Some random stuff:

I've been rewatching the original Doctor Who episodes, from An Unearthly Child up to The Firemaker. I never recalled Hartnell's Doctor being such a bastard - cranky, yes, but not as menacing, threatening, petulant, border-line murderous and coldblooded as he actually is in the first story arc. He almost out-assholes Colin Baker, which takes some doing.

Also watched the entire first series of Life on Mars. I get why people raved about this series now. Clever, intiguing, funny, different, satirical and gripping, it's cracking entertainment and although the premise emerged from a group of writers who initially intended it as a remake of The Sweeney, it morphed into a far more interesting beast when they decided to add the time travel element into the mix. The double mystery of whether Sam's actually just in a fantasy world prompted by his coma or actually transported into the past, somehow, and the crime stories in the episodes themselves, as well as some memorable characterizations, ensure that it's a cut above the average TV cop show.

I'm interested to see how the US version played out now. Has anyone seen it? I've heard it's very different, more Starsky and Hutch than The Sweeney.

Sad to hear that one of comedy's most overlooked actors - Colin Bean, who played Private Sponge in all but four of the 80 episodes of Dad's Army - has died aged 83.

I need more sleep.

Longbox and the Digital Revolution

Something I'd overlooked was the announcement of Longbox, the "iTunes for the comic industry". Will this mark the end of piracy in the comics industry? the end of the printed medium? Get a big shrug from most comic readers? Not sure, personally, I'm still of the opinion most of us want to read physical comics rather than onscreen and it'll succeed maybe to the level of e-books but not exactly take over, but as the article points out, Longbox is doing a lot of things right, including price points, apparent ease of use and so on.

The big question is, will Longbox succeed because it's able to deliver the latest issues cheaper (99 cents an issue) or is it going to be limited to older titles, like Marvel's . There's also the question of whether any of the big publishers are going to sign up for it - so far, only Top Cow and BOOM! Studios are confirmed. If Marvel and DC continue to want to do their own thing (or not in the case of DC) Longbox would appear to be defeated before it even begins.

Of course, there's also the question whether those that do read comics online will actually go back and start paying for them after they've been getting the content free on torrents for a while. And whether these people represent the bulk of those prepared to read books on their computers - obviously I'm happy with reading snippets of books online, but would I read my entirely monthly pull list on a computer instead of buying printed media? I doubt it. In my experience most comic readers are the same, but there probably are those who want to read comics but are short on storage space.

How do my friends list feel about this? Quick poll!

[Poll #1432786]

smarbaby is full of squee

Thanks to jawastew posting over at comicbook_icons I discovered Katie Cook, the aforementioned smarbaby.

Anyway, her art is pure love and in particular these (rejected) designs for the "X-Men Archives" trading card set.

So much good stuff there. And jawastew turned a bunch of them into icons over here.

Man, that's a lot of links.

I've knocked together a few of mine own. (I suspect distractedone will like the Emma ones below, if no-one else.)











If anyone uses any of these, please make sure to credit smarbaby.