Wednesday 16 May 2012

2DCAST EPISODE 4 : The Voyage Home






 


Hours. Minutes . Even Seconds .Tick Tick Tick Yeah Let It Happen!”

Now imagine that in the voice of the late great Macho Man Randy Savage and you may begin to imagine the excitement that Ciaran and Bobby are experiencing in waiting for the 2012 2d Festival. In anticipation of this your intrepid hosts talk about A vs X , Brian Michael Bendis , Dc's new New 52 titles and poke more fun at Alan Moore . We also speak to the Zombies Hi team about the rise of Uproar Comics, and cast our eyes on THE 50 WORST MOVIES OF ALL TIME. Another fun episode that suffered from technical issues we apologise for the loss of sound quality.



Contact us at 2dcast@gmail.com


Official 2d Festival website is
http://2dfestival.com/


Uproar comics website is :
http://www.uproarcomics.co.uk/
Total Films list of bad movies is here:
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-most-hated-movies-ever-made


We look forward to seeing you all at festival time . Bobby and Ciaran will be hosting Dial Q for Quiz at 6.30 pm Saturday evening. See you there.




Friday 27 April 2012

Insert your own lazy Oasis joke here.


Morning Glories Vol 1 &2

Image Comics

Joe Eisma( Artist) Nick Spencer (Author).

If you don'y have a school uniform fetish before you read this you will afterwards.


 
For those of you who are soundly of the mind that internet piracy is an evil, I would like both of you to take note of the following true tale. During a recent adventure on the Interpipes , I (completely by accident of course) downloaded an issue of Images Morning Glories, and within ten seconds of having completed it I  went to Amazon and bought the first two graphic novel collections. When the books arrived I read them both in one sitting, and then like some feeble junkie I went crawling back to Amazon to get Vol 3 only to find out that they had JACKED UP THE PRICE. Or, rather, there was no sign of the next collection, and a cursory investigation seemed to suggest the next issue may also be delayed. Just like all good pushers Joe Eisma and Nick Spencer can not be relied upon to deliver their goods when they say they will. That creates a bit of a problem as, to say Morning Glories is Moorish would be a bit like saying Hitler was “a bit of a rascal”. Not since ‘Lost’ first hit the screens have I been so completely engrossed in a narrative to the extent that I HAVE to know what happens next. And the comparisons to Lost don’t end there.

The story is purposely both intriguing and mysterious (like Lost), the characters are all absolutely gorgeous (like Lost); the whole thing is beautifully presented (like Lost). And just (like Lost) if I don’t get some straight answers soon I am GOING TO FUCKING SCREAM. In fact it’s so like Lost , that if I were a cynical man ( and I am), I would suggest that Morning Glories almost reads like a pilot for the next  hit show coming this fall on Showtime or AMC.



Right in the gentlemans teabags.


The central conceit is a simple one: pupils attend a mysterious boarding school.  Happily for us, the story completely avoids giving us the sorts of "golly gosh lets go and have a feast with Hagrid" scenarios that occasionally made the early Harry Potter books unbearable, and goes straight for those old family favourites: insane sexual tension, Machiavellian intrigue and ultra-violence. No real explanations are given for anything, and you are bombarded with unanswered question after unanswered question:   what the hell is this school for? Are the pupils and staff prisoners?  Didn’t she die in the last issue? Are the staff experimenting on pupils? What’s going on in the cavern under the school? Why is this classroom starting to fill up with water?  IT’S INSANE. And it’s brilliantly done. The artwork is absolutely top notch. It has an ethereal almost dream like quality to it, which adds a great deal to the stories “what is real and what isn’t?” vibe. Joe Eisma is destined for great things in the future.

"She makes me feel kinda funny. Like when we used to climb the ropes in gym class"

Writer Nick Spencer could well claim to be the hardest working man in show business (now that James Brown has snuffed it) working on not only his creator owned properties, but also for Marvel and DC. I can’t help but feel that he might be spreading himself a trifle thin in much the same way Kevin Smith did while he was working on Spiderman/ Black Cat.

