Geek Syndicate - Issue 7

REVIEWS:

IT CAME!

Dan Boultwood on Creating IT CAME!

PANDEMIC

Celebrating our 7th Year With 007

www.geeksyndicate.co.uk

KICK ASS 2

REVIVER

We Talk To Frank Barbiere about his Five Ghosts

ORBITAL

WORLD’S END

We Debate Doctors and Present Our Findings SEPTEMBER 2013

GS Issue 007 - Credits Cover Art: Dan Boultwood Cover Design: Antony McGarry-Thickitt Designer: Antony McGarry-Thickitt Editors: Barry Nugent Antony McGarry-Thickitt Proof Reader (Pages 1 - 100): James Sims (JMS1701) Contributors: Antony McGarry-Thickitt Barry Nugent Casey Douglass Cat Collins Christophe Montoya Corey Brotherson Dion Winton-Polak Ian J Simpson James Sims (JMS1701) Jess Hawke Leo Johnson Luke Halsall Matt Farr Phil Hobden Ronald Singh (SilverFox) Wendy Sims (Darkphoenix1701)

Typesetting: GS Banner - Copperplate Bold Cover Text - Century Gothic Main Text - Nobile (Open Font Licence)

EDITORIAL “Hi everyone my name is Barry and I loved Man of Steel” *waits for polite applause before quietly walking back to chair* As the summer drifts to a close and the many arguments we had over Tony Stark kicking ass or whether we loved or loathed Man of Steel we are drawn back to more indoor pursuits. Comics continue to knock it out of the park, although I’m still trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the last three pages of Age of Ultron. To that end we have blooming cracking interview with Frank Barbiere the brains behind the awesome pulp comic Five Ghosts (p76).

I also have to give a big thank you to Dan Boultwood who not only talked to GS about his new Comic IT Came but also created our brilliant anniversary cover.

It was this cover that prompted me into giving out some love to 007 himself (p52).

For those of us not content to stay indoors, there are some great conventions on the horizon like the Eurogamer Expo, where we can get our grubby mitts on the PS4 and decide if we really want to keep our preorder for it going. Of Course let’s not forget the madness that was San Diego Comic Con. This year, backing up the GS team, we had Corey ‘Magic of Myths’ Brotherson who gave us a creator’s eye view of the event (p24).

Still to come in the event calendar we have Scardiff - Cardiff’s

first horror convention which due to my nervous condition I have no intention of going near (good luck to those of you brave enough to attend). In November, we have the last big entry in the indie comic calendar - Thought Bubble. Last year, the little convention that could became the massive convention which does. The speed by which the exhibitor tables sold out must have broken some kind of UK con record. To help with the demand for floor space a third hall has now been announced which means that this year’s Thought Bubble promises to be the biggest and best yet.

Oh and there’s some show coming to Channel 4 called Estate Agents of SHELVE or something with that agent bloke from the film about those superheroes.

Never heard of this Whedon fella but it’s probably worth a shot I reckon.

Over on BBC One we wait to see if Atlantis can fill the shoes left

by Merlin.

Autumn may be just around the corner but the geek calendar is looking fuller than the Hulk’s undies.

B

y arr

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Geek Syndicate Contents Features DOCTOR WHO: Ranking The Doctors! .............................................................................................................. 4 Adventures at SDCC 2013 with Corey Brotherson and the Steampunk Syndicate .............................. 24 The Car’s The Star ............................................................................................................................................... 34 Why Hit-Girl is my hero .................................................................................................................................... 38 THE BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO ... Doctor Who ..................................................................................................... 40 On Her Majesty’s Geeky Service ..................................................................................................................... 53 Jack Kirby’s Fourth World -A Retrospective ................................................................................................ 61 Fast Travel In Video Games - Is it Worth it? ................................................................................................ 75 The Five Step Guide To Capitol Fashion ........................................................................................................ 81 The Creativity Playlist ...................................................................................................................................... 90

Interviews Picking the Brain of Monkeybrain ................................................................................................................ 20 Vic Armstrong - The World’s Greatest Stuntman ....................................................................................... 46 IT CAME! Writer and Artist, Dan Boultwood ................................................................................................ 64 GS Interviews Five Ghosts Creator, Frank Barbiere .................................................................................. 78 Frazer Hines, Doctor Who’s Longest Serving Companion ............................................................................ 85

Reviews Pacific Rim ........................................................................................................................................................... 98 Peter Pan ............................................................................................................................................................ 100 Pandemic ........................................................................................................................................................... 103 Kick Ass 2 ............................................................................................................................................................ 106 IT CAME! Issue #001 ........................................................................................................................................ 108 Reviver ................................................................................................................................................................. 114 Orbital Volume 1 - Scars .................................................................................................................................. 116 The World’s End ................................................................................................................................................. 121 The Pirate Cinema ............................................................................................................................................. 123 Doctor Who: Regeneration ............................................................................................................................. 125

Previews EVENT PREVIEW - MCM Expo (October, 2013) ........................................................................................... 129 BOOK PREVIEW - Skin Game, By Jim Butcher .......................................................................................... 130 COMIC PREVIEW - Five Ghosts (Ongoing Series) ...................................................................................... 131 VIDEO GAME PREVIEW - Grand Theft Auto V ............................................................................................ 132 TV PREVIEW - Doctor Who Fiftieth Anniversary Episode ........................................................................ 133 ELEVATOR PITCH - Reynard City ................................................................................................................... 134 ELEVATOR PITCH - Man From Space ............................................................................................................. 141 ELEVATOR PITCH - Zoë Out of Time .............................................................................................................. 147

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Geek Syndicate DOCTOR WHO: Ranking The Doctors!

Over the past fifty years, the television viewing, comic and novel reading and audio play listening public have been treated to the adventures of a mysterious quintessentially English alien who travels through time and space in a strange blue box. Doctor Who has captured the imagination of millions over it’s long history.

Part of the series’ longevity was the production team’s idea of being able to replace the lead actor by “renewing” the Doctor’s alien body. This process became known as “regeneration” and to date there have been eleven official incarnations of the Doctor – with a twelfth set to appear at the end of this year’s Christmas special.

Luke’s Order of Doctors...

Geek Syndicate is something that I hold very dear. I first heard about it a couple of years ago through Twitter at Thought Bubble. I got in touch and started writing for them. The rest is history. I write reviews (mainly for comics), report news and I’ve been a regular contributor of specialist articles (for example geek criminology) for this very magazine since its first issue. It is a real joy to write for Geek Syndicate.

I was first introduced to Doctor Who when my dad brought me back a toy Dalek to play with from a fair. I think I have always kind of known what it was about as us geeks seem to pick these things up by osmosis. I remember seeing that amazing blue box and an old fashioned watch as my nine year old self watched and wondered what this awesome TV show was about. I was watching the (oft-maligned) 1996 TV movie.

Then in 2000, my friend told me that BBC Two was airing a classic Doctor Who from the past - Genesis of the Daleks. I remember being utterly gripped by this six-part story. For some reason though I never watched it week in week out when it returned in 2005 but I did watch The Empty Child and thought the story was ingenious. It wasn’t until I watched the second season of the re-launch that I was hooked, watching as much Doctor Who as I possibly could, both new and old.

And yes Daleks still scare me!

11. The Sixth Doctor – Colin Baker (1984-1986)

Doctor …

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Image © BBC

Each Doctor has had fundamental differences in temperament while still maintaining a core-Doctorishness: the desire that things be right in the universe and that evil be stopped, whatever it’s shape and whatever the cost. There are many arguments about which Doctor is the best and why, so at Geek Syndicate we thought we’d stick our own four pence in and provide two considered rankings of each of the Doctors. In doing so, we hope to encourage readers to hunt down some old episodes of this British institution. After all, there’s no such thing as a bad

Whether it was the writing, Baker himself or a mixture of both, this era marks the start of the downfall of the classic series. After maybe the greatest story in Doctor Who history (The Caves of Androzani) we were greeted with the Sixth Doctor and possibly the worst story, The Twin Dilemma. In this story we started to see the problems with this Doctor.

He was nasty and cowardly. He didn’t act like the Doctor we knew at all. The Sixth Doctor openly attacked his young companion Peri and later used her as a human shield to protect himself. The Twin Dilemma is a horrific story but it is something that you have to see to believe.

Is THIS the new Doctor? The Doctor Strikes. The Twin Dilemma

After this, the Sixth Doctor did manage to get back on his feet with a half decent Cyberman story but there were strange ideas added by the production team, like the TARDIS changing from its classic Police Box form into other

Geek Syndicate shapes due to the Doctor “fixing” the Chameleon Circuit that allows the machine to blend in with its surroundings. The only real highlight of the Sixth Doctor’s reign, for me, was Vengeance on Varos – a story that hardly featured the Doctor in it’s first half. To add extra insult into the wound, the show was placed on hiaitus during this time, after which it returned with the season long arc, the Trial of a Timelord. This was a great improvement, with the Sixth Doctor seeming to warm up and he seemed to be more like The Doctor we all knew. Unfortunately it was too little too late. Baker refused to return when he was fired from the show for his regeneration meaning that ‘the Sixth Doctor’ is clearly replacement Sylvester McCoy in a wig.

“Ch a And nge m mom it seem y dear s no . ent too t soo a n.”

Image © BBC

I have heard that the audio stories are a vast improvement, but based on his TV appearances, Colin Baker leaves much to be desired. I actually believe that any story you dislike in “new who” is still far superior to this tenure...

10. The Third Doctor – Jon Pertwee (1970-1974) The Third Doctor’s era is a strange time for me. As he regenerated from the Second Doctor, the Time Lord went from being a clever little rebel who used his intellect to outwit people, never using his fists to being an authoritarian who would happily make use of Venusian Akido to get past a particularly obstinate guard. Maybe it is because I have such fondness for Troughton but these overtly aggressive Doctors (like Colin Baker) just don’t work for me.

A great set of episodes let down by a poor Doctor. For me there is not much difference between Pertwee and Colin Baker. Baker was just unlucky to be a part of a poor period in the show’s history.

9. The Seventh Doctor – Sylvester McCoy. (1987-1996) McCoy’s Seventh Doctor is the polar opposite to Pertwee for me: he is good for the role but his stories are not good enough. After the arrogant, overt nature of the Sixth Doctor, the Seventh is a more intricate little man, using his intelligence to outwit his foes. At this time, the writers tried to bring back a lot of mystique to the character as well as suggesting that there is a lot more to the Doctor than meets the eye.

Without this Doctor, neither Davies or Moffat would have probably come up with their ideas. McCoy’s brilliant Dalek story is really the

William Hartnell, The Original Time Lord

“Before I go I just want to tell you, you were fantastic.

Absolutely fantastic. And d’you know what? So was I.”

Paradoxically the stories during this era are some of the best the show has ever produced. For me, much of this time feels more like a U.N.I.T spinoff show than Doctor Who because Pertwee doesn’t feel anything like the Doctor. The Third Doctor faces some of his most classic foes for the first time from Autons, Silurians and Sontarans are all here, as well as the most integral of them all: The Master. This Master is wonderfully portrayed by Roger Delgado as the Moriarty to the Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes. The constant duelling and almost brotherly love for each other is something that continues through the series all the way up to John Simm’s portrayal in 2009.

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8. The Ninth Doctor - Christopher Eccleston – (2005) Eccelston is the man that should be congratulated for bringing Doctor Who back to our television screens. In the same way that Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale gave Batman his edge through gritty realism, Russell T Davies and Eccelston made us believe in the Doctor again in a serious manner that destroyed the image of bad sets and bad plots from the end of the classic series.

Eccelston’s Doctor was a tough, damaged soul, more so than any other Doctor before or since. Having survived The Time War, this is a darker Doctor than we had ever seen before, yet still distinctly the man we have always known. Having a truly twenty-first century edge to him, we saw Eccelston grow as he recovered from his past and started to live life more, thanks to his companion Rose. Eccelston portrayed this Doctor as weary traveller who started cynical yet managed to become the warmer man we knew. His shock exit at the end of his first season was, with hindsight, just what was needed for the show. Eccelston had given the series the shot in the arm, grounding it and giving it a solid base, whilst leaving at a time where the fans would want more.

Image © BBC

Unfortunately for McCoy, the damage from the Colin Baker era had already been done. The viewers had talked with their feet and it ironically wasn’t until near the end of the series that McCoy managed to get the series back on its feet. And then it was cancelled. In the 1996 televised movie the Seventh Doctor was shot down in his prime.

WHO ... AM ... I?”

“Doctor, Who ARE you?”

final spark needed for the oncoming Time War and the idea of “The First Question” that Moffat played with this year: there is more to The Doctor. In Silver Nemesis, the Doctor’s companion, Ace explicitly asks “who are you?” as the story ends. Speaking of Ace, she is an intriguing companion. It’s clear that the Doctor knows more about his companion than he lets on.

“Who am I?

Image © BBC

Geek Syndicate

Patrick Troughton, Mischevious Wanderer

7. The Eighth Doctor – Paul McGann (1996)

For many people the television movie was a blip best forgotten, McGann’s performance being the only saving grace. But I really liked it 6

t . bu d.. has en the ment ared p t’s “I mo pre the n e be ...” for

If McGann had been given more time in the TARDIS, I’ve no doubt he would be higher up on my list. McGann in just over an hour managed to embody everything that the Doctor should be. He was kind, compassionate and this particular Doctor was a romantic. A funny Time Lord, McGann’s Doctor encouraged his companions to become better people, to become what they should be. The Eighth Doctor always saw the best in people which makes it even sadder that this Doctor is the one that will face The Time War and make the most difficult decision in all of his lives.

Geek Syndicate and always will. This was the first time that Doctor Who was ever on TV for me and therefore my first taste of the Doctor.

6. The First Doctor – William Hartnell. (1963-1966) Image © BBC

William Hartnell’s depiction of the Doctor will probably come as a shock to the system if you are used to later incarnations. A grumpy old man, he begins life as a reluctant hero, whilst fluffing his lines: a trait the writers seemed to accept as being a character trait of the Doctor.

Hartnell played the role with gravitas, the old idealist who has never let his beliefs die. This Doctor doesn’t just meet the Daleks for the first time but also had some of the best Dalek stories to ever be made.

From the truly terrifying opener, The Daleks, to the fantastic Dalek Invasion of Earth, this Doctor had his hands full. Hartnell should be credited for never limiting the role. We saw a man that was grumpy, angry and yet could be warm, happy, funny and kind. Hartnell’s Doctor faced off against other classic foes like fellow Time Lord (not that the production team had even thought of the Time Lords at this point!), the Meddling Monk, and the Cybermen before finally regenerating.

Jon Pertwee, The Action Dandy

5. The Fourth Doctor – Tom Baker (1975-1981)

Image © BBC

Tom Baker always has said that he basically played the Doctor as himself and this is clear especially if you watch any interview with him since he left the programme.

This Doctor is fearless and often he literally just laughs at his The Doctor tries to talk Davros out of creating the Daleks enemies. He would rather offer them a jelly belly than even consider fear. The Doctor’s stance against genocide evolves from Baker’s Doctor in the classic, arguably the best Dalek story, Genesis of the Daleks. This is television magic as we watch the Doctor struggle with the thought of committing genocide to the Daleks before they have even really become a threat, right at their creation.

ot legs. s! I’ve still g “Aaargh! Leg ingers, hands, ooh f Good. Arms, es, two, s. Ears, yes ey lots of finger in...bliad worse. Ch nose...I’ve h No, I’m m a girl! No! mey! Hair! I’ ger!” d still not gin not a girl… an

To many people Tom Baker would be number one on a list such as this, but he isn’t for me. Yes he is wonderful to watch but there is just something about him that I don’t feel as connected to as I do with other Doctors. Baker is probably the most eccentric Doctor there has been and is often heralded as the man that completely changed the way that we look at the Doctor.

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Geek Syndicate Image © BBC

As well as having classic Dalek stories, Baker was lucky to have some of the best writers the show has ever seen working with him. When you have superb writers and an actor who has as much charisma as Tom Baker you are likely to be on to a winner. From Tom Baker’s classic scarf that is so symbolic now to Doctor Who, that even after three Doctors in New Who it would probably be the single piece of clothing that someone would think of when they think of the Doctor. The longest running Doctor, Tom Baker is a special actor who brought something very different to this role and should always be credited for that.

Baker’s greatest downfall is that he probably hung onto his scarf for a season or two too long. By the time he regenerated, I think the audiences were ready to see who would come next.

4. The Eleventh Doctor – Matt Smith (2010-2012)

When Smith’s first episode, The Eleventh Hour, finally aired he put all the doubters to shame. He was a Doctor who was more alien than the very human Tenth Doctor and instantly watchable. Smith’s erratic behaviour and quick wit keeps the viewers enthralled. He manages to perfectly portray a man that looks young and yet is old, with bags of wisdom to boot. Both Smith’s greatest strength and the thing that works against him is the writing. Smith is the reason you continue to watch as he is so good as the Doctor that you just have to see him week in, week out.

Tom Baker, Truly Alien Adventurer

“ A r a a g h , slower…slower!

Concentrate on one thing…one thing!”

Image © BBC

When Matt Smith was announced as the Doctor he had a difficult time. Before he had even been given any chance to play the role, people were saying that he would never live up to David Tennant, who many were seeing as the best Doctor of the modern era if not ever.

Further terror came when they saw his costume: his now infamous bow tie and tweed jacket. I was hooked when I saw this and thought it suited Smith perfectly. Smith decided that he wanted a costume that has a look of The Second Doctor after watching Tomb of the Cybermen and he pulls it off well with a modern twist.

There have been many great moments from the Eleventh Doctor such as The Pandorica Opens and the phenomenal The Name of The Doctor.

Unfortunately, his middle season was very disappointing, plagued by plot holes and storylines that were so farcical that they beggared belief. Yet even as story lines floundered and other characters behaved in a contradictory manner from week to week, Smith still brings us in. He is moody and seems wise: an old man trapped inside a giddy young man’s body. On top of this, he’s funny. He is everything we could want from the Doctor. I am truly upset to see him go as I feel that he was really starting to get cooking but maybe it is better to leave when you are still wanted.

3. The Fifth Doctor – Peter Davison (1982-1984) Davison was another actor who had a difficult time when he replaced

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Peter Davison, Vulnerable Veteren

Geek Syndicate

Image © BBC

Tom Baker. The Fifth Doctor is the most human of all the classic Doctors. He faced a universe that seemed much harsher than it had in the past. The Doctor would do what he had always done in the past, but now instead of saving everyone, they would often die. There was a harsh realism to the Fifth Doctor’s era: the hero cannot always save everyone. He lost companion Adric in an awesome Cyberman story that turned Adric from one of the most annoying companions to someone who really mattered.

The Fifth Doctor began to start to see the universe the way it was but never changed his morals. He embodied a pained heroism as he hopped around the universe with his piece of celery attached to his jacket. The Fifth Doctor faced The Master, The Daleks and many other classic villains as Davison steered the show into The Caves of Androzani - Shows WHO The Doctor is its twentieth anniversary.

Davison’s true acting chops were shown in his final story, The Caves of Androzani. This story epitomised what this Doctor was all about. He had just met Peri and still when they are both poisoned, on the verge of death, The Doctor still does everything in his power to save Peri. The Doctor doesn’t look for trouble it finds him. In this story Davison manages to convince the viewer that he is actually going to die, that he might not regenerate.

This is particularly impressive from Davison because even now, when I watched it knowing that he would eventually become the Eleventh Doctor, I still wondered whether he would survive.

Image © BBC

rout e h t ’s “That nere g e r th ble wi ou never Y hat ation. w w o kn quite ng to i o g you’re get.”

Colin Baker, The Brash Pragmatist

“Hello. OK, mmm. New teeth. That’s weird. So where was I? Oh that’s right...Barcelona.”

2. The Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton. (1967-1969) Patrick Troughton had the most difficult job out of all the Doctors. He was given the task of introducing the idea of regeneration, to make it convincing and to get the viewers to accept that although the Doctor’s personality would change drastically, he was still the same man.

Troughton’s crazed smile and astonishment at his first regeneration makes him captivating from the get go. Under Troughton we saw a Doctor that acted like a bumbling idiot – a guise that hid his intellect and cunning.

