Cluttered Like My Head

 The Chicago Conversion is an interesting V book. The first two either cover the original series or run parallel to it. The third one features the TV cast running around in an attempt to capture Diana. This is effectively the first one that falls in that gap between the mini-series and the original series, and chooses to fix any problems with continuity by setting itself in a completely different locale, with a completely different cast.  This has strengths and weaknesses. A strength is obviously that there is less chance of it contradicting the story that we see in other media, but a weakness is that the cast from the TV show is already well defined, and the book has to introduce a cast from scratch. I'm guessing that they were also written at pace, and so we tend to see a selection of common tropes appearing in the books. In this one, for instance, we have a hero called Sam Walker, an athletic Vietnam vet, a bit rough around the edges, a reluctant fighter driven by the loss ...

 We're in the home stretch now - I think it's fair to see that the creators knew the end was coming, as the Captain Britain story is coming close to wrapping up. The Fury meets with our assortment of heroes, and has the upper stakes in the battle that kicks off, ending with a shocking fade to black for the final page. As ever, it's wonderful stuff, Moore and Davis working wonderfully as a team, and with an opening triptych that plays to Davis's strengths. I know I'm forty years after the curve, but I'm glad to have finally got around to reading this,  As an extra this month, we have a strip called The Crusader by Davis and Paul Neary, apparently Davis's first professional work. It's another amusing parody of comic book tropes with our hero having been disturbed by the death of his parents, and deciding to become a superhero to avenge them. II'm not sure how it would have fitted originally in the pages of Rampage but it's an effective filler here,...

From my recall, book 3 of the series, "The Pursuit of Diana" by Allen Wold came out around the same time as the weekly TV show - I could be wrong (Amazon lists a publication date of June 1985) By the time the weekly show made it to the UK, the wheels had pretty clearly fallen off of the wagon, and instead of it being a high profile weekly show, it was shunted to late night on some ITV regions - not all of them even carried it.  But NEL, in the wake of Pinnacle in the US ploughed ahead, with a book showing how Diana was captured at the close of the two mini-series.  Ostensibly, this closes a gap between those series and the weekly show, which opened a year later with Diana on the stand for 'Crimes against Humanity'.  In reality, its really a lot of set pieces where the resistance capture Diana, then they come up against some humans who have been converted, Diana escapes, they capture her again, they end up on a mother ship, they need to fix the mother ship, they fight ...

 The second V book was East Coast Crisis, a chunky title set (as the title says) in New York rather than the Californa locale loved by television production companies at the time.  This one says that it was published in September 1984 in the US (by Pinnacle) and then April 1985 in the UK (by NEL)  A co-write between Ann Crispin and Howard Weinstein, at 300 pages, this is the chunks of the spin-off books, and runs simultaneously with the events of the original two mini-series and thus the original book.  It's fair to say therefore that there's little opportunity for surprise. We see a lot of plot points from the original series repeated, only with a New York twist. The visitors are our friends / they're converting people / what's happening to scientists etc etc.  I think its also true to suggest that the characters in this book probably suffer in comparison with the ones from the TV show - we can all visualise Mike Donovan and Juliet Parrish in our heads because ...

 Now we are up to September 1983. There's no sense here of a title that knows its on its last legs and going through the motions. I reckon this is probably one of the best issues of Daredevils - it knows exactly what it's doing and its doing it brilliantly.  Firstly - we've got the instalment of Captain Britain where Moore is literally lining up the chess pieces in the story and bringing them into play. It's a treat to see, and its nice to see supporting characters from the US comics (Shaw and Gyrich) appear - it helps to sustain the conceit that the stories are taking place in one big shared universe.  The art by Alan Davis is immaculate - he really has come on in leaps and bounds since the first issues and the twist on the last page, as the Fury make his return to this universe, is spectacular.  Then we've got Daredevil which this month includes the first appearance of Elektra. It's a marvellous piece of continuity mangling, Miller managing to convince us that...

Yesterday I went down south to see Idlewild at the Wedgewood Rooms. When I lived down that way, we used to see quite a few bands at that venue, and, according to my Setlist stats, the last band I saw there was Idlewild themselves back in 2009.  Roddy himself alluded to this - he said that he reckoned it was their 9th time in Portsmouth as a band, which, as he said, is pretty impressive for a band from Scotland. I reckon they've only been to Northampton 2 or 3 times so Portsmouth has been really lucky.  They were great of course - they mixed up their set with a few tracks from their most recent album, but it was mostly the big songs that you'd expect, and the band, now set as a 6 piece, with Rod Jones and Allan Stewart anchoring the stage with a guitar at each side, muscles through a raucous and energetic set.  It won't come as a great revelation that, as you get older, time seems to be speeding up. I only spent 4 years living down there, and moved back to Northampton in 2...