Cluttered Like My Head

 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...