This era saw the Doctor meeting his best friend Jamie (played by Frazer Hines). The chemistry between Troughton and Hines is a joy to watch. They bounce off each other continually, adding so much to the script at a time where the cast adlibbed (if the cast added someone you had to keep it in as you had one chance to record it). Further Troughton faced off against the most menacing Cybermen as well as introducing many classic enemies such as the Great Intelligence and the Yeti and the Ice Warriors.

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The Second Doctor bowed out in style with the ten-part story The War Games. Even in today’s stories, few people would be able to keep you captivated through a four hour ten minute epic but Troughton doesn’t just manage this feat, he does it with ease. Each cliff-hanger makes you worry for the Doctor and his companions. At the end of the adventure, we finally meet The Time Lords. We discover that The Doctor is a renegade Time Lord on the run from his own people. Facing a task beyond him, the Doctor must call his own people despite knowing the fate that awaits him. As a result, his companions Jamie and Zoe are sent back to their own times and made to forget about their adventures with The Doctor (if The Doctor losing Jamie isn’t enough to make your heart weep I don’t know what is) and then finally he is put on trial leading to a forced regeneration and exile on Earth, something that feels more like a death sentence.

1. The Tenth Doctor – David Tennant (2005-2010) He might not have been the first Doctor that I watched, but he definitely is my Doctor. The man who caused me to become addicted to this little show. Tennant, like Troughton, had the challenge of making sure that the show would continue and get a whole new audience to accept regeneration. The Tenth Doctor bounded around the galaxy with a quick wit and a sharp suit, donning a pair of converse trainers.

Tennant managed to portray more emotions with his Doctor than many other of his incarnations.

“It’s a ll o said. N ver’. That’s wh o, being a but it isn’t. I at you t’s ll the TAR over. I must g far from et back D go now IS immediat t ely! I m o …I mus ust t go at once.”

Geek Syndicate

Image © BBC

To many, Blink is seen as the stand out episode of New Who but for me it is The Waters of Mars and that is all down to Tennant. I love a good base under siege story anyway and this was the perfect tale.

But it is Tennant in the final ten minutes or so that makes it the pinnacle of New Who. Like any good horror, the tension builds till the final crescendo. The Waters of Mars has one of our basic needs as the threat - water. But that is not what is so frightening: it is the Doctor.

This episode slowly builds to the question of whether the Doctor will break one of his rules and alter a fixed point in time. It builds and builds until finally he goes over the edge.

Tennant plays this masterfully showing that the Tenth Doctor makes this choice for all very human reasons, but the damage it does to him is irreparable. All of this is down to Tennant and his superb acting.

The Tenth Doctor also warranted from some brilliant episodes: this was a special time. Further to Tennant’s credit is the fact that he made the show bigger than it arguably ever had been and Matt Smith has continued on from this success.

With the knowledge that there is a human Doctor version of Ten on a parallel earth as well as the fact that the Doctor has crossed his own time stream before to bring his selves together I look forward to seeing the return of the long brown coat and trainers this November.

Luke Halsall

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Sylvester McCoy, The Manipulative Clown

Geek Syndicate Antony’s Order of Doctors ...

My involvement with Geek Syndicate as more than a listener and contributor to the forums extends back to 2008 … I designed a logo for the UK Comic Podcast Group which was used in promotional material in that year’s Birmingham International Comics Expo. I was also one of the first news reporters and reviewers on the web site, reporting such things as Danny John Jules’ angry tirade at bin-men and reviewing classic games like Mercenaries 2. Since then, my involvement has grown and now I’m a member of the Editorial team – my main focus being the content and design of this very periodical. I am also the main Doctor Who reviewer for the Syndicate.

Image © BBC

“A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don’t cry. While there’s life, there’s....”

I can safely say that Doctor Who has been with me all of my life. My earliest memory of actually watching television is creeping into our lounge to see a cricket-attired man on a misty moor. The Man said something to an off-screen presence, then pressed a device … and vanished. Years later, I realised that this scene was from 1983’s The Five Doctors (here’s a link to a youtube video – it should start about 02:40 at the relevant portion). I had recently turned four when I saw this.

Since then, I’ve watched as much Who as I can – I read every Target novelisation I could get my hands on … I even enjoyed the 1996 TV movie! I read as many new and lost adventures as I could and listen to all the audio adventures. I have even started trying to work out a coherent history for the Daleks - a pdf version is sporadically updated on my website.

Paul McGann, Enthusiastic Hero

on. o s ng to say i o “G time ht g i s It’ bye. M I d , goo nerate . rege t know nt e ’ don s differ l Fee time. this c?” i Adr

My favourite Doctor … tends to be whichever I’m currently watching / reading about or listening to. So for this article, I present my current thinking on the subject, trying to be as objective as I can and taking into account my thoughts from the audio adventures released

by Big Finish and BBC Audio.

11. The Ninth Doctor - Christopher Eccleston – (2005) Christopher Eccleston had a big job to perform in 2005. He was the face of the re-launched series. While he had moments of sheer genius, I found his Doctor un-relatable and often unlikeable. Unfortunately, the season he was in suffered from a bad case of “feet finding” and it’s evident by his short tenure that (like me) the actor himself had issues with the way the show was going that year.

It’s a shame, because there are moments of genius where writing and acting talent combine to create some explosive moments – the “I can feel the Earth move” speech in Rose, the willingness to offer the Gelth human corpses in The Unquiet Dead, the entirety of Dalek … I wonder how many of my problems with this incarnation would have been alleviated with a second season once the right direction was found?

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Geek Syndicate I’m actually uncomfortable with this positioning, because I really enjoy the Hartnell stories – particularly some of the later stories once Peter Purves boards the TARDIS as Steven Taylor. The original TARDIS crew was also superb – despite Susan’s lack of development and rather annoying role.

Image © BBC

Many of these early stories were different from what came later. It’s only really in this era that the show really could literally do anything. There were no format constraints, no Gallifrey, no Time Lords … just an old man with a box having adventures with his assortment of companions.

Hartnell’s irrascability was Meeting one of his own kind in The Time Meddler excellent. I’m sure children in the 1960s weren’t sure whether to feel safe or scared in this man’s presence. In his first story, the Doctor intends to kill a straggler by smashing a rock into his skull because he was slowing the party down. In The Daleks, he deliberately sabotages his TARDIS just to get his own way.

“I don’t want to go!”

10. The First Doctor – William Hartnell. (1963-1966)

So why such a low position for the original Time Lord in this list? I think it boils down to this: despite some great performances and scripts, the original Doctor has not really become “THE DOCTOR” as such. It’s not until some way through the Second Doctor’s tenure that this switch seems to be flipped.

9. The Fourth Doctor – Tom Baker (1975-1981) Tom Baker is possibly the most Doctorish of Doctors. Baker is a very “alien” man and the alien-ness of the fourth Doctor comes completely from the actor, who clearly gave his all to this role that he felt privileged to be cast in. In many ways, this is a golden age for Doctor Who, though four production teams came and went over this time, making his seasons tonally different from each other. Of course this also means there is likely to be a story to match almost anyone’s tastes during this seven year period.

I’ll be honest – one of the reasons that the Fourth appears relatively high on my list is that (as Luke also points out) he’s often the “go-to” favourite and I’d like to encourage people to watch stories from other Doctors. When I was growing up, I loved reading the novelisations featuring Tom Baker … but again, I think part of this was the sheer volume of material available. There are probably a larger number of classic stories during this period … but there are also a larger number of stories overall!

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Christopher Eccleston, Bitter Survivor

Geek Syndicate 8. The Third Doctor – Jon Pertwee (1970-1974)

Image © BBC

Image © BBC

Often termed the “James Bond” of the Doctors, the Third was very much the actionman. If you want a high-speed chase or a swift venusian akido chop to the neck, this is the Doctor to turn to. Jon Pertwee also brought a great wisdom to the role, however he often came over (to me) as somewhat condescending and “HAI!” The Doctor unleashes Venusian Akido holier-than-thou, even to his companions at times to whom he normally seemed to be the favourite uncle.

I also have a bit of a problem with this Doctor’s attitudes. Generally, the Doctor is an anti-establishment figure, on the side of the rebels and liberals. Here, however, the Time Lord works with (not for!) the British Government and United Nations military. He has an army division to back him up and despite his claims of non-aggression, he’s not afraid to use it.

Of course, there are a plethora of great stories to delve into in this five year period – not least of which is the first anniversary story, which brings the three incarnations of the Doctor seen on screen together to fight a foe from the Time Lords’ past. I think that it’s a shame Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks (the show’s producer and script editor) were left with an Earth-bound Doctor to deal with as the programme feels more like Quatermass or The X-Files than Doctor Who for the majority of this era.

a s to wa wn ed t o d rri r tha ow t wo icke l h… . n bi ya p.. m a ral f “M e na s. I’ mpo nic sines he te ” bu out t r 13. ab ecto s in

7. The Fifth Doctor – Peter Davison (1982-1984)

David Tennant, Manic Defender

The main problem that faced Davison was in replacing the hugely successful (and long running) Tom Baker. Indeed, such were the concerns that the audience might not remember that there had been other Doctors, the BBC ran a “five faces of Doctor Who” season featuring adventures from the previous incarnations. Peter Davison is a superb actor and really shines in most of his performances – despite having a very crowded TARDIS when he first arrived.

What I quite like about Davison is his Doctor’s fallibility. In Warriors From the Deep, the TARDIS crew survive to adventure another day, but the Doctor’s goal of a peaceful resolution failed utterly and aggressors had to be poisoned. Such was the level of death during his time (he even lost a companion to the Grim Reaper) that one of his companion’s reason for leaving was to get away from death.

It’s unfortunate that it’s really during this period that the quality of the series is seen to have degenerated somewhat. On top of every-

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Many call this Doctor the “human Doctor” as he, like the later tenth Doctor have been the closest to ourselves. For me this is a detriment as the Doctor is not Human – he’s alien and should have alien values. His view of the big picture should often disturb us while we know in our hearts he’s right. Of course – our human Doctor regenerates because he’s so human. He can’t bear to sacrifice his new companion and so dies himself. If you watch only one story of Classic Who – watch The Caves of Androzani.

6. The Eighth Doctor – Paul McGann (1996) Paul McGann … it’s a shame we only got to see him in one misjudged television movie as I believe he would truly have shone in the role.

While the actor was not a huge fan of the wig himself, I quite liked the look of his Doctor in the movie. On top of that, I thought he worked well with the material available. The stand out scene for me is the “new shoes” moment while taking a walk with Grace, remembering Gallifrey and his youth … then having a massive, childlike footwear based digression.

ge n a ch hout t it s u j e w n’t k lik st!” a c o fir o l u e o “Y at I ing m wh sult n co

thing else, the show now had an official go-to person whose job was to advise on matters of continuity. It is perhaps because of this that many of Davison’s stories become mired in the past and much time is spent spouting exposition about previous encounters with, say, Omega or the Earth Reptiles.

Image © BBC

Where Doctor Eight truly shines is in the Big Finish audios. As with the Sixth (see later), Big Finish have an unlimited way that they can go with adventures for this barely seen Time Lord and could literally develop him as they went. Paul McGann has a softness to his Doctor for the The Doctor shows Grace and Chang Lee his home (Doctor Who) most part, but there is also a hardness you would not want to cross. Also – don’t get him angry. You won’t like that.

It’s genuinely difficult to pick a few adventures to catch, simply because so many of this range are excellent. The list below is a sample, but please check out all four of the Lucie Miller series of adventures which (especially the fourth) are superb.

5. The Tenth Doctor – David Tennant (2005-2010) I genuinely thought Ten (as people insist on referring to him) would

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Matt Smith, Mad Man With a Box

appear higher on my list. David Tennant is in many ways a perfect Doctor for me. He comes over as a mix of Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker and Peter Davison and is such a great actor that he can turn on a six-pence and completely change gear. In his first year, when watching episodes, I found myself uttering a comment on proceedings … only for the Doctor to echo them.

I agree entirely with Luke’s comments. Yet there’s something that grates for me: The low number of truly excellent episodes in which the Tenth Doctor appears – especially when compared to the Eleventh. In each year (barring the 2009-2010 specials when there was one), there are only two or three really excellent adventures. I have nothing against Tennant himself, but even the best actor can raise a story so far. In addition, this Doctor became amazingly arrogant and shouty by the end of his tenure and many episodes lost the subtlety of earlier scripts.

4. The Sixth Doctor – Colin Baker (1984-1986) Colin Baker – often called (unfairly) the Lazenby of the classic Doctors. Many will be shocked to see this Doctor so high on my list – after all, the majority of the stories of his tenure were not of a particularly high quality and he’d been assigned the most bizarre costume imaginable by John Nathan Turner.

But amongst the chaff are some truly exciting story premises – Vengeance on Varos’ “Big Brother” style TV show and the grim undertones of Revelation of the Daleks to cite but two. In every case of criticism against this period, I don’t think a single fault can be laid at Baker’s door. His Doctor appeared Brash, arrogant and unstable. He was. But the underlying idea was that he would mellow, and Big Finish’s audio adventures really rolled with this idea and made the Sixth Doctor my favourite to listen to.

Of all the “audio Doctors”, I think the Sixth has the best time – part of this is because when Colin Baker’s episodes ended he was not at the end of his life. There was no immediate regeneration which gives a vast scope for ongoing adventures. Couple this Doctor with an Older, wiser companion (Evelyn Smythe) and truly, Colin Baker shines.

Please check out some of this range of audio adventures if you can.

3. The Eleventh Doctor – Matt Smith (2010-2013) Matt Smith had a big job to do. He followed on from a Doctor who although in the role for less time than Tom Baker, certainly left a similar mark in the psyche of the audience. Not only this, but Matt Smith’s first year was the first for a whole new creative team. This year is genuinely my favourite since the 2005 re-launch. With each previous year, there were often two or maybe three episodes that were truly classic. But this year featured ten easily re-watchable ones out of thirteen.

“Have you ever wondered w hat it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?

Have you? To be exiles? S usan and I are cut off from our own planet without friends or protection. But one day, we shall get back . Yes, one day. One day…”

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Geek Syndicate This Doctor hit the ground running and brought back a genuine eccentricity and alien-ness to the Doctor – something that I think had been lacking in several previous incarnations. Smith is a superb actor who manages to continue the energy introduced by Tennant in a different way. He looks like a Doctor, having a “young old” face, acts like a Doctor and … well … Acts his socks off through good and bad writing!

Of course, this era of the show has been mired by the convoluted story arcs that may cause the casual viewer to scratch their head. Smith’s second year in particular was guilty of this. Personally, I think that the episodes broadcast in 2012 and 2013 (Smith’s final year) have gone some way to returning the show to one that a viewer can dip in and out of and I am very glad with the Doctor who will be running the show for the forthcoming anniversary special.

2. The Seventh Doctor – Sylvester McCoy. (1987-1996) Sylvester McCoy was the Doctor I remember watching most. Although his first season is generally ill-regarded, once new Script Editor Andrew Cartmel really got going, new writers with new ideas crept in and the final two years of Doctor Who’s original run really have some stand out stories. McCoy brought a lot of suppressed anger to his clownlike performance and began portraying a more manipulative “chess player” style of Doctor. A Doctor who put plans in motion … then executed them - somewhat mercilessly at times. This theme continued beyond the television show’s cancellation and was taken to extremes

by Virgin’s New Adventure line of books and to a more manageable extent in the Big Finish audio productions.

But this Doctor’s tenure on television was as much about his companion, Ace, as it was the Doctor himself. In season twenty-six, the final season, three out of four stories focus on Ace. Actress Sophie Aldred had some stellar moments in these stories and her character was in many ways the perfect companion – and the template for Rose and company when the series re-started in 2005.

1. The Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton. (1967-1969) For me, the Second Doctor is the Doctor. If the replacement for William Hartnell was inadequate in any way, then the show would have ended in 1966 or 1967 without question. The casting of Troughton was perfect. Not only was he a fantastic character actor, but Troughton was also a physical actor. Every movement seems perfectly in sync with the role he is playing and Troughton’s face runs through every emotion with instant believability.

The TARDIS seemed complete once James Robert McCrimmon joined the crew. Together with Victorian Victoria, or futuristic Zoe, this era held possibly the most familial group of friends you could wish for.

The obvious chemistry between the regulars enhances the performances and there’s a wonderful boyish charm about the Doctor and Jamie throughout.

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Geek Syndicate It was during this period that Doctor Who really found itself. It’s here that The Doctor is really introduced and his role in the universe is cemented. Before, it seemed that The Doctor bumbled between adventures, not really wanting or expecting them – but then we were introduced to Patrick Troughton. The Doctor, who, though far from perfect, exemplified the good in the universe.

What’s most telling for me is that in interviews, at least three Doctor’s reference Troughton when discussing their influences: Sylvester McCoy wanted (and in my opinion did) to bring Troughton to his role.

Life-long fan Tennant also referenced back to the Second Doctor … and even non-Who fan Matt Smith referred to Troughton episodes when preparing for the role.

I’ll sign off with these two quotes – both from the Second Doctor and both provide the basis for everything that followed: “There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.”

-The Moonbase

On remembering departed friends: “Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that’s the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they... they sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will you. Oh yes, you will. You’ll find there’s so much else to think about. To remember.

Our lives are different to anybody else’s. That’s the exciting thing, that nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing.”

-Tomb of the Cybermen

Antony McGarry-Thickitt So there we have it - two lists offering different views as to which Doctor is “the best”. I’m sure that readers will have their own lists and maybe we’ve swayed you towards one of ours, or maybe not. The joy of Doctor Who is that there’s fifty years of stories to catch up on and most can be enjoyed in a standalone manner. In addition to the TV and audio adventures we discuss, there’s a plethora of books and comic collections that you can check out.

Recommended Stories If you have not seen any Classic Series Doctor Who, or even any Doctor Who at all, but are interested in the show and what it’s about, then do not fear! Our two list compilers have put together a further list - this time of stories that are really worth checking out for each Doctor!

The First Doctor The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Time Meddler, The Ark, The Tenth Planet The Second Doctor Power of the Daleks, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, Evil of the

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Geek Syndicate Daleks, Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ice Warriors, The Web of Fear, The Wheel in Space, The Mind Robber, The Seeds of Death, The War Games The Third Doctor Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and The Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno, The Daemons, The Sea Devils, The Mutants, The Time Warrior

The Fourth Doctor The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Talons of Weng Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock, The Invasion of Time, City of Death, State of Decay

The Fifth Doctor Castrovalva, Kinda, Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Warriors of the Deep, Frontios, Resurrection of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani Audio: Eye of the Scorpion, Spare Parts, Rat Trap

The Sixth Doctor Attack of the Cybermen, Vengeance on Varos, Revelation of the Daleks.

Audio: The Marian Conspiracy, The Holy Terror, The One Doctor, City of Spires.

The Seventh Doctor Remembrance of the Daleks, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, The Curse of Fenric, Survival.

Audio: Master, Love And War

The Eighth Doctor The TV Movie Audio: Storm Warning, Terror Infirma, Brave New Town, Relative Dimensions, Dark Eyes

The Ninth Doctor Rose, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Dalek, Father’s Day

The Tenth Doctor Rise of the Cybermen / Age of Steel, The Girl in the Fireplace, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, Human Nature / The Family of the Blood, Blink, 42, The Doctor’s Daughter, The Waters of Mars

The Eleventh Doctor The Eleventh Hour, The Lodger, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, The Doctor’s Wife, A Christmas Carol, Let’s Kill Hitler, The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe, A Town Called Mercy, Hide, Nightmare in Silver, The Name of the Doctor

Luke Halsall Antony McGarry-Thickitt

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Geek Syndicate INTERVIEW

Picking the Brain of Monkeybrain

Image © Monkeybrain Comics, 2013

Monkeybrain Comics took the comic world by storm last year, with its “Independent’s Day” launch and slew of original digital comics. They were doing something new: selling nothing but digital first, possibly digital only, comics with plans to make print editions somewhere down the road.

Partnering with comiXology, the company launched with a line-up that featured a diverse mix of titles, everything from superhero stories to crime to humor. Over the course of the year, they added numerous titles in other genres like sci-fi, western, and more than one book that seems to not really fit into any genre.

