Comic Cuts - 1 February 2019

After two months working in-house, I'm back to working from home. I'm still writing material for the same firm, and will be for another six weeks or so. Working at the firm was always temporary, but it helped keep me focused on the job. I've just got to make sure I don't let e-mails, or Facebook, or watching something good on the TV, or fancying a walk round the block, distract me.

So, of course, during my first week back at home, I'm going to be in a tearing hurry to post an update to my Iron Mask book ahead of filming a little interviewette for The One Show next Thursday. The piece will be presented by social historian Ruth Goodman, probably best known for her shows and books about historical farming and Victorian life and practices.

I'll probably be on for about thirty seconds out of four minutes thirty. Even for such a short piece they are filming in at least three locations. Would they send me to Norfolk, or to Trafalgar Square or somewhere exciting to film? No, I'm in a shoe shop.

(Actually it's a little bit more exciting than I've made it sound, but I'll hopefully be able to talk about it next week.)

So that's my "One" news... more next week.

Just enough time left to mention a couple of upcoming releases from Rebellion. I posted in the Rolling News column to your left that Rebellion were releasing some reprint material from the humour titles in their archive and also had a Cor! and Buster Special lined up for publication on 17 April. Well, here are a couple of covers for you to enjoy.

The special, on the left, has cover artwork by Neil Googe and interior artwork by Ned Hartley, Cavan Scott, Abigail Bulmer and Tanya Roberts, with a lead-off strip by Lew Stringer. Good to see Frankie Stein, Martha (of Monster Make-Up fame) and Face-ache all making an appearance.

The other title is a freebie for Free Comic Book Day on 4 May and will contain reprints from various titles. It's great to see that Rebellion are making use of the full range of titles that they've acquired.


I haven't had much time for TV of late. I haven't been watching as much as normal because I'm not watching a show at lunchtime and I'm so knackered of an evening that I've not been watching anything just before bed. You'd perhaps expect that to be good for my eyesight, but actually it has been the cause of much eyestrain of late. I now have my new glasses and my eyes are gradually getting used to them... another reason I'm happy to be back at home where I have my chair, desk and monitor all carefully positioned to make long hours of computer work as comfortable on the eyes as possible.

I did manage to finish The Little Drummer Girl, adapted from a novel by John Le Carre which I have absolutely no memory of reading. I thought I had... I know I've got a copy, but I seem to have wiped the plot from my memory – which was great as it meant I could come to the TV series fresh.

I haven't read any reviews, but I suspect it was greeted with a bit less razzmatazz than The Night Manager was a couple of years ago. I quick dip into Wikipedia reveals that the latter was nominated for 36 awards and won 11, including 2 Emmys and 3 Golden Globes. When your show has Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman, it is going to get noticed.

By comparison, The Little Drummer Girl was a relatively quieter release. If you can take Mel as a typical viewer, she watched and enjoyed The Night Manager, but wasn't inspired by the trailers to watch The Little Drummer Girl.

I thought it had a slow burning storyline which occasionally exploded into action. There were some incredibly tense moments, usually moments of spycraft, such as when Charlie drives a car lined with Semtex into a town square. Who knew waiting for something to happen could be so tense? I didn't know many of the actors (Charles Dance aside, I probably only knew Alexander Skarsgard from True Blood and Generation Kill), but there were no disappointments on that front, and the whole thing was ably directed by Park Chan-wook, whose Oldboy is a classic South Korean action thriller, but whose Stoker I found unwatchable, despite it getting some excellent reviews. The Little Drummer Girl was highly watchable.

I'll leave you with some more "Ones"...

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