The bad news for addicts like me is that the erratic nature of the publishing schedule, plus the labyrinthine  nature of the various story arcs suggest that getting through Morning Glories is going to be a very drawn out process indeed. God damn it. I can’t wait for the TV show.



Thursday 12 April 2012

2DCAST EPISODE 3: Back in Training




2DCAST EPISODE 3 : BACK IN TRAINING

Not to be stopped by your puny human “technical difficulties”, Ciaran and Bobby return for another episode of the podcast that melts in your mouth not in your hands. In this episode we discuss recent plot revelations on Garth Ennis's The Boys, who we Hope gets killed off in Marvels A vs X mega event and \we discuss Alan Moore and his recent conflicts with publishers, move moguls, co creators and sanity. Festival director David Campbell joins us to announce our new GUESTS OF HONOUR as well as to give us his thoughts on the latest Hollywood Blockbusters. Were also joined by Dublin based comics artist Stephen Mooney who talks us through his career and gives us his thoughts on TEEN WOLF. A reasonable time can be expected by all.

Stephen Mooneys Half Past Danger blog is www.halfpastdanger.com

The Eclectic Mick’s website can be found here www. eclecticmicks.blogspot.co.uk/

The new 2d Festival website is now online at http://www.2dfestival.com/

You can email the show with any thoughts, requests views or competition entries at 2dcast@gmail.com

The crazy interview with Alan Moore is here:


Sunday 18 March 2012

2dCast Episode 2 : Electric boogaloo


Bobby Best and Ciaran Flanagan return with another episode of the comics podcast described by one listener as “ fine”. In this episode we have none of the promised interviews , a look at this years guest list , and news about changes( and not necessarily for the better) to the panel discussions settings. Bobby gives his thoughts on the Avengers trailer and shares his theory on the GOOSE OF IMPENDING DOOM. We set the wayback machine five years back as we give our thoughts on the greatest moments in festival history . All this plus a whole lot more. And really, sorry that the promised interviews dont appear. Sincerely.


The new 2d Festival website is now online at http://www.2dfestival.com/

you can email the show with any thoughts, requests or views at 2dcast@gmail.com


Star Trek Season 8 is here www.twitter.com/#!/tng_s8

 

Monday 20 February 2012

2d Festival Podcast Episode 1



It's finally here !!!! Join hosts Ciaran Flanagan and Bobby Best as they struggle against technical difficulties , K9 attacks and their own inadequacies as human beings in their quest to find a format. In our début adventure we discuss DC's New 52 ( and their horrendous new logo) , recent legal difficulties faced by some comics creators , the recent reboot of the X-Men franchise , and most shockingly whether or now the 2d Festival home turf The Verbal Arts Centre recently perished in a towering inferno! In more light-hearted news , we are joined by none other than David Campbell for a natter about his life in comics and the SECRET ORIGIN OF THE 2D FESTIVAL! All This plus a chance to get your mucky paws on a nice hardback copy of All Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder by Jim Lee and Frank Miller.

You can contact the podcast team with questions, plugs, enquiries or competition entries at our email address : 2dcast @gmail.com . All feedback is gratefully received

More information about The Comicbook Legal Defence Fund as mentioned during the show can be found @ http://cbldf.org/





Wednesday 15 February 2012

FAT FAT FAT FAT

In Derry this week . Despite a weekend in Belfast resulting in herculean booze intake according to Boots Derry, I am 84.6 kg and my mate Jims scales say 85.0 , but theyre bollocksed , so its all going in the right direction. I will return later this weekend with some comics reviews , my school report and  THE 2D FESTIVAL PODCAST

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Watchmen 3 years too late


This is something I wrote for Verbal Magazine on the eve of the film Watchmen being released, never edited or proofed and never used. I think its not too bad. I posted it here back in 2009 when there was actually nobody reading this as opposed to now when virtually no one is reading this . Obviously this is written with the layman in mind. Of everything on this blog I would  appreciate feedback on this most of all. In all honesty I was blown away on first viewing of Watchmen , feeling that they had captured the spirit of the book perfectly. I have yet to re watch it, and as I move further and further away from the first viewing all I can say is that I find the lack of tentacles to be disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as that big blue fellas todger. Anyway.......


Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Super hero and comic book movies have always been big business. Ever since Richard Donners Superman made us believe a man could fly in 1977 there has been a seemingly endless stream of films of varying quality , form the brilliant ( A History Of Violence , Road To Perdition,) to the banal (Batman and Robin being a memorable disaster). 2008 seemed to be something of a pinnacle in terms of box office success and quality of content what with the success last year of the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight. Anyone who went to the cinema to see the latter will have seen a trailer for another seemingly run of the mill super hero film called Watchmen. Most people who saw this trailer probably thought “Oh, what’s that? That looks like a good film. I may go and see that. When it comes out. In 2009. Probably” and then went on with their lives. But a select group of people (of which I am a member), probably came very close to wetting themselves at the prospect of this project coming to fruition. Comic fans have known since day one that Watchmen is something special.
Imagine your favourite book, song, and movie all combined into a single package: That’s Watchmen. The type of thing that you finish reading and immediately after the shock has worn off you wish you’d never read it so you can read it again. And then you read it again anyway. It’s that good. The term “greatest” is thrown around these days as if it was so much confetti, but take it from me, Watchmen is the greatest comic book ever. And I know that is a compliment roughly akin to being described as the best dressed man in Ballymena, but it really is something else. It punches above its weight breaking out from the confines of a ‘kids’ medium and making it onto Time magazines list of the top 100 novels of the Twentieth century. With the imminent release of the movie (recent legal issues not withstanding,) it seems like as good a time as any to take a look at this seminal work, and the wizard (literally) that produced it.

Northampton born Alan Moore had made a name for himself on the British comics’ circuit writing for titles such as Doctor Who, Captain Britain and 2000AD. His work on the latter had garnered him several UK based comics awards (voted for by, in Moore’s words, “50 people in anoraks with awful social lives”), which caught the eye of US comics giant DC who offered him the opportunity to write their (failing) Swamp Thing title. Rising to the challenge Moore somehow managed to take a book in which the protagonist was a walking compost heap from selling 15,000 copies to selling more than 100,000 copies.
DC rewarded this success by giving Moore a line of super hero characters from the recently acquired Charlton Comics that he could revamp as he saw fit. Moore felt that if he started the series off with the death of a major character that was well known to the reader then it would let them know they were reading something outside of the norm of the time. Eventually the rights to the Charlton characters were lost, but Moore carried on with characters that he made up himself reasoning that “If I wrote the substitute characters well enough, so that they seemed familiar in certain ways, certain aspects of them brought back a kind of generic super-hero resonance or familiarity to the reader, then it might work”. Taking the premise: what would happen if super heroes existed in the real( or at the very least a more realistic) world, Watchmen along with Frank Millers’ The Dark Knight Returns ushered in the era of grim and gritty comics that led to the creation of Tim Burton’s Batman franchise, and changed the way comics were written forever.


 
 
Set in an alternate version of 1985 in which Richard Nixon remains president, the cold war continues, and the United States and Soviet Union stand on the brink of nuclear war, Watchmen opens with the discovery of the Murder of Edward Blake aka The Comedian one of only two costumed crime fighters remaining in the governments good graces after vigilante activity has been outlawed. Rorschach a borderline socio-path and the only costume to operate outside the law starts an investigation into what he believes is a series of ‘ Cape Killings’ – someone murdering former costumed heroes. He launches an investigation contacting all former crime fighters including the paunchy down trodden Nite Owl, the self professed smartest man on the planet Ozymandias, and the super powered Doctor Manhattan, (the only genuine super being), who is becoming increasingly removed from his humanity. What follows is less of a super hero murder mystery and more of a journey through comics as a medium, as Moore pays tribute to comics’ history at the same times he is de-constructing and exposing the weakness’ of the super hero genre. With no super villains acting as antagonists the crux of he story became both the socio economic implications that the presence of a genuine super human would have on the world, and the (largely sexual) motivations that such individuals would have for their activities. Being that it was written in the mid eighties the tone is rather stark and grim, a commentary on the American psyche as it was during the Reganomics / cold war period. To say that the outcome of the narrative unexpected and shocking is something of an understatement ,in fact if I told you how the book ends you would dismiss it as the ravings of a deluded madman.