Along with the new titles came print editions of some of the first wave of books from such companies as Image and IDW. At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Monkeybrain was up for four Eisners, thanks to its title Bandette, including one win for Best Digital Comic. Not bad for a first year.

With one year down, and hopefully many more to come, it seemed only right to look into Monkeybrain, the creators that are a part of it, and just how this idea that seemed crazy at first has been wildly successful. With that in mind, co-founder and writer of Edison Rex, Chris Roberson was asked a few questions, along with Monkeybrain creators Christopher Sebela, Michael Moreci, Adam P. Knave, and Gabriel Hardman.

GS: Where did the original idea for Monkeybrain come from?

Chris Roberson: Well, Monkeybrain had been around as a small press print publisher for about ten years, doing prose science fiction, fantasy, and stuff like that. We’d always talked about doing comics at some point, but couldn’t make the financial side of things worked. With the rise of digital distribution, though, and the elimination of printing costs and the like, we were finally able to put together a structure that made sense.

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GS: How did you go about attracting the initial “first wave” of creators and books?

Chris Roberson: We basically just went to people we knew in the industry, friends of ours and professionals whose work we’ve always admired. We outlined what we had in mind and how we thought it would work, and invited them to join us.

GS: What about the idea of digital first publishing through ComiXology appealed to you?

Chris Roberson: We’d known for a while that we wanted to do digital distribution, and spent a good long while looking at that market and trying to gauge who we thought was going to emerge as the market leader. We actually spoke with a number of different outfits, but comiXology was far and away the most impressive, and we were sure that they would end up the ones to lead that market. And sure enough, they did!

GS: Monkeybrain has titles that range from all-ages to 17+ and tackle almost every genre. What goes into figuring out which stories are the right fit for Monkeybrain?

Chris Roberson: It starts with the creators. We only want to work with people who we think are fantastic at what they do, and who we think we’d enjoy working with. Beyond that, it’s up to what kinds of comics the creators themselves want to make.

The possibility always exists that someone will come up with something that ultimately we don’t think would be a good fit for us, but after more than a year and a half it hasn’t happened yet! I think that if you take talented people and let them make their passion project, you’re almost always going to end up

with something well worth reading.

GS: After a year, various first wave titles are now making the jump to print. Was this always the plan, or something that was decided as Monkeybrain took off?

Chris Roberson: Yes, the plan from the beginning was to make things available at as low a price as possible in a digital format, and then once there was a sufficient amount of material, to do a print collection. That way, readers who want the immediacy of digital serialization can get it without waiting, but those who prefer to have a print collection on the shelf are served, as well.

GS: As founder and a creator of one of the books, are you surprised by the support that Monkeybrain has received in its first year?

Chris Roberson: Allison and I have both been overwhelmed by the response we received from day one. We’d HOPED for a positive response, so I’m not sure if “surprised” is exactly the right word for it. “Satisfied,” maybe? ;) GS: What do you see for the future of Monkeybrain? What do you see it becoming?

Chris Roberson: You mean the future when apes are our masters? But no, in all honestly, the future for Monkeybrain looks like the present, only MUCH MORE SO. We hope to keep making great comics, and as many different KIND of comics as possi-

Image © Monkeybrain Comics, 2013

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ble, and simply not stop doing it.

Monkeybrain was not only unique for the way it approached publishing its books, but also in the type of books it published and the myriad of creators it attracted. The creators range from seasoned pros to those with only a couple of indie books to their name, but all wanted a place to tell a great story, and Monkeybrain was the home for these stories, stories that seemingly wouldn’t fly at other publishers. Even though many of the creators currently have comics being published at any of the numerous comic companies, there was something about Monkeybrain that drew them in and made them want to publish their stories there. The creators were asked a few, simple questions, essentially trying to discern, “Why Monkeybrain?”

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Geek Syndicate GS: What made MonkeyBrain an attractive company to publish your book with?

Gabriel Hardman, writer/artist of Kinski: Their creator friendly stance and the accessibility of Chris and Allison were big factors. The diversity of their line play a part as well. KINSKI isn’t that easy to categorize in the world of mainstream comics. I wanted to publish it someplace where readers were more likely to approach it with an open mind.

Image © Monkeybrain Comics, 2013

Christopher Sebela, writer/cocreator of High Crimes: Foremost, that when they asked me to pitch them something, they told me to pitch them the book I most wanted to do, which is the sort of thing you dream about a publisher saying to you. Beyond that, their deal is all about creators rights. One of the first things Chris told me was that they were only interested in doing books where writers and artists both have ownership stake. And it belongs to the creators outright.

Plus, I’d gotten to know Chris and Allison in real life and found them to be great people that I wanted to work with in whatever way I could.

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Adam P. Knave, writer of Action Cats, Amelia Cole, Artful Daggers: Chris and Allison are great people that I trust. So, from the jump, the idea of working with them was attractive because it meant working with good people.

But also the level of creative freedom certainly stands out. We get to do our comics our way. They approve the series because they like it and trust us to make great comics. They are there for advice, yet also will stand back and let us create in a whirlwind of fun and invention. Monkeybrain is sorta what I grew up thinking publishing should be like.

Michael Moreci, writer of Skybreaker: Well, there’s a few answers. One, I was so excited and impressed with what Chris and Alison were doing with Monkeybrain. They launched with such enthusiasm and a passion for the simple goal of making fun, great comics. And they came out the gate with an amazing line of books, one of which has been nominated for an Eisner.

Specifically with Skybreaker, I knew had to find a publisher willing to take risks--because, let’s face it, Westerns aren’t exactly setting the world on fire, they haven’t in a very long time. But this story is one I wanted to tell and, thankfully, Chris enabled me to do just that.

GS: Was the digital first aspect something that appealed to you?

Gabriel Hardman, writer/artist of Kinski: Digital first is crucial to me. I want to find ways to reach new readers. There’s also something very freeing doing everything on a book myself and sending it directly out into the world.

Christopher Sebela, writer/cocreator of High Crimes: It was.

It sidestepped the usual process of having to set hard and fast deadlines to have a book done and off to the printers in time to be on shelves, month in and month out, without fail. It allowed us to take our time on each issue, that if we needed another week or three, we could take it without creating headaches for publishers, production people and retailers down the line. And I was interested in doing a book where you do press when the issue is coming out, or after an issue comes out instead of weeks or months before, giving people lots of time to forget about it. And digital first stuff was still a fairly new concept back then, and I’m an early adopter, so it was exciting to see what this future aspect of comics might look like from the inside.

Adam P. Knave, writer of Action Cats, Amelia Cole, Artful Daggers: It really was. We get to break fairly new ground. We’re inventing and learning and creating the road in front of us as we walk it. That’s rare and insanely wonderful to be able to do. Digital first opens the door to lower risk comic creation (no print costs for the single issues, or distro worries, or warehousing!) while still letting us go to print for collections, which opens up a second market to us. It’s the best of both worlds, really. New readers aren’t into single print issues, really. Current readers yes. And I’m one of them, keep in mind.

But current and new readers are open to digital, more and more each day, so we get the best possible showcase for the single issues while still going a more traditional print route for trades. I love print. I will never not adore a book in my hands, but digital

first lets us have some cake, eat it, too, and still have more cake to go around!

Michael Moreci, writer of Skybreaker: Absolutely. I see great value in the digital market and definitely want to be part of it.

Look, I know that the digital versus print debate can be a touchy one. I’m no iconoclast when it comes to digital. I don’t think it’s going to eradicate print, not now or in my lifetime. Such dramatic shifts are rare, like TV wiping out the radio drama. In that case, it was getting something completely different in a new format.

Digital comics are the same thing, just a different delivery method.

The two work hand in hand and, I think, can compliment one another and cultivate new readers on both sides. Because you look at what Mark Waid is doing with Thrillbent, or the Batman 66 comic, and you think “wow--this is a great reading experience!”

Ideally that experience will turn shoot people down the rabbit hole that includes absorbing the print comic experience as well.

Image © Monkeybrain Comics, 2013

Plus, at the base of it all, I want

Image © Monkeybrain Comics, 2013

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my work to be accessible--I want people to be able to discover it with as little effort possible. If you can flip on your ComiXology app and buy one of my stories for .99 cents, that sounds good to me.

GS: What’s been the best part about publishing through and working with Monkeybrain?

Christopher Sebela, writer/ co-creator of High Crimes: The freedom they give us to do the best work we can do without interference, deadlines or worrying. The worrying part, especially. When they said yes to HIGH CRIMES, it wasn’t dependent on how well we sold or whether we grew our audience by such and such a percentage. It was about us telling our story, for however long we needed to tell it, which is a huge weight off, knowing we could take this all the way to the end and Chris and Allison would shoot straight with us and support us all the way.

above I’d have to say the larger collective of Monkeybrain creators. We’re not a gang, not legally, but we help each other promote books, we tend to become friends, and everyone there is busy making the comics they’ve always wanted to make. There’s a shared bond in the “Look what we get to do!” joy of it all. There are MB creators I met through them doing books and just saying hi that have become great friends.

Michael Moreci, writer of Skybreaker: There’s so much praise I can throw at Chris and Alison.

They find the perfect harmony of being supportive and granting freedom to make the book you want to make. They’re responsive, kind, and all-around awesome people. It’s a joy to be included with such stellar creators doing excellent work--so much so, that I’ll be doing it again in the fall with a new series! But that’s hush hush for now...

It’s obvious that both the publishers and the creators are excited about what Monkeybrain is doing. And who can blame them? They produce high quality comics at low prices and give creators that chance to tell the stories they most want to tell. For readers, it’s hard not to check out a new comic when it’s only $0.99, and Monkeybrain is taking full advantage of that.

While it likely won’t make any of the creators millionaires, it’s definitely making some good stories and some happy comic readers.

Leo Johnson

Adam P. Knave, writer of Action Cats, Amelia Cole, Artful Daggers: Outside of the stuff

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Geek Syndicate Adventures at SDCC 2013 with Corey Brotherson and the Steampunk Syndicate

San Diego Comic Con 2013 took place back in July and GS reporters Shar, Mirjana and Christi were there to bring back all the news from the convention floor and panels. However, we also wanted to get a more personal view from some of the creators who are attending and exhibiting at the show. To achieve this feat we approached UK comic creator Corey Brotherson (Magic of Myths, Clockwork Watch, Unseen Shadows: Stolen, Unseen Shadows: Fight or Flight). Corey kindly agreed to do us a little diary of their time at the San Diego, so I now hand you over to Corey to regale you with his adventures..

Day 0 “That’s so cool!”

Funnily enough, it didn’t seem all too cool in prospect the night before. Sleeping in a supermarket car park, that is.

Okay, so this may not be quite what you were expecting for a write-up on San Diego Comic-Con. So: context. My name is Corey Brotherson – by day I’m a content producer for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (PlayStation.com primarily). By night, I don a baggy t-shirt and a wild-eyed (read: sleep deprived) disposition to write comic books. In fact, I’ve been writing them since 2006. And despite the redness you see in my eyes, they make me very happy.

My girlfriend has seen many of the long nights, sleepwalking, panic attacks, crippling bouts of self-doubt and everything else that comes with being a creator. Yet, when I mentioned the idea of flying half way across the world to San Diego Comic-Con, she pushed me hard to make sure this dream became a reality.

When I got talking to my friends/fellow creators Yomi Ayeni and Jennie Gyllblad, we formed a plan of action to bring it all together.

Of course, it’s never that easy. Even if you get past the waiting list to get a table at Comic-Con, you still have to contend with payments and the mountains of rules, regulations and paperwork – which is also over half a dozen forms, faxing bank details, and many, many emails if you live outside the US. Not to mention the cost of flights, the logistics of getting your stock over there along with all your essential equipment, accommodation, transport and so on. It’s a large amount of work and stress long before you can even taste the sun-touched Californian air.

But it’ll be worth it. Everyone says it will be. We’d be promoting books I’ve spent years working on – primarily fantasy series Magic of Myths and steampunk adventure Clockwork Watch – making valuable contacts within the industry and reaching a wider audience that we’d have little hope of reaching otherwise.

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Geek Syndicate It’ll be worth it. …Right?

Landing in Los Angeles airport on the Saturday night – a few days before the show – I meet my partner in crime, Yomi, who has a Jeep full of Clockwork Watch and Magic of Myths copies delivered from our Nashville based printer. Jennie, unfortunately, had to back out of our trip, so the three of us who worked on our steampunk transmedia story Clockwork Watch (Yomi the creator, Jennie the artist/letterer and myself the adapting writer and editor) was sadly reduced to two for Comic-Con. To reduce costs – hotels usually jack up the prices of their rooms to take advantage of Comic-Con attendees – we decide to use ‘Gladys’ as our base.

Home for the convention - Gladys.

Gladys is a 47 year old, 26ft Airstream trailer complete with sink, bathroom, stove and three beds. Yomi, who travelled to the USA several days ahead of me, had to drive Gladys down from Los Banos (mid California) to Los Angeles to pick me up, then drive us down to San Clemente before we make our final stop to San Diego. And Gladys, bless her, is not a dainty lady. With the Jeep towing her, she takes up around two and a half full parking spaces. So after quick pit stop at a Japanese karaoke restaurant/ bar (for food, sake and beer, not singing) we have to find somewhere big enough to park her for the night.

This happens to be a nearby supermarket car park.

If I wasn’t so tired, I probably would have had visions of the police filing a report about how they discovered two black guys from the UK, holed up in “a lady called Gladys”, buried alive by a mountain of steampunk and fantasy comic books.

Any press is good press, as they say.

Surprisingly, we don’t get turfed out of our temporary home before breakfast. Instead, we woke up to friendly people doing their early morning shopping, who think Gladys is “so cool”, while others take a genuine interest in our books and the fact we’ve travelled so far to attend Comic-Con. And despite our trip to the first camp site accidently detouring to a military base (where a befuddled but smiling serviceman gets us back on track), and an alarming warning sign at our camp site telling us to ‘beware of rattlesnakes” (ugh… why does it always have to be snakes?) our trip has started off well.

Snakes. It had to be snakes ...

To top it all off, given time to inspect the freshly printed books, all fears of them being damaged or unusable during transit melt away in a wash of four colour goodness on well produced pages. And while my plastic book stands have broken from the flight, my secret weapon has survived, intact. He didn’t even lose a single claw. You’ll see him later…

So far, so… cool? Well, we’re about to see if the costumed crowd of Comic-Con think so. If not, I guess we can always drag a twenty-six foot lady into the convention centre to turn heads…

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Geek Syndicate Day 1 – preview night It’s a clear sign that I’m either too excited or not getting enough sleep when I nearly put pain relieving gel instead of toothpaste on my toothbrush.

SDCC Exhibitor Tip

Today is Preview Night, and that means it’s our official first day at San Diego Comic-Con. And there’s tons to do. Promotion needs to be written across all our social media channels, calls to be made, stock to prepare, price listings to be completed and other important housekeeping. All from 7.30AM.

Have all of this admin stuff done before you get here. Sounds like common sense, true but you tend to find time slipping away from you weeks before you even get on a flight. Especially when you’re trying to get all you books ready for print. So when you arrive you can just focus on the stuff you can only do on-site. If you want to take card payments for your sales, you’ll need an American Social Security number, US bank account and internet capable phone. And don’t forget to add California sales tax to your prices – otherwise “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase will be waiting to hurt you with a Million Dollar Dream if you don’t have that in mind and file everything (or maybe it’s just the IRS threatening prison time. I get confused easily).

Once we’ve had breakfast (essential for any convention), run away from a giant green beetle threatening to eat our eyes, avoided being splashed by our neighbour’s leaking trailer, then avoided mild insanity via the loud music from our other neighbour’s trailer and packed everything into suitcases and bags, we set off to grab our SDCC exhibitor badges and prepare our table.

Yeah, like it was going to be that simple.

Instead, we drove around for an hour because I totally misread the map – turns out there’s two batches of several streets sporting the same names and same surrounding roads, all next to each other in two entirely different areas, even though they’re mere miles apart. Map reading made fun!

When we finally get to the San Diego Convention Centre, the place is heaving with people, all queuing up for badges, passes and waiting for the show doors to open to the public (several hours before time).

Preview Night is a funny one, especially for someone who is only used to UK conventions. It’s a bit like a soft launch – the show opens up from six to nine in the evening for a limited audience of professionals, exhibitors, and some guests pre-registered for all of the exhibition’s days. Of course, when the general audience is over 130,000, even a “imited audience” can mean floods of people. And that’s exactly what there was.

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Even the Industry Registration is extremely busy

Geek Syndicate

After the show loud speaker announces that SDCC is officially open, there’s a round of applause. Then two security guards slink over and stand next to our table. We soon see why. A stampede of excited people rush through the hallways. There’s a wild look in many of their eyes as they speed-walk past all of our tables and to the far end of the hallway. The security guards, not wishing to share the fate of Mufasa in The Lion King, knew what was coming. “It’s the exclusive stuff,” explains one guard. “Toys, mainly. People rush to buy them before ABOVE: Our stand in all it’s glory. they sell out. Some even sell them on eBay before they’ve actually purchased them here at the show.”

We’re stunned. Eventually, the guards make their escape, but the exclusive hunters keep pouring in. Our fellow exhibitors in our row all seem to wear a tired look of resignation on their faces. One tries to take advantage of this traffic by holding out flyers, hoping passers-by blindly take them. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t. There’s a single mindedness that’s clear. “It’s the same every year,” our neighbouring exhibitor laments. “They don’t bother looking at the good comics. People just walk on by and never even look at you.”

About thirty minutes later, the tide literally turns the opposite way. Some triumphantly walk back with large numbers of boxes in tow, mostly from Hasbro. Others look crestfallen. It’s a strange thing to observe. And even stranger, the tone of SDCC eventually just… shifts. The rush for exclusives over, the whole show switches to what feels like a more typical, sociable convention. And with this leisurely mood comes genuine curiosity from consumers now looking to see what’s on display.

As some pass by with film cameras, others on Segways, San Diego starts to show the face we’re here for.

Friendly people stop and chat, taking an interest in both Clockwork Watch and Magic of Myths. Our free postcards and bookmarks are a hit, although free stuff often is at conventions. And while sales are slow,

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Geek Syndicate new Clockwork Watch book Tick Tock IPA is popular enough to leave with a few happy customers. Steampunk has a massive following in San Diego as clearly demonstrated by the number of events planned for the week and the groups dressed up in Victorian hats and intricate trinkets. Seeing as both Yomi and I are dressed up in colourful waistcoats and itchy tweed, it’s like bees to pollen.

The scary thing is, as busy as Preview Night is – which is to say, it was as busy as a big UK convention – everyone tells us that it’s going to get three times as crazy from tomorrow onward, to the point where no one will be able to move easily. “Be prepared”, one exhibitor tells us, and I secretly hope he’ll burst into song to complete The Lion King theme of the night.

He doesn’t.

All in all, it’s an interesting start to our SDCC experience. No big celebrity encounters yet, although plenty of familiar and friendly faces make our first night an enjoyable one, with promises of meet-ups during the week. Yomi has the (deep breath) Digital Development and Marketing for Your Digital Comic, Web Series, Game, App or Kickstarter panel tomorrow, as well. Let’s see where it takes us…

Day 2 Mornings hurt.

Waking up at seven AM after barely five hours sleep is certainly not unusual for people attending conventions of any kind, and I’ve done eighteen-hour days at events like E3 and gamescom, but the slightly lingering jet lag and intense San Diego heat teaming up with being on my feet and selling for hours on end make this experience far more brutal. I’ve a slight headache and my raspy voice makes Christian Bale’s Batman sound like a castrated My Little Pony. Yomi is clearly suffering too – our morning conversation is a mixture of grunts and half sentences. The most either of us can mutter is “shower” and “go”.

SDCC Exhibitor Tip

After the healing power of warm water and fresh clothes have taken their effect, we’re all suited and booted to head out once more unto the breach.

Visit a supermarket before you start the con. Food at the Convention Centre is expensive, although not as limited as other cons. If you’re going to be at a table by yourself, a packed lunch (and maybe dinner, too) is essential. Fruit, bagels/sandwiches, water/juice and protein bars are all great to help you push through the day.

