All in All

There hasn’t been many comments on comics for a long time, I fear this is due to my slowly getting bored with them, partly perhaps through declining standards and mostly through apathy on my part.

On the Vertigo side of things, I’m still reading Hellblazer and enjoying Andy Diggle’s take although sadly his run is coming to an end soon – I just hope he’s replaced by another British writer, I’ve said it before but as he’s a quintessentially British character he needs a British writer and to be based in the UK. The stories that relocate him to the States never quite work.

Fables remains one of my top reads, but I fear Rose Red is about to die sadly. Jack of the Fables is also good, but sometimes the more frivolous aspect of it annoys me a little.

Top Vertigo read is Vinyl Underground, which is scandalously under appreciated and has been cancelled from the next issue. I guess I can see why it hasn’t done well though – firstly it does swear a lot which always seems to upset the readers in Middle America, but more importantly it is a very English story which whilst hitting all the right notes for me just probably doesn’t translate to the larger US market. Face it, they won’t know who Calum Best is (who at least in a small part must be the basis for the central character, and I bet Best wishes he was that cool)

On the main DCU/spandex front I fear there are more misses than hits at the moment. I am a huge Titans fan, after all that was what got me into spandex comics in the first place, but having spent my time reading the Wolfman/Perez Titans, I have very little empathy towards the current team line up on Teen Titans (and I hate Miss Martian with a passion, horrible pointless character). I also had so much hope for Titans (grown up), and do like Winick’s writing mostly, but so far this has been lazy crap. Okay, so it seems they are aware of this and have had to instigate major changes after just 3 issues, but I worry that it will all be too late.

Wonder Woman’s good again. JLA improving but suffered badly from the rather bad crossover just when the new writer started. JSA is just a bit too slow for my liking.

Didn’t bother with the new weekly, Trinity. Probably though disappointment over Countdown. Checkmate dropped before it was cancelled, Manhunter close to being dropped.

The other two I’m reading are the big Final Crisis event and Batman, both by Grant Morrison. All I will say is that I am enjoying them both, and finding them extremely well-written, well-written enough for me to find myself finishing them and wishing I had the next issue already.

BUT, I guess one of the reasons why I very rarely post on messageboards is my frustration at the comments about both of them that I read. I’d probably be banned within posts if I responded to some of the comments.

I guess its difficult writing comics in this age of internet, messageboards, and immediate response. More than anything I fear that patience levels are dropping – pre-internet you never heard of people moaning between issues, you waited for issue 5 and were hit by the payback and realised that the story was actually great and intricately written. Now, it seems people want everything to be within that one issue otherwise it doesn’t make sense or, is slow, or is simply rubbish. How would Watchmen fare if it were released monthly these days? I'd bet it wouldn't receive the praise it does.

Comments on Final Crisis and Batman's RIP storyline seem to be getting a lot of these criticisms when it doesn’t take rocket science to see where the story is going and appreciate the intricacies. These are two of DC’s biggest properties, do people really think they would vigorously promote and publish these stories if they were incomprehensible? I also get really pissed off with the comments about needing to be on drugs to understand them, simply because Morrison has mentioned in the past that he dabbles.

I’d hate to be a comic writer. These characters have been around longer than a lot of the readers, who can be any age, any nationality, and of any viewpoint (especially in the US where I would say 85% of the audience is). You’ll never please everyone, and the occasional anonymity of the internet makes the nay-sayers more vocal and on occasion aggressive.

Music update next!

Last year, we attended the new London 1-day festival and I like so many other blogged at length at all the faults from poor organisation which made it a less than enjoyable day all round. However, in the way that with bands I am nearly always prepared to give a not well-performing band a second chance, Mac and I braved the (mostly not working yet again) Tube system to Victoria Park to see if the Field Day team would be true to their word and learn from last year’s mistakes.

Last years main failings were: appalling queues for the toilets, bars and food, and bad sound. They advertised that they have appointed new bar/caterers with plenty of experience, doubled the number of bars and increased the number of toilets, including adding gents urinals. How did it go then?

On entering the site and making our way to the main stage to see Wild Beasts (for the third time this year, which considering they were terrible the first time we ever saw them just over a year ago just proves how we are prepared to give anyone a second chance – they are now Mac’s new band of the year so far). The first thing we had to do to get to the stage was the cross through a very long queue for the toilets. Uh oh, not a good sign. Sound at the main stage was fine (at least fine for my perma-damaged ears), Wild Beats were fine. On to a bar, served instantly, prices what you would expect. Unfortunately the way to beat queues for a pint seems to forego draft beer for cans, but this is a minor issue if I’m being totally honest, and I’d rather get a can in 2 minutes than a pint in 45 minutes. Food had lost the organic selling point from last year and in turn had turned to standard festival kiosks, but I can easily live with that.

Queues for the toilets seemed to stretch all day, although I guess part of this was poor sign posting – the urinals were tucked away behind the main area but unless you looked hard you wouldn’t have known this at all. As the day went on they added more urinals too – not sure if they were moved from other areas or just added through supply and demand. So better but still a little room for improvement – maybe a few more and better signposted urinals may help next year.

So on the whole, yes, they had learnt a lot from last year and had largely delivered. However, this can always lead to new problems. The main one which was their problem was the constant reshuffling of the set times – there was one posted on the website two days before, that was changed by the morning of the festival, which in turn had changed by the time you got there. This rather made their free programme pointless as it was giving all the wrong times. Now the changes did come about due to things outside their control (acts unable to turn up at the last moment) but I would have thought it better to not upset the programme too much to cater for this problem than to drastically change things – The Homefires stage was worst hit. I also understand that the Security were over heavy-handed ejecting people early on for peeing against the fence due to the length of the queues. I can’t comment on this too much as it is always the word of the disgruntled person sounding off loudest. If this was an eviction policy, however, I do think they should have clearly stated it on entry.

So, organisationally, last years 2/10 has been increased to about a 7/10. Still room for improvement but a good show on the whole. Onto the festival itself.

The worst part of the festival was the thing no-one could do anything about – rain. Constant rain for most of the day. I don’t know if there were fewer acts than last year or just fewer that I was interested in seeing but the problem with constant rain and an average hour between acts I was interested in meant, that sad wimp that I am, I got cold. By the time I had seen an excellent set by Efterklang and realised that I had about an hour and a half before Foals, I’ll have to be totally honest here and say that the cold got to me and it was time to mooch off, dry off, and have a wind down pint in Brixton before bed. Sorry Foals, but blame global warming.

The other downside to rain? Umbrellas. Selfish twats with umbrellas. Thankfully, the long gap between acts meant we could get to the stage well in advance and so we were always able to get pretty close to the front and not be obscured by people’s umbrellas. However, when you see a photo like this you can’t help understand the hatred for people using them




So will we do Field Day again? Line up permitting, of course, but yes. Please can we have a decent summer next year Mr Weatherman?