Moore choose David Gibbons as not only the artist for the piece but also co-creator, and often times copy editor, dealing with the several hundred pages of handwritten script and notes that Moore provided in a piecemeal fashion. A three or four page description of a single panel would often end with the note”If this doesn’t work for you just do what works best”. Gibbons insisted on a nine panel page layout which allowed him an element of pacing and visual control that he could predict and use to dramatic effect. After more than twenty years it is easy to forget that for all its success as a collected edition it was never meant to be read in that fashion, rather it was intended as a monthly serial piece allowing for suspense and cliff-hangers in the same way that contemporary dramas such as Lost and 24 do. Additionally Gibbons was able to use the comics medium to his advantage by adding a level of detail which was second to none, so in depth that even Moore himself is noticing new touches today some twenty years after its initial publication .In essence Watchmen was the first work to exploit the medium to tell a tale that could be engineered only in comics. Chapter 5: Fearful Symmetry stands out in particular for it experimental style, as Gibbons laid it out in a symmetrical fashion: the first page mirrored the last in terms of layout, with the centre page spread being completely symmetrical. It’s the small touches like this that you don’t really notice until the sixth or seventh read through.









The flow of the narrative is broken up by a comic-within- a –comic Tales of the Black Freighter, a pirate adventure book. The creators reasoned that a society that had actual super heroes would not be interested in reading their comic book exploits, and would instead enjoy other genres such as horror , detective romance etc. . The rich and dark imagery in the swash buckling tale made for an effective counterpoint to the contemporary setting. Each issue also included supplementary material designed to give a richer insight into the world of the Watchmen. These included psychological profiles, magazine articles, and an autobiography of a retired crime fighter. The book would loose nothing if these were taken away. They’re just nice touches designed to reward the careful reader .Eventually, as work on Watchmen progressed the strip took on a life of its own and strange synchronicities started to pop up unintentionally. The monthly publication of the title was fraught with delays, but it mattered little. The book was a massive commercial and critical success. DC rushed to release cash in merchandise. It remains in print till this day, and its influence is felt not only in the work of comic writers such as Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis, but in many other facets of Pop culture including the Acid House movement (The iconic smiley face image used on a hit Bomb The Bass single), and a recent appearance in The Simpson’s.


Things did not end happily between Moore and DC Comics, as in 1990 he refused to work with them any longer due in part to their treatment of him in the wake of Watchmen’s success . In fact Moore largely moved outside the mainstream preferring to approach work on his own terms. He continues to thrive however on the fringe of the industry, where he remains one of the most respected figures in modern comics. He does not however have high hopes for the forthcoming movie of his most famous work stating “There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't”. I for one hope that he’s wrong about that. 




The Films of Alan Moore.

Alan Moore has a hate/hate relationship with Hollywood, so much so that he will not take payment from or watch any film based on his work .It doesn’t help that the films in question tend to be total cobblers. What are the chances of Watchmen bucking the trend? Not good by the looks of previous efforts……..
You're a naughty one, Saucy Jack.....



From Hell: Moore’s complex look at the character and psychology of the city of London, as told through the story of Jack the Ripper became, in the words of comedian Stewart Lee “A thing about a man who kills some women".
TO THE SHITMOBILE


The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
: In 1999 Moore and artist Kevin O Neil made a bold attempt to merge all works of fiction into a single cohesive narrative, which actually worked within the context of the strip. Film-maker Stephen Norrington added a sexy vampire and Tom Sawyer driving a Batmobile. Nice.
Demons ? No way!!!!


Constantine: The comics’ version of John Constantine (aka Hellblazer) was an embittered, alcoholic, cynical, chain smoking British, Noir style occult detective with no morals and a very dim view of human nature. The film version was Keanu Reeves.
Princess Leia hasn't been well.
V For Vendetta: The problem: America was always going to have a problem with the “Terrorist super Hero” introduced in Moore’s limited series. The solution: let’s change the main character from a ruthless anarchist to a romantic freedom fighter. Oh, and add an unconvincing love story and bobbins script while were at it. 
DONG


Watchmen: Picture worth one thousand words.