Also, be aware that there are few ‘quiet moments’ for you to snack away from prying eyes. You don’t have to move all of your Henry VIII style banquet from the table, but try to be discreet and be prepared to have an unobtrusive place you can park your food should a customer want to talk or buy something from you while you’re gorging. There’s nothing more off-putting to a punter than accidentally spitting a Cheeto into their eye.

As promised, the show floor is busier than Preview Night. Not overwhelmingly so, but still manic. The first half an hour is almost a carbon copy of the night before, as people start galloping towards the exclusive toys section. The All-Seeing Eye of Comic-Con does not like this. Soon the All-Seeing Eye of Comic-Con declares, in a booming tannoy voice, that there is no running in the Convention Hall. I await bloodthirsty hounds to emerge from the floors and destroy the law-breakers, although there’s no sound of growling and flesh being torn from bone. Clearly this All-Seeing Eye has a lot to learn.

After attending an interesting panel on how small press creators can get coverage for their books (given these blog entries, the irony of this doesn’t escape me) and Yomi impresses at the guest table on the Digital Development and Marketing for Your Digital Comic, Web Series, Game, App or Kickstarter panel, we get into the groove of selling. Clockwork Watch and Magic of Myths are well received, both by people who knew or heard heard about us before and by total strangers chancing upon our table. Our

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Geek Syndicate SDCC Exhibitor Tip

“secret weapons” – various props including a modelled Clockwork heart and a plush toy version of one of the main characters from Magic of Myths created by the talented Sara Dunkerton – work their charm.

People at American cons LOVE badges (or “buttons”, as they’re called here). Even more so when they’re free. For most of the day, our Clockwork Watch badges were constantly the subject of one question: “are these free?” And when we reply that they’re not, the response was usually a disappointed frown. One guy even cack-handedly stole a badge from our table after I explicitly told him he had to pay. So, if you can afford to get some made - do so.

Artwork is also a big draw, as Jennie Gyllblad’s beautiful watercolours on Clockwork Watch and Sergio Calvet’s dynamic style on Magic of Myths gain plenty of admiring comments even when they don’t lead to sales. And with the large number of cosplayers present, we take any opportunity to grab passers-by for a photo.

SDCC Exhibitor Tip

That said, wearing tweed meant we were occasionally pulled aside for a few snaps, which was a pleasant surprise. We’re also approached by one gentleman who wants to interview us for his documentary on black creators at Comic-Con. Very cool.

Cosplay is a big part of SDCC. However, you’ll not find many exhibitors dressing up. Naturally, this is partly because standing behind a table trying to sell for ten hours straight is gruelling enough, but we found that if you dress a bit differently (preferably in theme with what you’re selling) you’re far more likely to grab the attention of potential customers. At the very least, you’ll be memorable. Standing out from the crowd on a personal level is the perfect way to draw someone into taking a look at your books.

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Geek Syndicate Despite the size of the con, there’s a growing “family” feel in the small press area which is very similar to what we’ve experienced at UK conventions. Everyone’s friendly, eager to help and some sales were made by an open willingness to support fellow creators. It really helps push us through the tiring final hours of a marathon day. There’s also the revelation – at least, to me, as Yomi seemed to be aware of this already – that there’s a massive steampunk community in San Diego, which makes Clockwork Watch a far easier sell to many customers. In fact, the superb “chap-hop” rapper Professor Elemental said he’d swing by our table tomorrow to say hi and add even more to our steampunk kudos.

Now, if we could only find a way to make the All-Seeing Eye of Comic-Con to give us a shout out… time to dig out my running shoes…

Days 3, 4 and 5 First of all, an apology.

I’ve had to write these since getting back to the UK. Initially it was because Day Three was uneventful until the night, when I got home very, very late. However, little did I know that the following day I’d have an accident which would totally kill my laptop. As in: I couldn’t even switch it on. Don’t ask. Just be careful what you wish for…

In any case, it put me behind these write-ups. So please, grab a cup of joe and prepare for a rather “Giantsized Man Thing” Celebrity Special report for the final few days of Comic-Con. Swampy!

Day 3 The calm before the storm?

SDCC Exhibitor Tip

Day Three was surprisingly quiet. Not in the sense of there being fewer people – there was the now expected Early Morning Exclusive Toys rush at the start and crowds were plentiful – but more in the sense that it felt more like a usual con, albeit with larger crowds. Sales were great, with the combined Season 1 and 2 edition of Magic of Myths and Tick Tock IPA flying off the table. Interest in the books was high and lots of smiling, friendly faces made it a fun affair. Fatigue started to creep in, but it’s overcome by the pleasant enthusiasm by all involved. I even discovered that one of our table neighbours is part of the dev team SuperGiant Games, who is developing Transistor for PlayStation 4. Looks like I’ve got another feature for my day job at PlayStation.com in the pipeline…

Days at SDCC are LONG. You may well know this, but as they start from nine AM and finish around six or seven PM, you’re on your feet a substantial amount of time. For consumers it’s essential to wear comfy footwear, but it’s just as important for exhibitors as well. You’ll never sell as well sitting down as you will standing up, so chances are you’ll be standing most of the time, even if you’re just welcoming passers-by to your table. While tip #4 (dressing up) is handy, make sure you factor in something which won’t leave your feet like two tender beef patties on a BBQ by the end of the day.

As more people start to attend wearing more elaborate costumes, Yomi and I start to reel them in with photos of them holding our books. It’s a great tactic as many oblige and it creates a buzz around our table as well as furthering interest in our stories. Although one guy dressed as Bane – or maybe it WAS Bane – refused to play along, shaking his head when we try to hand him a book. We couldn’t tell if his words were muffled or he just couldn’t speak past his breathing mask. Or maybe it’s because he’s still sore that no one liked his freestyle rap.

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Geek Syndicate Yomi managed to get talking to one of the organisers of ComicCon, who is impressed it’s our first time at the show – she reveals that the waiting list to attend is massive and we must have something they and customers want if we managed to beat it. Further still, only around one hundred tables are allocated for Small Press, so competition is especially fierce. Suddenly all that paperwork we had to go through doesn’t seem as mountainous or painful.

The rest of the day passes without incident, so we head out and have a few drinks with some of our fun new contacts. It’s a night full of laughs – and alcoholic slushies, which are surprisingly potent. We eventually meet up with Jimmy Aquino of Comic News Insider, who brings with him TV presenter and writer Jonathan Ross and artist John Cassaday (X-Men/Planetary), who are all in great form and proceed to launch into an array of dirty jokes. It all makes for a memorable night… although we’re told that Saturday will be the busiest day of the whole Con (uh oh), so we should go to bed early.

Naturally, we end up turning in at nearly three AM. Whoops.

Day 4 “What’s up with all these horse heads? They’re freaking creepy,” says Yomi between yawns.

I agree. The bizarre number of people wearing strange horse head masks is kinda unsettling. Maybe they were actually hallucinations from the lack of sleep. Barely four hours is nowhere enough to get through a day at a ten hour convention, let alone SDCC. It’s punishing, and strangely enough, despite the increased crowds, very few people are buying. In fact, after a few waves of sales, many fob us off with a polite “okay, I’ll come back later” or “sounds cool, let me think about it.”

It turns out, as stated by our lovely new friend who works for Comic-Con, Saturdays are crazy busy but many people hold off buying because they want to see if you’ll cut your prices on the following (last) day to shift stock. Shrewd. A quick chat with others around nearby tables reveals that we’re all in the same boat – inconsistent sales, strange behaviour and a slightly demoralising dismissive feel. That’s the nature of any sales driven business, at times.

Despite low sales, there’s plenty of interest in the books, as many are taken in by the unique elements of Clockwork Watch, while others suggest Magic of Myths would be ideal for an animated series.

John “Doctor Who/Torchwood/Arrow” Barrowman gets chatting with Yomi, saying that he may well send over his sister to grab some copies of Clockwork Watch, given the chance – a very nice surprise.

One thing which became quickly evident over the duration of the con is that the artwork – and the artists involved – are very, very important. The most asked question of the entire week? “Are you the artist of Clockwork Watch?” We feel Jennie’s absence as she adds another draw (no pun intended) to our table that we can’t fill – when you have two giant art banners behind you, it’s only natural it would be one of the main talking points. I make a mental note to create a Magic of Myths banner and also to kidnap both Sergio and Jennie for future conventions.

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SDCC Exhibitor Tip

Geek Syndicate If you’re going through a bad patch of sales, the worst thing you can do is slump into a corner and look beaten. Inside you may be dying, but a smile and friendly face keeps people coming, even if they’re not buying. This is especially true at the super friendly SDCC, where many people will make eye contact and ask how you’re doing.

Another thing that became clear is that people still really don’t know what “adaptation” means and thus tend to treat you as the poor kid hanging on to the *real* creators. As time went on, the conversations were becoming startling similar: Customer: “Oh, so what do you do?”

Me: “Well, I’m the writer and co-creator of this,” *I point to Magic of Myths. The customer nods with interest* “I edited this,” *I point to Tick Tock IPA*the customer then smiles and nods* “and I adapted these two books.” *I show them Clockwork Watch: The Arrival and Breakaway. The customer looks at me as if I’ve been talking in an entirely different language.* Customer: *puzzled* Oh. One classic moment came when I explained to one rather blunt customer who asked what Yomi and my roles were before signing the books. Upon learning that I was the adapting writer and editor and Yomi was the creator, he thrust the books at Yomi and said: “YOU sign these.”

I was starting to feel a bit like Banky from Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, who was the butt of many a joke for being “just an inker”. “Oh, you trace…” *look of pity* By the end of the day we’re both battered and bruised from exhaustion, but have enough time to do a couple of on the spot video interviews about Clockwork Watch and being a black comic book creators from Britain. Fun stuff, although we also hope that we won’t be edited in a ‘Rock Bottom’ style from the Homer Badman episode of The Simpsons. If our clips end up as ‘Yomi Ayeni and Corey Brotherson: Portrait of an Ass-Grabber’, we’ll be consulting our… ah, who am I kidding, we’d probably love the publicity. “Sweet sweet caaaaan.”

One final note of the day, which turns out to be painfully prophetic.

We met up with an old Birmingham writer mate and fellow Aston Villa supporter, Ben McCool (Choker; Pigs; LOOKOUTS), who introduces us to a cool friend of his, who works for Seagate.

That’s Seagate the back-up storage company.

You can probably see where this is going.

We have a quick chat about how backing up data is important for creative people and set up some future plans.

A few hours later I spill a sizable amount of water on my laptop, killing it almost immediately.

Thrills and spills at Comic-Con. * Sigh. *

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Geek Syndicate Day 5 The last day and also, the shortest one. My travel back to Los Angeles airport means a four hour trip, which in turn means I only have an hour’s attendance at the Con. It’s saddening, but there’s also a sense of my body trying to punch itself in victory – it’s survived a week of little sleep, twelve to eighteen hour days and all the ups and downs that came with them. My voice is virtually broken to the point where many customers can’t understand me and my whole body aches.

The logistics of travel also throw up another issue – getting Yomi’s trailer, Gladys, into the town centre, finding somewhere to park her and then lugging all my clothes to the Convention Centre to my suitcase (which was acting as storage for our gear at the show). It results in a five AM start, a seven AM drive into town and a frantic set up and tear down before customers are let in by nine AM. There’s a nervous energy surrounding both Yomi and I. Maybe it’s fatigue.

Maybe it’s the prospect of travel – for me it’s a mild, but easy journey. For Yomi it means getting out of a busy San Diego with Gladys and then making a twelve hour drive across mountainous regions to drop her back off at Reno.

Maybe it’s that we’re sad to see this all go after nearly ten months of set-up, culminating in a manic week of work.

After all the intensity, this is where it comes to end. All the costumes, meet-ups, mad dashes for wi-fi, threats of dancing/singing, panels, horse heads and randomness. It’s punishing, painful, rewarding, fun and downright mental. And tearing down my part of the table (leaving Yomi with a handful of Magic of Myths copies, just in case the discount hunters come-a-sniffing) seems far more final than it should.

Then we get wind of someone giving out forms to apply for next year’s Con. And we both smile. Yomi runs off to grab one and returns. The question everyone asks as I leave the show floor, towing a large suitcase, backpack and San Diego Comic-Con carrier bag?

“Will you be back next year?”

The grin on our faces should tell you the answer.

Corey Brotherson Corey Brotherson is a London based writer and producer for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, who’s been creating content for the games industry on a whole since 2000. As well as Magic of Myths, he’s co-created/written several shorts for Daniel Lundie’s Tales from the Plex anthology (Bad Luck Inc., L33tspeak, A Twilight’s Promise) as well as stories for several other anthologies, including Bayou Arcana Volume One: Songs of Loss and Redemption (Irons in the Fire) and Unseen Shadows: Tales of the Forgotten (Stolen and Fight or Flight). He is also the adapting graphic novel writer of transmedia property, Clockwork Watch.

Don’t forget to check out both Magic of Myths and Clockwork Watch for some excellent steampunk goodness.

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Geek Syndicate The Car’s The Star “It’s the car. Chicks love the car.”

– Batman, Batman Forever (1995) There can be no doubt that our favourite movies and television shows have included their fair share of personal automotive vehicles. In many of these, the car or speeder or whatever is a simple means by which our heroes and villains get from A to B. In others, they are an expression of the character of their owners. Sometimes though, the vehicle is more than that. Sometimes the car is as big a star as the film or television show’s actors.

Rather than producing a top ten list of the most popular cars in the whole genre, what I’ve done here is tried to include some of the less known ones amongst the iconic and rate them by their ingenuity, originality and real-world appeal. So without further ado, let’s vroom on into the list. Oh, by the way, the dates indicate the vehicle’s first appearance.

10) The De Lorean (Back to the Future, 1985) We all know those classic words: “You made a time machine… out of a De Lorean?!?”

A time-machine … well that’s just never going to happen! And gullwing doors, they’re just a pain in the rear in a real modern carpark. As for running the car off of a nuclear-fusion based foodprocessor – c’mon?! But… we’ve all sat there sweltering in a traffic jam and thought, wouldn’t it be cool to vertically take off and rise above the masses.

GS Rating: For pure implausibility… 4/10 9) Logan’s Solar Powered Car (Logan’s Run, 1976) Long before the world went green, Logan 5, along with Jessica 6 and the android REM took flight from Francis and the Sandmen in a solar-powered car that the script-writers conveniently left abandoned for them to stumble across. It was in truth more of a hovercraft than a car, but it was big, silver and environmentally friendly.

GS Rating: Seriously – pollutant free and cheaper than diesel – if we could develop better than forty percent efficient solar panels and halve the size and weight of the batteries, we would indeed find sanctuary … 4/10 8) Luke’s Landspeeder (Star Wars A New Hope, 1977) Never mind that’s it from the greatest movie franchise of all time, Skywalker Junior’s hover-vehicle solved the problem of building an all-terrain off-roader without the need for an expensive suspension system: use expensive anti-gravity technology instead. This eliminates the problems of tyre wear and tear and of running over next door’s cat in one neat solution.

GS Rating: If we could just shrink Japanese ‘MagLev’ (magnetic levitation) technology, currently being trialed in hi-speed trains, into a coupe convertible chassis - wow… 5/10

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Geek Syndicate 7) The Landmaster (Damnation Alley, 1977) Back in 1977, this was the closest thing to what Judge Dredd used to cross the Cursed Earth in: a twelve-wheeled amphibious articulated vehicle. A working version was actually built for the movie at a cost of $350,000 in 1976, about $1.5 million in today’s money. The ultimate mobile home, armed to the teeth and able to go pretty much anywhere, this would make you feel safe crossing the set of The Hills Have Eyes.

GS Rating: Horrendously expensive to buy and fuel up. Parking would be a nightmare. In a post-apocalyptic world? Who cares? ... 6/10 6) K.I.T.T. (Knightrider, 1982) When you think about it, twenty-five percent of a modern car’s value is made up of its high-tech electronics. Voice-directed SatNav, mobile internet access, info-tainment systems, multiple seat-comfort motors, anti-trap windows, GSM modems that dial emergency services upon access, parking cameras - they are all here today and the self-drive car using Google Maps is just around the corner. So, in truth, the Knight Industries Two Thousand is now sadly passé – but back in the nineteen eighties, that black T-top was what every teenager wanted!

GS Rating: purely for nostalgia and the fact that it’s ninety percent already here ... 7/10 5) Something in Pink (The Pink Panther Show, 1969 / Thunderbirds, 1965) What do you give the fashion victim who has nearly everything? Either the Pink Panther’s roadster or Lady Penelope’s Rolls-Royce. Outrageously flamboyant and elaborate, these two cars epitomise the expression “Pimp My Ride!”

GS Rating: guaranteed to turn heads (and indeed a few stomachs), they are indeed, one-of-a-kind icons ... 7/10

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Geek Syndicate 4) Johnny-Cab (Total Recall, 1990) One day all cabs will be like this. Tell it where you want to go, and then sit back. This is Google-Maps self drive car with a personality.

In a strange city, what could be more reassuring for a tourist than a cab that keeps to the speed limit, gives city-guide commentary in any programmed language, and doesn’t try to fleece you!

GS Rating: Refer to Google Maps as previously mentioned, a cab that won’t take you ‘round the houses to get to your destination ... 8/10 3) The Spinner (Blade Runner, 1982) Having just lambasted the De Lorean for implausibility, you may be wondering how this got here; Ridley Scott took the ‘impossible’ flying car, and for just shy of two hours, made it look possible.

A full size (non-flying) replica will set you back between $60,000 and $80,000, although it might be uncomfortable to sleep in when your partner throws you out for not paying the mortgage instead.

GS Rating: Thanks to Vangelis, Syd Mead and the rest of the crew, cinema’s most beautiful vertical parking manoeuvre…

8/10 2) Lotus Esprit S1 (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977) Everyone has a favourite Bond car and generally it is the Aston Martin DB5 because it’s so damn classy. Let’s face it, we’ve all had someone in our car we’d like to eject at one time or other. Having recently watched Richard Hammond successfully build a fully working submersible, watertight Lotus on a Top Gear James Bond Special … well, that just sealed the deal for me.

GS Rating: How to truly entertain the kids when on a driving holiday… 9/10 1) The Tumbler (Batman Begins, 2005) As beautiful as they were, pretty much every incarnation of the Batman’s car suffered the same problem of being fantastically impractical or improbable. Until (influenced no doubt by The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel) Chris Nolan decided to take a prototype armoured personal carrier and give it the Henry Ford treatment. Okay, so the Bat-pod was a bit of a leap, but the rest of it is just pure genius.

GS Rating: for a mere $250,000, pimp my Hummer and give me a car I can park anywhere I please… 10/10 The Also-rans: the Fantasticar, Aliens’ Troop-Carrier, Bumblebee, the Ghost-Buster’s Ecto-mobile, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, Men-In-Black’s Ford Crown Victoria, Christine (if for no other reason than her Wolverine like powers of recovery), any of the concept cars that BMW, Audi or Lexus threw at us in I, Robot, Minority Reports or Mission Impossible, and a never-ending list of flying cars from Harry Potter to the Absent-Minded Professor to The Fifth Element.

Oh, and contrary to popular opinion, this article is not a ham-fisted Jeremy Clarkson of an excuse just to show lots of cool pictures of really great cars!

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Geek Syndicate Image © Marvel Comics, 2010

Why Hit-Girl is my hero

“So, you wanna play?”

But then I read Kick-Ass, and I met Hit-Girl. And I fell in love with her.

Not romantic love, you understand. I’ve saved that for Mr Rochester. It’s more an awed devotion. Here was a character - a kid, no less - who swore like a navvy, fought like a ninja, had a sense of humour as crude and dark as any fictional character before her and a heart of gold.

Plus, she knows what she’s doing Image © Universal Studios, 2010

I’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. (That’s right, I said when.) I went through the intellectual Egyptologist phase and spent some time dreaming of becoming a hacker, while the more realistic ‘journalist’ always floated around in the background. And, sometime in 2002 I saw the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode ‘Grave’ and decided that being Xander Harris would be as good as it could possibly get - la-

tent superpowers notwithstanding.

with a pair of nunchucks - she’s frigging Bruce Lee in a purple wig. How could you not warm to her? How could you not want to be her?

Of course, there’s a whole group of people who haven’t warmed to her at all, particularly after seeing a young Chloe-Grace Moretz drop a C-bomb in the film adaptation. The palaver is pretty hilarious, when you consider how many people the heroine violently dispatches over the course of the movie. But anyway. Whatever. Back to my mushy ode.

