Brand New Doctor Who Series 6 Trailer (is Awesome)!!!

My brain was surely not built for this kind of excitement.

First Full Captain America Trailer, Then?

Spot on.

A Trailer: SUPER

SUPER.

Time Travel is Bad for You

I did a talk at the last Bettakultcha to 250 people on the perils of Time Travel earlier in the month. It gave me gulps. This is it:

Mark Johnson from Dave Naylor on Vimeo.

Multi-storey Tron Legacy: A Review

Put my review of Tron: Legacy review up on The Culture Vulture, featuring Obi Wan Kenobi, The Dude and Jeff Bridges' creepy CGI face.

I may have gone off on one a little about the problems in fiction in which writers get to set all their own world rules. Have an extract:

"The great strength and weakness of having a film set in a completely fabricated world is that said world’s creators get to decide on all of its rules. Those creators – director Joseph Kosinski, writers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, and, of course, Steven M. Lisberger, the writer and director of the first Tronfilm and a producer on this one – pay lip service to The Grid being a visual representation of the behaviour of software (its inhabitants, for example, are called ‘programs’) but the reality (unreality?) of the situation is that it is a fantasy world with rules that have more to do with Harry Potter than Windows 7."

The Professional Nerd’s diary of Thought Bubble Festival Part 2

My write-up of Thought Bubble 2010 finally surfaced over on The Culture Vulture. TB was great this year. Partly because we had more staff on the OK Comics table, mostly because it was just great. I'd say more, but it's all through there. That said, have a little taste:

"10:30pm: Spot John Romita Jr, described by Marvel’s Editor in Chief as the greatest artist in comics, stood at the bar. I have been reading his comics since I’ve been reading. He’s comics royalty. Nearly let the fact that I have absolutely nothing constructive to say to him stop me from saying hi. Realise I don’t want this to be the day I almost met John Romita Jr and brusquely shove my friend Jack out of the way mid-sentence to go introduce myself. For the entire two minutes we talk he grips my hand like he could turn it into a calcium supplement. He’s very gracious about the fact I barely understand syllables right now. The only other three people in the world I would get like this with are Michael J. Fox, Stan Lee and Harrison Ford."

(While we're on the subject of Thought Bubble - here's my diary of TB2009).

Ultraman Zero Trailer: Green Lantern vs Power Rangers

Via BleedingCool.

Leeds' Identity Crisis and the Perils of PR Bobbins

I had a guest post up on The Culture Vulture the other day. It's about Leeds, its identity and the problems with trying to form a cohesive narrative about any city. It's here. It ran with the picture above, which I took with my very own iPhone.

Last Saturday at OK Comics...

- I decided to go to work in an Empire Strikes Back t-shirt under an unfastened plaid shirt. I observed on Facebook that there are few things in this life that announce you as a comic shop employee like the aforementioned clothing combination and was vindicated by the 'likes' of several friends. Brendan also wore a t-shirt under an unfastened plaid shirt. This is not coincidence. It was confirmed for me that this look is BACK.

- Oliver was uncertain whether to follow the hype and buy Enslaved or follow his feelings and buy Castlevania. He went with Castlevania. This may be significant.

- Me and Kirsty are now a Leeds independent retail power couple. She worked at Crash Records for the first time in several years. She also helped with the window display at OK Comics.

- I discovered that the Valerian and Laureline translation I have been patiently waiting for has actually been on the shelf for at least a few weeks. RETAIL FAIL. (I toyed with dubbing this a 'REFAIL', but it just didn't work). I read French comics without being told to now.

- Mike Infinitum brought in several shortboxes that contained, amongst other things, late '90s X-Force and X-Men. While we tried to coat our enthusiasm under a slap-dash veneer of irony, there was no hiding the fact that me and Brendan were both genuinely excited about this. The excitement, though, was insufficient to prompt either of us to actually buy anything from the box.

- We sold some comics.

All-Star Superman in Moving Pictures! (Or 'a Trailer')

The trailer seems to miss the tone of the comics series entirely and instead opts for an end-of-the-world sort of feel. Could just be the cut of the trailer, I suppose, but...

I got a bad feeling about this.