I get that it might seem strange.

A grown woman who thinks that a violent, borderlinepsychopathic eleven-year-old is the best thing since Ripley booted the alien queen out of the airlock.

But look past all the effing and blinding and mass slaughter for a second.

See it for what it is - caricature and hyperbole. And stop thinking about it so damn much.

Here we have, as Moretz herself has said, an intelligent, powerful, take-

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Geek Syndicate

But there’s a huge part of me

Mark Millar’s story was originally born out of an idea based on HitGirl and her father/mentor, Big Daddy. He eventually decided to sideline the rather extreme characters in favour of making a hero out of the more relatable everyman, Dave Lizewski. It was an understandable choice, and ultimately the right one. The original

that wishes it had happened. There’s a huge part of me that wishes she didn’t have to be softened, that fictional characters could be crazy and unrestrained and that readers or viewers would still look hard enough to see the real story underneath rather than simply stare open-mouthed at the blood and guts covering it. Because Hit-Girl is more than just a murder machine and it would do her a disservice to hand her to us on a plate. If we had to

Kick-Ass 2 was released on August 14 in the UK, and August 16 in the US.

Cat Collins Cat Collins is co-founder and editor of Geeky Girls Love SciFi. You should follow them on Twitter, they’re awesome: @ GirlsLoveSciFi

Image © Universal Studios, 2013

idea might’ve found fandom in print, but it never would’ve made it to the big screen. The character, with all her gung-ho brutality, is only made palatable by the more restrained attitude of her sidekick - and make no mistake, Kick-Ass is without a doubt HitGirl’s sidekick.

Image © Marvel Comics, 2010

charge young woman who knows her mind and won’t let anybody take advantage of her. Mindy Macready has lifted herself out of the most horrific, messed up beginnings to become focused, level-headed, extremely loyal and unbelievably courageous. Tell me that’s not a good role model.

Tell me that’s not something we should all aspire to.

There are about five individuals on my ‘people I’d like to meet before I die’ list, and Hit-Girl is one of them. I realise it’s unlikely to happen, what with me being a real life person and her… well, not so much. To be honest, though, I think it’s a good thing.

She’d probably kick my arse.

wade through hefty diatribes about how difficult her life has been, how sad she is that her daddy lied to her and how awful it is to be a Hello Kitty fan by day and katana-wielding maniac by night we wouldn’t have Hit-Girl anymore. She’d be something else. Somebody else. And she’d be really, really annoying.

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Geek Syndicate THE BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO ... Doctor Who Ever wondered what all those geeks in the corner were talking about? Sick of missing out of the sly references and obscure injokes? Never Fear!

I’m impressed you know what TARDIS stands for.

Image © BBC Worldwide, 2013

The Bluffers Guide is here to help!

collection of “Assistants” (later “Companions”) and the TARDIS - Time and Relative Dimension in Space - a time machine / space ship disguised as a 1960s era Police Box.

Really? What brought that on?

Well it’s everywhere, it seems. Even the Guardian ran an article revealing that the Daleks where going to be in it. I didn’t even know that they weren’t in it!

If you say so. I take it from all the fuss around casting that they change the actors all the time then? No-one has done fifty years in the job?

Which is different from going to college and coming back a brunette?

Yes. Well, mostly. The writers introduced the idea that the Doctor was a Time Lord, a renegade member of an ancient and powerful race. One of the abilities of Time Lords was that when faced with death they could regenerate themselves into a new body, with a new personality. Out went Hartnell and in came Patrick Troughton, who for many really Image © BBC, 1973

You know, I was thinking I should probably watch some Doctor Who.

Every geek should know what TARDIS stands for, just like they should be able to make a Lightsaber noise and do that hand-salute that Spock does on Star Trek.

Well, they change the actor who plays the title role, but more importantly they also change the character. It’s not a soap opera; where someone goes off to college and comes back looking totally different. To get around the problem of William Hartnell (the first actor to play the Doctor), getting older and less able to keep up with the part, the production team of the time invented the process of “Regeneration”.

No, the Daleks have always been it. It’s just that they’re confirming they will be in the fiftieth Anniversary Special. Along with nearly everything else, it seems.

Fiftieth...anniversary?

It means the show is fifty years old.

I know what it means. But that’s a really long time for a TV show.

Yes it is. And a long, strange journey it’s been too. Doctor Who was first broadcast on 23rd November, 1963. It began with the core format of “The Doctor”, a

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The first three Doctors, together for the tenth anniversary special: The Three Doctors

Geek Syndicate defines the character of the Doctor.

Even though he was second?

Even through he was second, yes.

Many of Troughton’s episodes are lost now, but...

Wait...lost?

Only 1970? How many of these guys do we have to get through?

So far? Eleven. But the series was cancelled in 1989 and didn’t fully return until 2005. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. The Pertwee era is another big change to the show - largely set on Earth, the Doctor spends a lot of time

ing which time the show became a phenomenon. Prior to the return of the show in 2005, for many people he was The Doctor, embodying everything the role should be. Baker’s era(s) saw the show blast back into the space, making as much a Space Opera show as a Time-Travel and Historical Drama show, and is the high-water mark of the Classic Series. Baker dominates Doctor Who’s history, a legacy that stretches on even now.

But he left?

Yes, to be followed by the young and fresh-faced Peter Davison.

Its an odd era of the show to Images © BBC

Yes, Lost. The BBC had a policy of reusing old tapes, and a huge amount of television from the 1950s and 1960s has been forever lost. Doctor Who is possibly now the most famous, but other examples include big chunks of a Peter Cushing-starring Sherlock Holmes series, a number of

whilst also being noticeably different, something that would continue as Troughton himself regenerated into Jon Pertwee in 1970. Due to the episode wiping he’s also the earliest Doctor most people have familiarity with, as complete serials survive for reruns.

More than just the Daleks - The Doctor has battled many villains and monsters over fifty years of adventures.

influential theatre adaptations like Death of a Salesman, and all but two episodes of the wildly popular Juke Box Jury, over the period of the rise of the Pop Music Charts. Many of the Who episodes that survive were re-patriated copies that had been sent overseas.

I can’t imagine them just wiping that stuff.

It was a different Era and video tape was expensive and re-usable. Anyway, Troughton brings to the role a sense of playfulness and introduced the idea that the character can be older and wiser than the looks or acts. He also managed to be consistent with the core of Hartnell’s character

working with UNIT, a military organisation tasked with dealing with alien menaces to the planet.

It’s all a little bit chummy and occasionally endearingly lowbudget but has a steady thread of conflict between the “shoot first” military response and the Doctors more intellectual and investigative attitude. Pertwee’s tenure also sees the introduction of The Master, a villainous Time Lord envisioned as Moriarty to his Sherlock Holmes. In the end though, Pertwee is often overshadowed by his successor, Tom Baker.

Ahhh. With the Hair and the Scarf.

Thats the chap. Tom Baker was the Doctor from 1974 to 1981, dur-

watch, as early warning signs of the storms that would afflict it in the 1980s start to crop up during Davidson’s run, as a new guard want to take the show into darker and edgier territory, full on conflicted morals and anti-heroics.

Really? Doctor Who? Yes, really. Who had already caught some flak for being “too scary” and “too dark” for kids during Baker’s (or more specifically, Producer Peter Hinchcliffe’s) time, but the Doctor was still very much the conquering hero, bringing light and reason to dark and superstitious places. By the end of Davison’s era though, serials had noticeably downbeat resolutions, gruesome

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Geek Syndicate Surely people like Dark and Gritty?

To a point, yes. But Doctor Who is at heart a family show, aimed at a wide demographic. It was a show starting to look tired and in need of a refresh, and sinking into these sorts of stories, with unlikeable heroes and compromised endings took the show further from it’s mass market appeal. Ratings started to fall, and with them budgets, production time and overall quality. It’s ironic that Davison’ final story, Caves of Androzani, is all of those things, yet often cited as one of the greatest stories of Classic Doctor Who.

Baker, and in came Sylvester McCoy for the Classic series last hurrah.

They pulled it back then?

Sort of, although not enough to ultimately save the series from cancellation. McCoy saw a bunch of new talent come in on the writing side, and whilst budget cuts continued and the BBC management made it a point of policy to try and shut the show down (Director-General Michael

Gann. It was, frankly, a bit of a confused mess, unsure of its tone or intended direction and wasn’t well received on the whole. In the meantime, the Doctor Who fanbase was sated with new novels and later with audio series starring the original casts (including McGann) whose writers included not only those who’d worked on the show but several who would write for the re-launch. And then, in 2005, the show itself regenerated.

Image © BBC, 2005

deaths, and was starting to feel a long way from its more optimistic roots.

And when was that?

1984. Davison’s fifth Doctor sacrificed himself for a young woman he hardly knows, because he was that kind of fellow, and was replaced by Colin Baker (no relation) whose sixth Doctor was brash, arrogant, condescending and basically a big jerk. His two seasons were a disaster for Doctor Who, seeing it shunted around the schedules and ultimately cancelled, before being brought back without him.

Wow. He was really that bad?

General consensus is that Baker himself: not so much. The scripts and character he had to work with? Yes, that bad. Of course, the “plan” of the production team was to mellow the character out over the years that Baker would play the role – but they never got the chance. The finale of the sixth Doctor’s time in the TARDIS was the series long “Trial of a Time Lord”, a series of linked stories that while not without ambition, is terribly executed. So out went

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Christopher Eccleston - A new Doctor for a new age. Doctor Who is back ... and it’s about time

Grade was quite open about hating Doctor Who) it gradually started to get back on its feet.

Some of the changes were pretty important too - the relationship between the Doctor and his companion Ace was put at the heart of the show, and there was a whiff of contemporary themes rustling through the shows subtext. It felt like a crude prototype of the re-launched show, still fifteen years away.

Fifteen years is a long time for a show to go on hiatus. I’m surprised it came back at all.

There was an abortive attempt to re-launch the show in 1996 starting an eighth Doctor, Paul Mc-

Ooh, that sounds dramatic.

It sort of is. Show runner Russell T Davies brought back Doctor Who wearing a markedly different skin. Most episodes were stand-alone stories, with series long “teased” arcs for big finales, as is the fashion in US telly. The show became brighter, flashier, funnier and sexier. Things exploded. The Daleks came back, to chase a new generation of kids behind the sofa. Doctor Who was (whisper it) suddenly cool.

Nah. Yes! That first season caused all sorts of ripples, not least with a fandom that was prone to schism

Geek Syndicate at the best of times. With a show as diverse as Who has been over the years, everyone has their idea of what it should be, and many fans dreamed of how they would do it. In every Doctor Who forum across the internet, you will find valid critics of some the changes wrought by the new show, but you’ll also find some fans who just can’t forgive Davies for being the one that managed to resurrect the show in the first place.

Enough of the fans! Go back to the sexy!

Well, the ninth Doctor himself, Christopher “Lots of Planets Have a North” Eccleston, isn’t that sexy, but when he regenerated into David Tennant the show sort of exploded. We’d had younger Doctors before, but genteel, polite ones, not bouncing balls of energy and spikey hair spouting rapid dialogue and shouting and....well, you get the picture.

Even I know what David Tennant looks like!

Image © BBC, 1999

Exactly. Tennant probably still defines the modern Who as much as Tom Baker defined the Classic run. It was a hard act to follow, and when Tennant left to be followed by Matt Smith’s eleventh

Joanna Lumley IS THE DOCTOR!

Doctor, Russell T Davies left too, to be replaced by Stephen Moffat. It heralded another change to the show; secrets and mysteries became a big part of the series, as did Moffatt’s trademark “timey-wimey” plotting. This year, of course, Matt Smith is leaving the show which will bring a new, twelfth Doctor. It is likely that the show will gain a new feel yet again.

A new Doctor....maybe a woman?

Ah this. It always comes up.

It’s a fair question. If the Doctor can be an old guy, or a young guy, or a sexy guy, or a grumpy guy, why can’t he be a black guy, or a woman guy? or a totally alien guy?

No, it is a fair question, and one that divides people. There is a school of thought that says whilst Time Lords can regenerate seemingly freely, the Doctor “identifies” as a White Human Male, and that’s just how he is. There’s another school of thought that says he tends to react to what’s around him as his old form is dying and mostly he’s in an environment where being a White Male is an advantageous form, so it’s a type of survival mechanism.

Or the show just likes casting White Male actors.

Well if you’re going to be like that then I guess so. In-universe. regeneration has never really been detailed, although it has been implied that Time Lords can exert some degree of control over it, as both Romana (a Time Lady Companion from the Tom Baker era) and the Master did. So there’s no reason that the Doctor couldn’t be a Woman for a change, or a different ethnicity, but even in this day and age it’s maybe too big a property for the BBC

to take on scaring the fan-base too much. For good or ill, Doctor Who’s fanbase remains vocal on such matters, even if it rarely speaks with one voice.

Still, there is always all those good looking, young companions, right?

That has been a bit of a trend. Of course, by always casting a male Doctor then in order to keep some semblance of gender balance in the show (there’s a great book on it, incidentally, called “Chicks Dig Time Lords”) the vast majority of companions have been, yes, attractive young women. In the modern era they’ve tended to have more equal billing, but the record in the Classic era is a little more patchy.

You mentioned a Time Lady?

Romana, yes. A character very much the Doctor’s equal in many ways, and the second Romana (the first regenerated) played by Lalla Ward had a great, partnerin-crime relationship with Tom Baker’s Doctor. Elisabeth Sladen’s character Sarah-Jane Smith was a reaction to the rise of seventies feminism on the behalf of the shows producers, but is a proactive and capable character that remains on of the great Companions, even getting a successful spin-off show after appearing in a post-re-launch episode.

You’re going to tell me they’re not all great though?

Sadly, there is a strong undercurrent of Companions being there to point at things and need them explaining, or to get grabbed by monsters and need rescuing.

Nicola Bryant, who played the fifth and sixth Doctors’ companion Peri once claimed she was hired pretty much because

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Geek Syndicate she looked good in a bikini. Savage warrior woman Leela (Louise Jameson) also spent most of her time in the TARDIS in skimpy leatherwear, but at least coupled it with a dose of knife-wielding aggression that let her rise above the wounds inflicted by the Costume Department.

It sounds very laddish.

The traditional jibe is that companions were cast as something “for the dads to look at” and there is some truth in that. But if the classic companion is someone to have something explained to them, the modern one is there to humanise the Doctor, keep him in check, and be the human path through all the alien time-travel weirdness. That isn’t a gender specific role, so maybe a female Doctor could have a hot young male companion.

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I hear there’s a market for that.

Doctor Who’s fanbase is very diverse, now you mention it. I’ve probably sounded critical of its slightly fractured “old school” fanbase but it’s a show rooted in outsiders and non-conformists, one that has celebrated diversity (albeit by analogy, rather than direct casting) and the overcoming of obstacles by coming together to defeat them. Its monsters are the oppressive, the uniform, the intolerant; things that want to consume or destroy or conquer.

Its most iconic villain, the Daleks, are genocidal aliens who can do nothing but hate.

EX-TER-MIN-ATE! Yes, thank you. But it proves one of the main points about Doctor Who, and it’s this: over fifty years it has ingrained itself in wider popular culture, even when the

show itself has been off the air. At its best, it’s a show about life, and heart and the good in the world, and about how things can be better by the application of reason and understanding. Generations of British kids have this show built into their make-up and that message is an important one to impart, even more so in an age of audience segmentation and targeting. It’s a show trying to be all things to everyone, and that makes it pretty lovable.

OK, I’m sold. So where do I start?

Well, thats a whole other story....

Matt farr

Geek Syndicate

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Geek Syndicate INTERVIEW

Vic Armstrong - The World’s Greatest Stuntman Image © Titan Books,2011

What makes a good action film? Is it the stars paid millions of dollars? Is it the Director who has the vision to bring it all together? The composer who brings the sound of action to the screen? The writer who comes up with the plot? The answer is, of course all of the above, but action films would be nothing without the stunts.

Even in this age of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), we still get a kick out of seeing cool stunts on screen and I would guess that you never know the name of the man or woman who has risked their life to bring something to the screen.

One name that you should get to know is Vic Armstrong who has worked on over sixty of the biggest action movies in his amazing career that he literally fell into. Vic has worked his way from performing horse riding stunts to being the stunt co-ordinator, then to Second Unit Director for some huge films. His most recent move sees him step into the Director’s chair in a film starring Nicholas Cage.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. I want to introduce you to the man called The World’s Greatest Stuntman which also happens to be the title of his book (The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman) that I think is a must read for film fans.

Geek Syndicate caught up with Vic last year for an incredibly enjoyable chat about his career...

the work of someone who truly loves their craft. How long did it take to write the book, and when did he get the idea to write it?

As such a busy man, I was very surprised that Vic had the time to write a book that was not only a great insight into the mind of a stuntman but also

VA: It was six years overall, I never ever wanted to write one and lots of people said ‘Oh you must write a book’ and they start

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giving you an idea, and how they want to write it for you, everybody kind of took the tabloid headline approach, you know crashes and breakages and accidents….that’s not what I wanted to do/ I said I didn’t want to write a book, but if I did do one I wanted to do a chronicle of what

Geek Syndicate life has been like as a stuntman: the real life you live and the characters you meet, the things you do. So I kept turning everyone down.

Then Robert Sellers approached me and I looked at some of his work. He had done an awful lot of film books including Tom Cruise, George Harrison and Rebel, and I just liked his approach, and he said ‘Look Vic, it is going to be everything that you want to tell, nothing else, nothing more, nothing less, and if you don’t like it at the end of the day we won’t publish it, we may not even get a publisher’.

In his first decade as a stuntman on movies, Vic Armstrong worked on over fifteen films, including three James Bonds: You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (as George Lazenby’s ski double) and Live and Let Die as Roger Moore’s stunt double. It was during this first decade he became the assistant stunt arranger on A Bridge Too Far which is one of my favourite Second World War movies. If you know the film you know there were a lot of stunts in that film.

Knowing just how many films he was in and how many stunts he performed or helped set up how did he remember them all? Did he go back and watch them again?

VA: No I just remembered every moment, and I just figured if it’s in my memory that’s what I want to put down, all the anecdotes, everything: all the names of people of people I could remember, every single one, it was amazing.

In 1978, Vic went to work on what would become one of defining comic book movies of all time as the stunt Image © Vic Armstrong, 1978

I said ‘Ok’ and we started on it, it took six years because nothing was written down apart from I used to keep a list of films that I had worked on up until about ten years ago. So he would say ‘right lets go from, for instance, 1965 to 1969’, and we start ‘You Only Live Twice’ and all the memories would come flooding back to me you know, and then I would go away on location for six months, he’d write it and we would email backwards and forwards and I would do corrections and things, and so on and so forth and we

would work our way right up to the present day. Then he presented this and Titan jumped at it, they snapped it up straight away.

double of Christopher Reeve’s Superman. This would lead on to his performing and supplying stunts on both Superman 2 and Superman 3.

One notable scene was when Superman is blown backwards into a bus

by Zod and his two companions in the first sequel. I always remembered this scene for being just like watching a real comic book come to life. It was Vic in the Superman suit in that scene and he nailed it as far as I was concerned.

A few years later Vic was hired to work on a film that was the brainchild of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the film? Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was a film designed to showcase stunts of the old school kind. It was also the start of an amazing friendship with the movie’s leading actor Harrison Ford. Armstrong became firm friends with the actor and did Harrison’s stunt work in most of his films.

Taking one example from Indiana Jones, we talk about the scene where Jones jumps from the back of a horse to a tank in The Last Crusade which even today is one of my favourite stunts.

VA: The jump onto the tank in Indiana Jones was for me technically very difficult. Being a horseman to get a horse that you could charge galloping flat out in a straight line, and as you stand up on its saddle you don’t want it to deviate or slow down or pitch your off, and you have to run the same speed as the tank, and close to the edge of a cliff, and you don’t want it to swerve away as you jump otherwise you go under the tracks of the tank, you don’t want to get too close to the edge otherwise the horse will slip of the edge and get squashed, and you know they are very challenging.

Vic Armstrong as the Man of Steel in the classic 1978 movie.

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Geek Syndicate Back when Armstrong started in the industry it seemed that the stuntman was just the hired muscle and people did not know them or even care about them in some cases but how has the industry changed in the last forty years?

VA: Oh absolutely, you have actors like Harrison Ford and people like that really sing our praises and advertise the fact that stuntmen do the stunts. Directors have got more relaxed about saying ‘yeah there was an action unit on that’ because we don’t do it on our own we do it in conjunction with the main unit and so it’s not taking anything away from them, it’s just that we have the time and the knowlImage © Vic Armstrong, 1978

VA: It has changed radically.

When I was doing it we didn’t have a huge amount of respect, money, influence, responsibility or anything like that, so I think we are very proud to have built that up over the years. The business has obviously changed and people have acknowledged the

the industry, but also the cinema going public. Is this what the average stuntman thinks?

Vic became firm friends with Harrison Ford on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark

fact that action does put bums on seats. If you look at ninety-five percent of the trailers, it’s all action stunts in the trailer that get people into the cinema. CG has had its effect on it. Stunts have got bigger. We have got bigger budgets and have more freedom and we have more input than we used to have in the old days. It has grown with us actually.

In the past the stunt person didn’t necessarily have the respect that they were due, but it seems that recently there is a new found appreciation for the profession not just within 48

edge to be able to do those sort of things better than the main unit. So people are much more aware of what we do, you know, it is advertised now and it is a huge thing that’s why there are so many young stunt kids likely to become stuntmen, so it is not the bastard stepchild that is hidden in the attic.

The next decade and a half was a very busy time for Vic who moved from being a stuntman on films like Conan, Brazil, Blade Runner and Krull to a stunt coordinator on Total Recall,

Rambo III, Universal Soldier and The Last Action Hero but this also brought some new challenges. CGI. How did Vic embrace the new technology and combine it with old fashioned stunt work.

VA: It is a two edged sword. I embrace CGI wholeheartedly - it is a wonderful tool. It can ruin a lot of movies if used instead of real action. It is a great thing to enhance sequences and to take out safety features that we may have in there like a ramp or a fall bag, or a wire, and so on an so forth.

It is marvellous in that respect, some people tend to use it as a tool just to create the whole sequence, then it does start to become a bit cartoon like in some respects.

If used correctly it is a fantastic tool, it is simple for anyone to use, and in fact its bad in that respect that somebody who probably don’t have the knowledge of how to do it correctly, will do it in a computer and therefore that’s when I start losing interest in certain films when they look like they have been created in a computer.

The past ten years has seen Vic work on some very heavily CGI laden blockbusters including Thor, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, I Am Legend, War of the Worlds, The Amazing Spider-Man and Mission: Impossible III all of which seem to have found the right balance between CGI and live action stunts. Can someone who lives and breathes the stunt world actually be able to sit back and enjoy the films?

VA: Normally I watch the movie and if something stands out, in my mind I’m thinking and I’ll be affected by the fact that it did have an impact on me, and then in later dates you do look at it, and now we can break it down,

Geek Syndicate

From the list of movies that Vic has worked on it is clear that he enjoys a very creative relationship with many acclaimed directors but where does it start and end in terms of planning scenes or stunts.

VA: It can vary, somebody like Martin Scorsese or Stephen Spielberg they have a set thing in their mind and they have chronicled their film in their head and they edited it in their head beforehand.

We went up and down the Thames every Sunday – I was working on Entrapment six days a week and on Sundays we would get a boat and we had a wonderful guy that owns all the boat concessions on the Thames he knew every nook and cranny. We’d go up and down, up and down and invented the chase. The thing about chases is that they must never get repetitive, and with a car skidding around the corner, and a boat go up and down the water, it can get very repetitive so we kept adding

Newer films, like The War of the Worlds mix CGI and regular stunts

But when Vic is left to his own ideas we get some truly amazing stunts, like the boat chase in Die Another Day on the Thames.

VA: I looked at different boat chases and thought what can I do to make this different and exciting, and you know working on the Thames the busiest waterway in the world and the script in fact just said Bond leaves MI6 at Vauxhall broads in a boat and he finishes up at the Dome and we want a hot air balloon involved so I set off with stunt co-ordinator Simon Crane who had worked with me for years - he is now top man in his own field.

of general stuff. You know you are working in busy streets and you have stuff to add into your chase, and when I was told that they wanted a chase on the ice: a) we had to find a location and everything else b) I thought what the heck do you do with just two cars and what’s gonna add to it, you can’t have a nun running across on fire, and make him swerve across into a gas station which explodes and blah de blah de blah.

Image © Vic Armstrong, 2004

and slow them down, I am also on the committee of the tourist Welsh Thunder Awards and so everything that’s entered into that we do analyse and say how much are physical stunts, how much is cheat and CG if you like, and so we break them down like that, in that respect. If it is a good movie then I’m totally lost in it to begin with, it’s when it’s not a good movie that I start critiquing it!

something different into it which is why we took it out of the water and we had a jet boat you could blast along the ground for a little bit, then back into the water and so on and so forth.

Keeping on the Bond theme, Armstrong cites that one of his proudest moments was also in Die Another Day: the ice car chase between Bond’s Aston Martin and the villain’s henchman’s Jaguar.

VA: I have just done a little voting for some stunt clips on movies and there are car chases in that, and you look at them all and they have all got the same sort of feel to them, you know the same sort

Then I started thinking. Once I saw the location, once I had got there and everything else I just started dreaming up ideas and I could see it all with an operatic orchestral music in the background and as a ballet on ice if you like - using the location, using wide shots of the glacier and the icebergs and passing them.

I mean two people similarly matched,

with the same fire power just trying to outwit each other like a big game of chess. So the end result I thought was actually beautiful it just made a very, very interesting and it took the viewers to a wonderful location and you can see all the location and it wasn’t shot close up, I was just very proud of it, what we made out of what was asked for.

If you read Vic’s book you will understand the hard work that goes into his stunts but one question he gets asked a lot is what were the most challenging stunts he had to perform?

VA: There have been so many over the years, really. I did a hun49

Geek Syndicate dred foot fall which gets your heart going as there is no getting away from the fact that you will be doing sixty-five to seventy miles per hour when you hit the air bag and have to stop within three foot, so you know all that is going through your mind, and that’s challenging but lots of people do that.

In another movie I did years and years ago called Krull they had horses that were galloping faster than the speed of light so I suggested shooting against a blue screen, and the producer looked at me and went ‘Hmmm, ok’ and I explained how to do it. I said we can put them on treadmills so they would be galloping but not moving in the studio. I said get carthorses they are easier to use.

He said have you got treadmills?

I said no, but we will invent them, we will make them. So anyway I got the job, I walked out of the meeting, and Peter Yates the director who directed Bullitt, he was the director, and he said to me do you know what when you left the producer looked at me and said ‘He’s stark staring mad isn’t he. You can’t get horses on a treadmill in a studio’ and Peter Yates turned to this guy and said ‘I think he knows what he’s talking about you know, he is a horse rider, I think he can do it’ So he went along with it and we made the treadmills, and we did it. And that’s challenging, every little job is a challenge of some sort, it’s always going to be different to what everyone else does.

In Hollywood it is all about numbers and the heads of studios get very nervous when their stars perform their own stunts. This is why we have stuntmen and women but occasionally there are actors who want to do as much as possible but which ones want to and which ones actually can?

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VA: Harrison Ford would have been THE best stuntman. He is analytical, he has got tons of ability, he has got a great sense of humour, he is good at everything he does. I think he would have made a hell of a stuntman.

Tom Cruise is unbelievably courageous, a fantastic driver he would have made an amazing stuntman, I’m not sure about the personality but he would have made a hell of a stuntman.

Chris Hemsworth who we did Thor with, was brilliant, you know, he got stuck in there and did it all. You get a lot of these actors nowadays, and I actually design stuff, because of CG you can have pads on the floor, pads on the walls, you can slide people, hang them in the air, on cables as thick as your little finger that take ten tonnes. When we used to do it when we were on Superman 1 and 2, we would be on piano wires that would snap, it was just a single strand, and bang they’re gone. So the safety aspect is much better now and as I said you can have pads underneath the people.

I did a shot on Spider-Man, where Spidey runs leaps and does a somersault through the air, across the street, onto a roof on the other side of the road, and we had a full roof built in the studio, so we shoot it inside in the studios in LA, we had a air ram - you know one of those rams you hit and ping and it fires you, it is a ram that lifts up, a platform that pivots very quickly and if you are on it, it fires you through the air. So he ran and hit his air ram, ping! He somersaulted through the air and landed on the roof on the other side, we had an eight foot pad for him to land on just in case and also to save his legs a bit.

He did that shot beautifully and then I said to my CG guy ‘what do you need from us now for you work?’ and he said ‘erm, ok just run the footage again, same camera movement but take the ram out, take the pad out, so I have got the footage on the roof with a proper roof underneath where the pads were covering it”.

We did that and in the movie you see this guy somersault through the air, leap through the air and land on the roof, so it is wonderful in that respect, you know it helps to make the safety aspect so much better, therefore you can use actors much much more.

With more safety equipment and sets being built, will we see more actors doing their own stunts in the future as long as the studios are not worried? Vic has his own thoughts on the matter: VA: Oh completely, it’s the law of danger: you just add up what ever the percentage of danger is and if its over a certain mark then its not worth risking a $200 million movie. You know the last Mission Impossible movie? I wrote that purely so that Tom Cruise could do all the stunts himself.

On War of the Worlds, we wrote it knowing how he could work, and what he liked to do, knowing what safety aspects we could put in so he does everything himself.

We’ll rehearse the heck out of it with a stuntman to get all the wrinkles out, and all the things that can bite you on the day if you like, so we have reduced the percentage of danger as much as we possibly can, so that it becomes an acceptable level. And to me that makes a movie, when you believe its your hero in there and not some computerised safe or body, or a body that you can’t see the face of, if you really feel your hero is in amongst it then I

Image © Vic Armstrong

Geek Syndicate

Vic is known for his exellent horse skills - seen here with Sylvester Stallone

think it is a much better experience for the movie goer.

From reading his book it is quite clear that Vic has gained a lot of high praise from actors and directors alike through his career, but which was the most emotional praise that he received?

VA: I got a BAFTA lifetime achievement. For me that was sensational, you know I’m the first stuntman in the world to have a BAFTA which is our version of an OSCAR. I was thrilled to have that. But I think that the most emotional bit was the funniest one which you will laugh at probably.

It was This is Your Life [A television show where a celebrity’s life is remembered and they are presented a book of memories by the host – ed.].

You know that wonderful phrase from Martin Scorsese who is a dear friend of mine which was added to the book was fantastic, but for absolutely shock, surprise, joy and gratitude it had to be This is Your Life.

I direct commercials as well, I had a commercial company, so I was directing commercials for Lincoln and Audi, and I was doing post production in LA and I got a call to come back to the UK immediately from (James Bond Producer) Barbara Broccoli and I thought ‘Christ, what have I done now?’ ‘You have to come back on Friday’. I said, ‘Look can’t I leave it until Monday I am doing the colour correction at company three in LA’ and all I got back was ‘No!’. I thought ‘Jesus’ so I jumped on a plane that night, finished my work on the plane arrived Friday morning, got off the plane and my usual driver drove me to Pinewood.

There was a little film shooting in the gateway there so we had to stop and got out. I saw a couple of stunt guys and started to chatting to them, and the next I knew an Aston Martin slides up sideways and (This is your Life presenter) Michael Aspel jumps out with the red book and walked towards me. So I’m looking over

my shoulder to see who is walking to, and he came to me. It just knocked me sideways and then people popped out the bushes and off the fire escape and people were all laughing and clapping and my kids were being driven up to the studios.

Then they took me to the studio and your whole life suddenly appears in front of you, I thought ‘My god, this is absolutely fantastic’ and I think it was the most wonderful weekend I have ever had, it was just sensational. They flew my kids in from America, and friends in from Spain and all over the world, and of course Scorsese is on it, and Harrison Ford and everybody was on it, it was just sensational.

One major aspect of Vic is the importance of family - both in terms of his work family but also his personal one which now overlaps with the trade that he loves.

VA: It’s wonderful seeing them doing it. It is great seeing them doing it. They are all talented in their own right. You tend to think that because its family doing it, it’s negative, but its not. There are no apprenticeships these days and when you think about it, my kids for instance have served their whole life as an apprenticeship, they have been sitting around the kitchen table, unbeknownst to us, listening in to conversations we have had about how we build treadmills, how we build this, how I invented the fan descender.

That was another thing talking about difficult things. The producer wanted me to jump off a three-hundred and forty foot building using a machine that had never been seen before in a movie, it had to be practical, it

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Geek Syndicate had to be built and they wanted it filmed from a helicopter. I said ‘Oh, I think that will take me about three or four minutes to think of that one’, I went away and came back with a fan descender, and I got an Academy Award for that.

But the kids would listen to these conversations going on you know, and they have obviously been driving cars around the fields here since they were six, seven years old, riding horses and if we cleaned the stunt equipment we would have the air bag outside the window, they would run upstairs and we would say ‘go on you can jump if you want’ and they would jump out of the bedroom window onto the airbag.

So they have had a great grounding, and to see them doing what they are doing is fantastic but again that is another double edged sword on Green Hornet, my youngest son Scott who has done fantastic crashes on the bridge of Mission Impossible 3 as well and he did one stunt on Green Hornet where he is in a pick-up truck, the truck’s on fire and he has to go sixty miles per hour head on into a bus then go through the bus, out of the roof and somersault down the street on fire, you know, and I’m directing it and on the set at night in LA and go ok roll camera, action, you know trying to be totally cool you know you don’t want to get people alarmed and my son was probably much cooler than I was, but inside my heart was hammering, it is horrendous, but it is wonderful to see them do it and be successful at it.

Talking of directing, which he did on the Green Hornet, Vic has done a lot of Second Unit work on over fifty films but which is harder, directing or running the stunts?

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VA: Each little area I have sort of evolved through with a great satisfaction to me, you know being a stunt man in the first days was like Wow! This is great, riding a horse better than someone else could or doing things and being very happy with that but you would look at somebody that was employed and think well he is a stunt co-ordinator that is a better job because he is on it all the time, I’m only on it three weeks doing these stunts.

I also loved the creativity of it, I was always great at writing stories, and telling stories and essays in English at school and stuff like that, I like the creativity of it all, so the stunt co-ordinator gets to create sequences and advise and suggest sequences as well as breaking down how they are done because it is incredibly great and constructive to design a sequence, break down how you shoot it, how it works, and how the cuts are going to work, how the physical safety angles are going to be used and then see it brought to fruition which is as the stunt co-ordinator is a great job right, but the director does all of those things, you employ the co-ordinator and you advise the co-ordinator and at the end of the day you place the cameras and the lenses, and the camera speed and you edit it, so it is a wonderful creative process and I am just happy to work my way through it all.

Vic does not seem to be showing any signs of stopping any time soon but does he still want to do his own stunts or has he given up completely.

VA: Yeah, I sort of gave up completely. I’m too old, and it’s a young man’s agile reflexive game. A few years ago I used to see a go up to a great friend of mine who is now dead, Roy Alon,

a wonderful English stuntman who started with us on A Bridge Too Far. He was a co-ordinator and he did a lot of work up in Yorkshire, he was a Yorkshire lad, he used to do A Touch of Frost and Peak Practice.

He would call me and say ‘Vic, I have an eight wheeled truck to crash, do you fancy it?’ I would say ‘Absolutely’ and I would go up there for a weekend and we would do a crash or something like that but, I would only go up there for the night out and a nice curry in Manchester or somewhere and the fun of it all, you know not necessarily to do the stunts but, they were less physical stunts than I would have done on the Indiana Jones movie for instance, but I don’t do that anymore either. I think the last one I did was the Mummy 3 I was a drunk in the party at the end, my son actually gets thrown onto a table, smashes a table and Wendy and myself at sitting at the table as a little guest appearance.

So what is next for The Words Greatest Stuntman?

He has just wrapped on the stunts for the Jack Ryan reboot starring Star Trek’s Chris Pine and then he will be directing Nicholas Cage in Left Behind about a group of people struggle to survive in the aftermath of a “Rapture” that has removed people of the Christian faith from Earth.

To find out more about Vic Armstrong and his incredible career, visit his web site at http://www.vicarmstrong.com/ The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman is out now, published by Titan Books, in all good book stores.

Christophe Montoya

Geek Syndicate On Her Majesty’s Geeky Service What better way to celebrate the seventh anniversary of all things Geek Syndicate and (coincidentally, the seventh issue of this humble magazine) than by using said number as an excuse for a James Bond feature?

Of course I expect you to agree because failure to do so would mean I would have to introduce you to my very persuasive acid spouting fountain pen, which I call ‘Little Nugie’ Now I don’t claim to know Bond as well as certain members of the GS team like Ant who actually makes a mean scrambled eggs following a recipe taken from Ian Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me, but I am a huge fan.

Just like with Doctor Who, everyone has their 007 and for me it will always be Mr Connery. However after his performance in Skyfall, Craig has nudged up into second place (sorry Pierce).

Whether he’s getting gritty and down to earth in From Russia with Love or absurdly dodging lasers in Moonraker, Bond has always been a hundred percent pure escapism. This universal export wears its heart proudly on its union jack embroidered sleeve. So as a tribute to the man who is, let’s face it, the worst undercover spy in history, I’ve decided to pick my top seven bond gadgets, music tracks and overall Bond moments from the films.

Before I start I apologise in advance as I’m sure some of you will read this and scream ‘[insert swear word of choice] I can’t believe he did not mention [insert gadget, baddie or moment of choice]’. But these are my opinions, so kiss my Goldfinger.

Bond Gadgets 001. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice) OK lets set the record straight. That white helmet Bond wears while piloting the mini copter which packs a mean punch looks crap. Connery looks like he should be playing polo not outgunning Spectre bad guys. It’s a great scene though, in spite of the helmet.

002. Bowler Hat (Goldfinger) Even though it proved to be his undoing in the electrifying conclusion to his battle with Bond, as a fellow hat wearer, I must doff my cap to you Odd Job.

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Geek Syndicate 003. Dagger Shoe (From Russia With Love) It’s a shoe with a dagger in it...job done. Seriously though, every time I watch that poor bloke Kronsteen get taken out by the shoe for messing up I shudder. I’ve seen a lot of bad guys die horribly but for some reason that kick just feels really painful. The actor and the sound effects do a great job of selling it.

It’s another of a long line of death scene that leaves me wondering why anyone would work for SPECTRE? It must one hell of a benefits package that comes with the position.

004. Garrotte Watch (From Russia With Love) Simple and deadly. Never was timekeeping such a hazardous pastime for anyone in the vicinity of this nefarious timepiece. I think in the whole of the Bond films I never feared as much for 007 as when that watch is used on him.

005. The Aston Martin DB5 (Goldfinger) I can’t drive but if someone promised me a car with extras that included an ejector seat, spinning hubcap razors and headlights that double as missiles I reckon it would be worth giving it another go.

Ah, there is nothing in the world that cannot be made better with an ejector seat.

006. Wrist dart gun (Moonraker) I know, I know. It’s a one trick gadget. I mean all it does is fire darts but load that bad boy up with sleeps darts and morning office meetings listening to your boss drone on will take on a whole new lease of life.

“And today’s agenda is....”

Three hours later he/she wakes up back in their office with no memory of what happened while you and a work mates toast your ingenuity with your beverage of choice.

“Mine’s a double whiskey barkeep.”

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Geek Syndicate 007 - Walther PPK Not so much a gadget but certainly one of Bond’s biggest lifesaving tools. I always like the fact that when Bond is given the weapon In Dr. No that he kinda turns his nose up at it even when he is told how bad ass it is.

In today’s action movies where the hero always seems to be carrying a handgun bigger than his head. The PPK stands proud as a testament that bigger does not always mean better.

Bond Soundtracks Now we have left the world of gadgets behind, let’s plug in our headphones and listen to my top seven pieces of Bond music.

001. GoldFinger (Goldfinger) An iconic theme that sets the standard for the Bond themes and their performers for decades to come.

Although most of the Bond films use elements of the title theme, Goldfinger was a masterclass in how to do it effortlessly.

002. Diamonds Are Forever (Diamonds Are Forever) Even though Connery is starting to show his age a little here, Bassey’s haunting theme still has more than enough life to carry the old British bulldog through.

003. 007 - (Thunderball) When I refer to Bond having an “anthem” people will think of that iconic opening theme that plays while Bond walks onto the screen being watched through the barrel of gun. However it is this balls to the wall theme that I think of as Bond’s signature tune. His “saving the world again” theme. It is used several times in Bond’s career but no more so than in Connery’s tenure. Look out for it in the underwater fight in Thunderball, the speedboat chase in Moonraker (yes I know that’s Moore), the climax scene in Diamonds are Forever and elsewhere.

004. Fight at Kobe Dock (You Only Live Twice) This is the piece of music that plays in one of my “Bond moments”. I won’t say too much about the scene itself as I will talk about it later. What I will say, is this is one of the best pieces of music accompanying an action sequence that these ears have heard. Not only does it use elements of the main theme but fits the scene so well it gets me every single time I hear it. The only other piece of music which gets me like that is Sky Chase in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

005. Bond Averts World War Three (You Only Live Twice) Ominous and thematic is how I would describe this bombastic track. The stakes are never higher for Bond and this piece of music highlights that for. It is able to balance the action of Bond’s fight with Blofield’s towering bodyguard with the vastness of the outer space sequence it intercuts with. No small feat but John Barry once again comes up with the goods.

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Geek Syndicate 006. Skyfall (Skyfall) For me this is one of the best bond themes to come out of the recent films and it stands right up there with some of the classics. I love the way the lyrics pretty much hand you the plot on the plate. Also, if you’re either not a fan of Adele or her lyrics then track down the instrumental version and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Somewhere Shirley Bassey and John Barry are giving this a standing ovation. Madonna and Alica Keys take note.

007. On her Majesty’s Secret Service (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) I still think, however, that OHMSS is a great and underrated Bond flick (don’t hate me) and given a little more time, Lazenby could have grown into a very different Bond. Anyway this title track is sublime and shows why every Bond soundtrack nicks from the master that is John Barry. I have loved David Arnold and others’ work on the Bond soundtracks over the years but none have come close touching John Barry at his best, which is here. The first moment those trumpets kick in at the beginning you know that two and a half minutes of musical heaven awaits you.

Bond Moments Finally we are on to my 007 Bond moments. These are those scenes that I have to re-watch again and again. If I catch a glimpse of Bond on the telly and know one of these moments are nearby I have to take a seat and wait for the fireworks.

So charge your martini sit back and enjoy...

001. ‘Welcome to hell Blofield ‘ (Diamonds are Forever) Looks a little cheesy now, but there’s a special place in my heart for this sequence. Although it’s not stated explicitly, the scene seems to pick up after the death of Bond’s wife, Tracy, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. We find Bond on the hunt for Blofield to exact revenge on old baldy. The fact that you don’t see Bond in the first two scenes but only hear his voice, see his hands and for one poor fellow feel his boot adds to the build up. Personally would have loved this scene to have been connected a little more explicitly to Tracy’s death (it’s never mentioned in the film) but such is life.

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Geek Syndicate 002. “Your plan is inspired” (Goldfinger) I know when people think of Goldfinger they think of that laser scene. It is a great scene but for me there’s a little scene afterwards that I always return to. You have Bond and Goldfinger sharing a civilised drink while they discuss the pros and cons of Goldfinger’s plan to rob Fort Knox. It is a slick little scene between enemies sharing a respectful reprise from lasers and steel tipped Bowler hats. Yes Bond wants to get information out of Goldfinger but the more he hears about the plan the more impressed he becomes.

003. Bond VS Red Grant (From Russia With Love) I think Red Grant was a brilliant adversary for Bond who matched him both in cunning and physicality.

The way Grant was set up in the opening scene killing a Bond double as part of his training is spot on. It has you waiting for him to go up against the real deal. The anticipation is rewarded with a brutal train fight in which we don’t gets lots of fancy martial arts - just two big blokes giving each other a kicking.

After Grant the villains became more outlandish and larger than life, which is another reason this character is a particular fearsome fella.

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Geek Syndicate 4. Bond vs Rooftop thugs (You Only Live Twice) In this scene we have Bond pursed over a rooftop by thugs while he’s investigating some dodgy goings on at the docks. Not only does Bond take on most of them in hand to hand combat but the scene ends with Bond diving off the roof to escape. What makes this scene so memorable for me is the great aerial tracking shot that shows bond taking on the bad guys and John Barry’s perfect scoring of the scene.

005. Ski Chase (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) Like “Bond Vs the Roof Top Thugs”, this is another perfect blend of music (god bless you John Barry) and action (Bond on one bloody ski!). There has been a lot of snow based action sequences but this one is my fave by far.

Oh and all machine gun sound effects need to sound like the ones in this scene.

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Geek Syndicate 006. Tennyson (Skyfall) The set up for this scene is perfect. In the first half of Skyfall we see a Bond who is past his sell by date and at the end of his career. He’s tired, beaten and jaded. In this scene, he is running to M’s rescue as she recites a poem to an oversight committee who want her head. It’s a pivotal scene for the film and for Bond who shows us that there’s still life in 007 yet.

007. “You’ve had your six” (Dr. No) In contrast to a jaded and tired Bond. My 007 moment shows us a Bond at the height of his prowess. He’s cool, charming, intelligent and utterly ruthless. If I had to show one scene to a Bond newbie that gives you an introduction to just who James Bond is it would be this scene. Aside from the gadgets, the girls, the fancy locations this scene reminds just who James Bond really is - a killer in a Savile Row suit.

Barry Nugent

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Geek Syndicate

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Geek Syndicate Jack Kirby’s Fourth World -A Retrospective

Jack Kirby is a comic book legend. He was the co-creator of the majority of the Marvel universe with Stan Lee in the 1960s.

At the end of the decade, Kirby wanted to move on. He was ready to go it out alone and prove his true creative genius. Kirby jumped ship to DC Comics, where he created The Fourth World: a saga that would live to be important for the comic medium as a whole as well as other media.

other media. Before The Fourth World appeared on our comic shelves, there had never been such a thing as a crossover event, something that is now almost an annual occurrence in the comic world. Kirby was also ahead of his time in his storytelling in The Fourth World. Kirby was well ahead of the game; he saw his Fourth World as a book that would be collected together in trade form and would be more likely to be sold in bookshops than anywhere else. It is ironic that this was an oddity at best in the early seventies and yet now is common place.

Image © DC Comics, 1971

Kirby’s storytelling differed from his earlier work with Marvel. The Fourth World reads more like something akin to the recent television series from HBO than anything else.

As soon as you open The New Gods issue #1, you are thrown into a whole new world of ideas and characters. Kirby expects you to be able to come along for the ride and discover some of the secrets in this world as the book continues. It is not until we arrive at The New Gods issue #7 and the story “The Pact” (a true highlight of The Fourth World series) that we discover more about where these New Gods came from.

The ideas that Kirby presented are just remarkable. Some have never been touched on again and others it took decades for anyone else to even dare to try. In Forever People issue #4, we are introduced to Happy Land. Happy Land is a theme park into which the people of Apocalypse (the series antagonists) have taken The Forever People (the heroes of the series) hostage and made them apart of the park. If they do not perform their designated tasks there, then they will die. The only people in the theme park who can see the reality are children. This plot touches upon the ideas of reality and hyper reality put forward by post modernist Baudrillard. It is remarkable to think that such ideas would even be considered for a comic plot in the nineteen seventies, let alone that they be portrayed so beautifully.

The Fourth World has had an impact on so many things in the comic world as well as

The first issue in Kirby’s Fourth World epic ... published March, 1971

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Geek Syndicate battle between Orion and Darkseid seems to have reached tipping point: a major (if not their final) battle was on the horizon.

Unfortunately, DC decided to cancel many of The Fourth World titles - including The New Gods.

After the cull, the only book left was Mister Miracle.

to heat up. Because of this it is my opinion that even if Mister Miracle was outperforming The New Gods, DC should have taken a chance and kept The New Gods instead. It is not that the next few issues of Mister Miracle aren’t good but it does feel that Kirby lost a lot of enthusiasm for the

Image © DC Comics, 1971

The Fourth World brought us the first crossover epic with a dense style of storytelling that might not have been seen before. Kirby did not just bring us the first crossover event; he also created the entire universe that these characters would inhabit. They were always a part of the rest of the DC universe (DCU) but at the same time, the only characters to ever really appear in this saga from the rest of the DCU were Superman and Jimmy Olsen. It could be argued that this was more to do with the fact that Kirby was given Jimmy Olsen as a book to use by DC’s editors rather than Kirby’s fondness for or desire to include him. Although the next crossover event didn’t happen for around a decade, Kirby’s experiment was the start of something that has truly revolutionised comic books.

New Genesis - Home of the New Gods. A vast, fortress city hovering over a world populated by The Forever People

Another medium that The Fourth World seems to have had an influence on was film. George Lucas and Jack Kirby often met up and discussed ideas and Lucas was a comic reader. Amongst his influences were science fiction serials like Flash Gordon, and Kirby’s Fourth World. All of these influences led to the production of a small film you may have heard of: Star Wars. The impact of Star Wars was and still is huge, and Kirby’s Fourth world was a key component in its gestation.

Issue 11 of The New Gods is one that left the reader desperate to see what would happen next. The

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This to me is the biggest crime imaginable. It was the equivalent of cancelling Watchmen at issue 11, or deciding that Blackest Night was not doing so well and therefore they would cancel the main book of the event Blackest Night but keep Blackest Night: Flash in publication. Although Mister Miracle was a great book, the crux of this epic is The New Gods. The Forever People, Mister Miracle and Jimmy Olsen all had themes of The Fourth World running through it but it was The New Gods where the main arc was going on; where the battle between Orion and Darkseid really started

book. A key problem was actually Kirby’s masterful storytelling.

The New Gods issue 11 was so good that readers were left feeling lost and with no resolution to the main story of The Fourth World.

This must have been horrific in the seventies when this occurred because it was bad enough for me to have to read through the rest of the book, desperate to know what was going to happen next, with the knowledge that Kirby finally had the chance to write a finale.

Kirby was finally allowed to continue The New Gods arc with two final graphic novels: Even Gods

Image Š DC Comics, 1971

Geek Syndicate series would be killed off.

It is a bittersweet, yet still a highly enjoyable finish to a fantastic epic that led to so many changes to the comic medium and the main stream without them even realising it.

Luke Halsall

The origins of the New Gods, from Issue 7 of The New Gods

Must Die and The Hunger Dogs.

Both are really enjoyable stories. However they do not feel like the continuation on from The New Gods 11 that I had hoped for. Instead they feel like a snap shot into this universe. Further, a lot had changed for Kirby in the time it took him to finally pen the end to his epic. He had often stated that the finale would see the end of Orion and Darkseid but at the same time his finale was always in a state of flux. One thing that helped to add to this state of flux was the time it took for Even

Gods Must Die to be produced.

The final issue of Mister Miracle was released in March 1973, the final issue of The New Gods was November 1972. Even Gods Must Die was published in November 1985, thirteen years since the last issue of The New Gods. Kirby had changed and consequently his story had changed with it. Also DC had just released Orion, Darkseid and their cohorts as toys.

Now that they were a success with the kids, DC were less keen with the possibility that the two most intergral characters in the

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Geek Syndicate IT CAME! Writer and Artist, Dan Boultwood Image Š Titan Comics, 2013

INTERVIEW

In August, Titan Comics unleashed IT CAME! onto the world. The comic is a four part mini-series created by talented artist, Dan Boultwood. Probably best known for his work on numerous projects with writer Tony Lee (Hope Falls, The Gloom), Dan has put both quill and brush to paper to write, produce and direct this B-Movie that never was.

IT CAME! Is a fun, tongue in cheek romp that beautifully sums up the values of the era it is set and respectfully parodies the genre it sits in.

Recently, Christophe Montoya caught up with Dan to find out more about the project that is being treated as much more than just a mini-series by its publisher ...

GS: It Came is not an original idea but it is a fun and cherished one so how did Dan come up with the idea?

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Geek Syndicate DB: When I came up with it I was trying to do this other thing called Bambridge Scott and the Sartorial Malady. It was basically The 39 Steps but it was two drunk blokes running around in the 1930s trying to find the King’s tweed because whoever wears this tweed will be the King of England. I started this idea about six times and I kept drawing I think it was the first four pages in varying styles as the years had gone on because it just changed every time, because by the time I got round to doing it I thought “I’m going to have to start again and I can make it better”. I got about eight pages into it and I just went “this is crap! I’ve wasted all this time; it’s just not workable as an idea”.

There’s this thing that you should only write about what you know, but this would of actually literally only been interesting to myself, and hardly anyone else and I was like well that’s not very good so I kind of chucked it away and I was sitting there thinking “well I really want to do something, I really want to write something” and I think it was because at the time all I really knew was the 1930s and being drunk. I was kinda doodling something and my girlfriend has like a 1950s sort of dress, and there was that whole thing of write what you know.

I know B movies, I love them.

They’re my favourite genre of film; I think they deserve their own genre? Although I don’t think they’re really posh enough to have a genre?

GS: Last year Geek Syndicate had a running feature which was the Godfathers of Sci-Fi, about the movies that defined an era and created a genre, they inspired so many people. Dan was also a fan of this type of movies.

DB: I found a load on YouTube. I

watched The Forgotten Land and was like “I want to do this! I want to do B-movies”. I only found this out afterwards, but Mars Attacks is still going as a comic but I didn’t want to do Mars Attacks because, I like it, and I’m talking about the film, but even though it’s old by standards now, and even something that’s only two years old is old, it’s not a B Movie, it’s too flashy and there’s too many effects. It tries to look real almost. The mistake is that modern things are made to look too real when you want that suspension of disbelief. B-movies are theatre.

GS: It’s as if you know that the actors know they’re in a movie, and they want you to know that this is a movie, whereas modern movies are no, this is real. We’re making this as real as possible.

DB: They try and make it so that you don’t have to think. I don’t mean all films; I want to avoid sweeping generalisations. That’s obviously a rocky road to go down, but I think a lot of SciFI films are now; well you don’t have to think. You’re kind of assaulted by these kind of rich, lavish backgrounds. I don’t want to use Star Wars as a reference but it is a prime example of this shoving so much in there that you’re just overloaded. It just overloads the senses.

GS: You’re right because in those old 50s black and white movies, a lot of it is the clever use of how the directors would use what they had at hand and you had to think ok, that’s what’s happening and they made you think about it rather than bringing it all on screen DB: Well it’s like that thing, King of the Rocketmen. You’d never imagine that basically a man with a bucket on his head would be fan-

tastic...but he is! It’s great! It’s that thing of, and I’m thinking of The Rocketeer now because I love that film GS: That’s one of my favourite movies! It’s a classic.

DB: But it’s that thing of, and I’m not going to use The Rocketeer as an example to compare it because it’s different, but there’s that thing of there’s something utterly endearing about a man being lifted up on a bit of string with a firework coming out of his arse, and you’re like, that’s a man with a rocket pack! Because it just is and you have to just believe it which is why it’s like theatre. It’s nice. It’s endearing. Um what was the question?

GS: So how long have you been working on this idea?

DB: It’s been going a year now.

I did the first fourteen pages because I’d always worked on the basis that two pages is a pitch document, and I sort of went “oh you know what? I’ll do fourteen”, almost an entire issue, which is something I’ve kept up since, doing an entire episode of it because I think that’s nice to be able to look through the whole thing.

You should be able to get a good idea of where something’s going with that. When I’d got that done I put it together in a PDF, which is something I’d never done before either. Since then they picked it up and that was in October 2012 and I’d been working on it since May 2012 on and off, doing bits here and there, and then I got it through to Titan. I wanted to do a book that wasn’t rushed, I wanted to give something the attention I think it deserves. Taking some time out to work on the way I draw.

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Even in the first issue, the first fourteen pages are actually slightly different to the last six or so pages, because it changed in the interim period between pitching it and getting it started. I discovered human beings actually have cheekbones, and you know when they talk? Their chins move! They don’t just have the same shaped face no matter what’s going on with their mouths and things! I used to have a very angular style I think, and it’s softened into actually looking like human beings now which is quite nice. Oh and I tried to do hands better as well!

GS: It’s been described as you’re directing, It Came. Which is pretty much you doing all of this. This is a big solo project for you. Why do all of it?

DB: Why? Do you know what?

Because I can! Originally I was going to Kickstart this. I like the idea of doing everything yourself, it’s nice. I’ll be honest, I still like getting a script off other people to draw, it’s nice not to have to think about that bit so much with the actual writing, but I wanted to do something that was just me so if it’s good or bad, the onus is on me. Which is slightly worrying.

GS: A bit more pressure doing it that way!

DB: Just a bit, yeah! The thing is, I’d sit down and do an issue of it and once the ball gets rolling, and the momentum starts up on an issue, I’m kinda fine. But there’s that bit when you’re sitting there thinking “I’ve got to think up twenty two pages of funny! Am I funny? Is this funny?”. There’s that second guessing stuff with jokes.

GS: Yeah I could see that from issue 66

one. There’s some very British humour in there DB: That was the point. Originally it was going to be called It Came; A Very British B-Movie, but then I didn’t want to stick that on it because it should be obvious that it is really from just reading it for two seconds. I saw someone putting “its name is so suggestive. It’s subtly suggestive” and it’s not really because originally it was going to be called It Came; From Space, Not in a Sock! or It Came; From Space (Not Like That You Dirty Bugger!), it was that get your mind out of the gutter sort of thing.

I was very aware that They Came didn’t sound very good, and I thought “I don’t really want to draw loads of robots; it’s going to take ages!”. So I decided to shave it down a bit. It’s also because It Came from another world and that sort of thing so it kinda works and I’ve seen another load of films called It Came from Dunstable, or whatever, so I thought I’d just call it It Came.

The name took a while and then so did designing the characters.

I wanted them to be right, although I had one of the worst reviews I’ve ever had recently from someone at IGN but it’s actually my favourite review I’ve had for it! I tried to address some of the stuff she’d said because I thought, well you know, maybe she’s right on a couple of these points. It would have been nice

Image © Titan Comics, 2013

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to hear something slightly positive, but you know. It’s the thing with writing comedy as well.

Comedy is subjective.

GS: It’s comedy for its time as well.

There’s lots of stuff when you see certain things that are said in the dialogue, and its dialogue that you wouldn’t really get away with now, but its dialogue that fits for that era DB: A few people have said this.

They’ve said that it’s a satire. It’s not a satire because I’m not trying to say “Oh look at the stupid people in the 50s, they were so backwards with their ideals and stuff”, I mean they were, I’m not going to quibble about that at all, but it’s more he’s just a man in the 50s, that’s just what they were. It’s a self aware kind of book. The only kind of humour I can do is my sort of humour. I have a very self aware sense of humour; I know when I’ve gone over the line basically. There is a

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GS: So there are a couple of Easter eggs there

Image © Titan Comics, 2013

lot of me in this book. I was wor- made them quite strong they would ried about the misogyny slight- stand up to the men which was a ly; people don’t like that sort of weird thing. It was kind of a paradox thing, which is completely cor- in a way; hang on they are strong but rect. It’s equality for all. So I was they’re not allowed to be strong. If worried slightly but there’s a pay you could say two movies then that off at the end, but you have to influenced It Came? get all the way to the end of issue four so if you can sit through this DB: One of them would be Iron rampant knob, I don’t know how Giant. The Iron Giant itself was an to describe him, he’s not really a absolutely fantastic film but that satire he’s just a bit of a prick, but film he’s watching? I want to see that’s what they were like in these that film! films. Even if this wasn’t the prevalent attitude in life, in these films that’s what men were like.

In The Forgotten Land there’s this brilliant bit with the woman in it and they’re like “are you going to be alright in that ship with all those men?” and she goes “I like men!” and you’re like, she’s a floozy!

She’s meant to be all white picket fence, girl next door and she’s a floozy. Every now and again they’d throw in a woman Dan signing at the IT CAME! launch event character. It’s kind of odd because they try and make it that she’s this strong confident fe- GS: With the brain crawling across male character but then at some the thing on the floor? point she’s going to get hit on the DB: The guy puts his hand on head and faint or have to be reshis chin and goes “hmmm”. I cued sat there and watched it and I thought “I wanna do that”. Not GS: It’s quite interesting because exactly the same which is why I you say it’s definitely an homage wanted to set it in Britain to all those fifties movies, which is great and we’ve spoken about two key GS: You can imagine It Came being movies that influenced it, but back on the TV and a young lad watching it then there were these stereotypes but although there were stereotypes DB: So another one? There are of the women, they were still strong loads. There are parts of so many women, they made them strong, but and lots of references in it. Inthey also put them into that box of credibly obscure references. Did how a woman should be in the fifties, you spot any when you were they need to get rescued but they still looking through it at all? They’re

not necessarily B-Movie references either; they’re just very British things. I’ll give you two of them. There’s the pub at beginning which is the pub from Last of the Summer Wine. In fact that entire village is from Last of the Summer Wine. And the bit at the end with the old ladies when they’re talking? That’s the transcribed ending of Chas and Dave’s Rabbit. It’s so obscure, maybe too obscure, but that’s what I like

DB: There’s a lot I had to stick in because it makes you feel nice when you spot a reference, and you think “oh yes I know my shit!”

I’d say The Forgotten Land but that’s for my next one because I think I watched that and went “I want to do another one” because originally on the cover it had It Came from the studio that brought you Lost Valley of the Lost which was meant to pre-date it

film wise. I think there’s a lot of Earth Versus the Flying Saucers in it in that it starts with the main characters driving along...

GS: Right down that highway, talking DB: And there’s no explanation as to why because there doesn’t have to be. When I originally pitched it they wanted more out of it and I went “I don’t want this to be long” because B-Movies are an hour, an hour and ten tops.

They’re not long; they’re not like a Kevin Costner biopic are they?

They’re the kind of film you can watch without needing to go to 67

Geek Syndicate the toilet which is nice! Not like now where it’s half an hour before the film finishes in the cinema and you’re busting and it’s ruining the film for you, like Lord of the Rings. I missed the end attack in the Tower of Doom or whatever it was because I needed to go to the toilet!

GS: As you mention, a couple of Easter eggs there; Last of the Summer Wine and Chas and Dave, two very British things and the comic is set in England. Most of these B movies are set in America so why set it in Britain?

Image © Titan Comics, 2013

DB: All I know of fifties America is B-movies, and the sort of infomercials and things like Reefer Madness. There are some really good ones I found online which I was watching the other day and they’re hilarious. There’s one about how to go on dates and stuff, “Rules for Dating”.

They’re just so awkward and my god, if you went on dates like this you’d never get laid again!

They’re absolutely atrocious. I would really like to do a kind of Surf Nazis Must Die-esque book at some point because I do like that whole thing. Someone said “oh you’re trying to be a rockabilly

IT CAME! Cakes - An early licencing deal?

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now you’ve done this” and I went “no, I’m a teddy boy” because I’m not a rockabilly, not that I’m a teddy boy, but if I was going to be one or the other I’d be the British one because that’s what I know. It’s that thing of “I know this era in British history pretty well”. If I could, I’d only ever do period work. First World War era to the 50s, all that time is fantastic, I love it. But the 50s I’ve got a particularly soft spot for just because for a world carrying on in the threat of nuclear annihilation it was really positive and hopeful.

There was a lot of bad stuff and I don’t romanticise the past, there was a lot of bad stuff, but I think kind of there was a hopeful attitude, the way of the future and that sort of thing and it was endearing in a way.

GS: Very much the whole sort of, and I’m side stepping at the moment but, Captain America and Iron Man. You’ve got the Howard Stark thing.

This is the future and the way of the future technology. We’re stepping into a new generation of technology DB: Whereas, and I’m one to talk about looking back, it’s all I ever do, the way they envisioned the future...this is before they’d even got a man on the moon. Some of the stuff in the B-movies, as much as they might laugh at them were pretty accurate with what they thought GS: They did a good job. So talking about being accurate and the Bmoves, the robot itself; very simplistic but a very scary design. How did that design come about? Was it the first one?

DB: No I did a few. Originally it wasn’t meant to be eight feet tall, but one of the jokes wouldn’t work so luckily I hadn’t really done the robot yet, and I thought I can make it quite big. It’s actu-

ally worked out that the big robot works. I toyed with a Robby the Robot-esque design for it, quite blocky like a man with a bucket on his head sort of design. I even tried the one design from possibly one of the worst films ever made. What was the name of it?

The robot in it is called Ro-man.

It’s basically a guy in a gorilla suit with a round fish bowl on his head, and there’s seven people left alive in the world because they’ve annihilated everyone.

GS: I’ve never seen that!

DB: It’s absolutely awful! There’s a bit in it where he’s caught the child and he’s standing at the bottom of a tree and the kid is up on a hill, literally five feet away and he goes “I’m going to get you!” and the kid goes “You’ll never get through the secret electricity field we made...whoops” and he goes “Haha now I’ve got you!”. I’ll find out what it’s called, I can’t remember which is really annoying because it’s brilliant.

It’s not quite as bad as Plan Nine from Outer Space, but its well within that area of just utter cack! To top it all off, it’s all just a dream.

The kids fallen over in a cave and it was all just a dream. There are two films which have a guy in an ape suit and a fish bowl helmet, one is very good and the other is very bad.

Why did I even mention that?

The robot design! So yeah, I had thought about that but it took a little time to get the robot design.

When the saucer appears, in the book it’s a model, I made models so it had the fifties special effects and there is a string. I’ve put a string in there on the ship, but really I would liked to of made a model of the robot but for the amount the robot needs to do it was just wasn’t appropriate. It

Geek Syndicate just wouldn’t have worked because it had to do so much stuff and interact. Originally I would have liked to have made the robot. It would have been great.

For the next one, if it happens, Lost Valley of the Lost with the dinosaur valley there will be made dinosaurs, even to the point that I want to take photographs of lizards and Photoshop the fins and the horns on and stuff to make it look like the proper sort of thing GS: Fantastic! So we’ve talked about the robot, tell us about the key characters in the series DB: Well the key characters...

Doctor Boybrett. Well it’s awful and she’ll hate me for saying this and I haven’t actually said this to her yet, but Doris Knight who’s supposed to be a play on Doris Day, Knight and Day, did you see what I did there?!

GS: Yes, very clever DB: I wouldn’t go that far! Originally she was going to be like the one from The Forgotten Lands in that she was going to have kind of a tied up shirt in a cropped top kind of thing and was going to be blonde and all this kind of stuff and then my girlfriend wore this dress and I was like “Wait! You’re this character!” which on a level she’s very happy that she’ll be immortalised in a comic, yet she doesn’t actually act like her in the comic. I think she’s probably “well cheers for that!” because the character; Boybrett? I’ve basically plundered her life for inspiration.

Boybrett is her granddad’s name but it’s not actually Boy its Boyd, Boyce sorry, but this is why I call him Boybrett, because when he was a kid all the teachers would go “come here boy! Boybrett!” and he thought his name was Boy, so

he wrote Boy on all his exercise books, and I thought that is such a good name! But then you think about it and I’ve put her and her granddad into this weird pseudorelationship romance thing, not there is a huge romance thing, but there’s an underlying sort of, well not a will they won’t they kind of thing but that’s just what happens in those kind of films. I haven’t told her that but I’m sure she’s figured it out. I haven’t actually shown her the first issue because I’m worried she’ll just go “WHAT?!” and it’ll be too late because it’s gone into print!

The man of the fifties knew everything. You didn’t argue with a man of the fifties, they just had knowledge about everything even if it was flawed or completely useless. It was more the confidence and bravado in dispensing that knowledge. All stars revolve around the Earth and that sort of stuff. That kind of ignorance is bliss thing. That, “well I know what I’m doing because it’s the fifties and science is advanced to the point where it can go no further”, and that was what he was meant to be.

I didn’t want to make him a sort of toff-esque character, some upper middle class yobbo, and transferring that into a British setting because the closest we have to that is Quatermass, which is fantastic and there was actually a point when I was first coming up with the idea that it was just Quatermass and that’s why it veered away from it, because it was just Quatermass and the Pit basically which is fantastic, but it’s a B-movie, but it’s meant to be a British take on that. I don’t want to say things like Hot Fuzz because I don’t think it’s quite like that but it’s that thing of Britishising

GS: That’s a new word!

DB: I write now, I can make up words! Anglophiling? Anglosaxing? That sounds like something you’d read in the Sun! But it’s having those kinds of characteristics. I just wanted him to be this, someone saying misogynistic, it’s more he’s a bit of a prick but he doesn’t mean to be GS: It’s sort of how they were then, it was the norm DB: He has testicles and he’s proud of them. Someone said, he’s a man’s man, but I don’t think he really is a man’s man; he hasn’t punched anyone in this book and he won’t because barely anyone even shoots a gun in it. What I was aiming for with him was “loveable prick”, which is what I hoped people viewed myself as. That whole Gentleman Bastard. For years that what I always said I wanted, that tightrope of walking the line between gentleman bastard, which way will you fall? It was generally bastard unfortunately but every now and again it was gentleman I suppose.

There was a bit at the beginning where he says “that collar looks good on you Doris” and she goes “hehehe” and I thought that’s nice but I didn’t want that to be because no one could fall for someone saying shit like that all the time, even in the nineteen fifties women wouldn’t like being called basically subservient all the time, that’s just ridiculous.

There’s a thing from the start and all up until the end with his comments, her reactions to them are going to get more annoyed, I want the annoyance. She’s still kind of giving him a chance, but really, kind of getting annoyed by it. She’s kind of with this guy, they’re not together or anything

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Image © Titan Comics, 2013

Geek Syndicate isn’t out yet. It sounds awful but they’re not supposed to be deep characters. They’re meant to be people that are there, doing that, right now and they’re just in this situation. We don’t need to know their back stories. We don’t need to know their desires or lusts or fears. There’s no need for it because in a B-movie they didn’t do that. Every now and again they might go “back, during the war”, but half the time you’re lucky to get an explanation of how they even know each other.

They’re just there. Writing at the beginning and trying to figure it out and it was like I said about the thing with Quatermass, mind control aliens and it was getting far too much like, well how do they know each other? How does this fit? The bizarre thing is that generally when you’re writing a story this is all stuff that you have to figure out, but I had to not figure this out because it’s for a B-movie; it’s unimportant.

I don’t mean that to sound like it was lazy because it wasn’t, it still was tricky to write, but because of that like the thing when you meet the Colonel bloke, I’ve got to say they know each other a bit GS: I think he says “I haven’t heard from you in a year”?

One of the promotional materials for the It Came! film. I mean Comic. ...

but, originally her Dad was going to be in it and he knew him from years back and it was all complicated and an over complicated Bmovie? You don’t want to do it.

It’s a simple story. One person said “it’s a series of things that happen so that things in B-movies can happen” and that’s exactly what it is.

The concept is that it is a B-movie. That is it. There’s no message. You could sort of say with the misogyny aspect of it that there is a message by the end of it but it’s not really a message, it’s more like a culmination I suppose. I’m not going to say too much because it obviously

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DB: Yeah at the space conference, and that’s so you can get the word “space” in front of things, like “Space scientist”. It’s kind of weird because all I keep thinking about now is that bad review and “these are such unlikeable characters”. I don’t think they’re unlikeable. It’s difficult. They each have their own character but there’s a lot of me in this book, a lot of my humour, basically because I’m the one writing it but it is very, what I would find funny, and the things they say are the things that I would find funny if

Geek Syndicate people said them. They’re both almost just aspects of me, which is even more disturbing!

So what I’ve done is taken aspects of myself and turned them into my girlfriend and her granddad and make them have some pseudo-relationship. Yeah, I’m going to be seeing a therapist for years after this! That’s probably not the answer I would have chosen to go for, but it’s probably the most accurate one!

GS: Talking of the sort of humour and stuff, one of the things that I thought was quite cool when I was reading issue one were the adverts. So how did they come about? Just to explain to the readers if they haven’t seen it yet, these are adverts that have literally been taken from the 50s and slapped in the middle of a comic DB: That’s because I always like that whole *starts singing* “let’s all go to the lobby and get ourselves a treat”, that sort of thing.

I wanted there to be intermissions in it, toilet breaks I guess you might say. It’s meant to be not fully immersive, but it’s meant to be a forgotten film studio, they are films, they’re not a literal translation of a film to a comic. There’s a lot of things where people sort of go when I was at college and they called panels frames and that stuff like that and they’d frame your shot, moving the angle of the panel and that sort of thing but then I thought it’s actually quite tricky sometimes because I’ve got to fit it into quite a narrow panel and how can I make these narrow panels look interesting but I wanted to have that film kind of feel.

It is a film and they used to have those things where they’d show films back to back but there were

adverts in and you could just walk in in the middle and just sit there until it got around to the end and you’d just sit there until it got back around and be like “oh well that’s what happened in the beginning”. I wanted it to have that feel and each issue has the adverts in. I don’t know what you got in the preview. Did you get the extra bits that are at the end of it?

GS: No it was literally just the two adverts and that was it DB: Because at the end of the first one there’s a pin up for another film by this studio called My Reptilian Bride, which isn’t going to be a book but I just wanted to do movie posters. There’s that one and there’s going to be one for The Rocket in Space for issue two. There are other extras in it too. Dick Claymore who is Boybrett and Fanny Flanders...it was only afterwards that I went “oh god, I’ve called them Dick and Fanny!” but it was too late and I didn’t even notice. Dick Claymore is meant to be like a pork sword obviously and Fanny Flanders is a mixture of Fanny Hill; Memoires of a Woman of Pleasure and Moll Flanders, but it’s their mock IMDB pages, although obviously not IMDB for legal reasons, but it’s meant to be that they are actors and if there are more of these; and I hope I get to do the next one because I really want to do Valley of the Lost Dinosaurs, I love dinosaurs, but they’ll be in it but they won’t be the same as they are in this book. They’ll be slightly different as they’ll be playing different characters obviously, in a film GS: So the same actors but doing different characters DB: Yeah and that’s sort of thing but still kind of the same be-

cause the acting was only varied so much. King Kong, and this isn’t even about the adverts, my favourite blossoming relationship in any film, is in the one in the 1930s King Kong because I don’t understand how they got together; the woman and a guy on a ship because he’s basically “girls are crap, you’re crap, why are you on this boat? Oh actually I quite like you now!” and she’s fine with that and it’s all good at the end and its like this guy is an arsehole, he’s just filled with hate, but they get together.

And that’s kind of what I was aiming for, that whole “I don’t understand. How could this possibly happen?” It’s like this guy has never met a woman before.

He’s like “you’ve got this two bits up here that I don’t quite understand. Where’s your penis?”

But yeah the adverts. I just wanted to put those interesting breaks in it to give it that feeling that it is the 50s. It’s like the cigarettes and liquid hair “If it’s burning, it’s working” GS: You’ve mentioned in the past that originally you looked at this as a one off graphic novel as opposed to a number of issues, and I’m sure Titan will release this; it’s too good an opportunity to not release this...

DB: Oh it’s going to come out as a book. Because they wanted it to be thirty-two pages initially and originally it was meant to be about sixty-six pages or so, and that’s sixty-six not including extras. They wanted it to be four thirty-two page issues, and I went “but it’s not that long” and I hadn’t written anything in ten years. Really? Issue three, which is the issue that came from nowhere, I think is actually my favourite so far because I’ve tried to take what reviews had said a bit and not temper it, but it’s that

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Geek Syndicate sort of thing, but I’m still learning. I’m writing and it’s not the bit I’m used to doing, but I’m really enjoying it and I’ve always come up with things but I’ve never had the opportunity to get it out there. It’s like I’m having to learn in front of people. In the first issue I was trying to cram so many jokes in, and it eases off on the jokes but it’s still funny.

GS: So you’ve got the adverts and stuff. When I finished reading that first issue I thought when this comes out I’m gonna buy it because I can see Titan are going to do a really nice job of this, you’re going to put the extras in. If this was Marvel they’d do one page with the robot and the specifications like “these are the metal claws”...

DB: I’ve done that in issue two!

An eagle cutaway GS: I’m so glad you’ve done that. I really want to see that!

DB: I don’t have it on my phone. I apologise, because I would have shown you but it is an eagle cutaway. Issue three which I’ve just finished apart from the extras is going to be another movie poster. In issue one The Reptilian Bride is a double page spread so you can take it out and put it up. It’s a proper pinup. The third one is going to have a Haynes manual-esque Flying Saucer poster. I just wanted detail basically GS: So we’re going to get some nice extras in each issue, but also in the whole graphic novel, the whole collection put together

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DB: For the graphic novel the plan is, on the assumption that it does well enough that they want to do another book, is to do a ten page, you know like in the 50s, the sort of trailers for upcoming films were so long that there were like ten pages for Family of the Lost that they did a little film with Horror, Mystique, Dinosaurs?

almost those little dress up doll things where you have a figure and you cut up the outfits, and I liked that but thought I could do better than that, so I figured out how to make the robot out of card and am having it as a picture with lots of little people running away from it so can make a diorama of the characters. That one’s not done yet, it’s tricky.

That one’s probably going to require pipe cleaners! Not enough in this world requires pipe cleaners anymore! So the graphic novel will have a new cover.

I’m looking forward to the graphic novel coming out because I’m looking forward

GS: They had a trailer for It Came.

Did you see that?

DB: Yeah I did, it was great. It’s funny because I used to be a flash animator years ago and now flash is the most redundant, acidic thing to anybody that uses a computer and it’s like what happened? So there’s hopefully

going to be ten pages of that so I’m going to have to make some dinosaurs...

GS: You’re going to be sat at home playing with these toy dinosaurs!

DB: People are saying Twenty Million Miles to Earth thing and a bit of Harryhausen. It’s even got a thick black line around it.

So there will be all the extras in there and I’ll thrown in some more as well as I wanted to do

to it just being done. It will be nice to have something that I’ve done, finished. Obviously I’ve finished things in the past, that sounds like I’ve never finished a book; because the first thing I ever wrote and had published was called Comicarda...it was awful! It was so bad.

I was only twenty one and I hadn’t got any pain and suffering in my life yet; I was twenty one. It was in a comic shop with these two guys and only the first issue ever came out. It was basically just Spaced, because it was when Spaced was out but it wasn’t meant to be Spaced. It was meant to be this whole thing where they go into Hell because the Devil turns up. They open a portal into hell by using Pop-uppirate, and then this guy called Father Downjoint, who was like Father Dowling, and a streetwise nun turned up and they went into Hell and the Devil was this big panda and it was going to be great...but that was the first thing, the only thing I’ve ever

Geek Syndicate Image © Titan Comics, 2013

written and drawn myself. So it’s been like, what? Twelve years. It’s been a long time, so it will be nice GS: You’re at a period in your career it seems like, where you’re really comfortable with what you’re doing. Is that a fair assumption?

DB: I wasn’t for a while but now? I think I just got older and just grew up at some point.

It’s a really clichéd thing, but I think I just needed to grow up. I hit my thirties and I like it. I think I like it more than when I was in my twenties. Pain and suffering? I’ve had some pain and suffering and it kind of tempers stuff. I feel more relaxed in life. I used to be very stressed about everything so now, even from the point of starting It Came, I’m not saying I changed it because of the reviews; it was just a natural progression.

It evolves as it goes on because I’m not the same person that I was when I started writing it. It’s so different now that it’s going to change. I still think it’s funny that thing of writing it where I don’t write a script; it’s like a vague outline and then I’d write the dialogue and letter it so that way it’s changed slightly. At the beginning I was trying to write the jokes and I’d sit there writing jokes and nothing was ever funny anymore because I’d written them a thousand times. It’s like the bit where he goes “I want to be as feminine as you”. That lost all meaning in my head. It’s like when you say sausages too many times; it’s like what is this? What does this even mean any more?

Issue Two will be out in September

GS: So on a final note then, what is your pitch to people who haven’t seen this before and you want them to pick up this book? How are you going to sell it to them?

DB: I always describe it as a 1950s comedy B-movie pastiche, because that’s what it is. When it was described as a satire and sat there and thought “it’s not a satire, it’s a pastiche or a parody.” It’s not satirical.

It’s sort of an Elstree Studios B-movie if they’d done one. That’s the best way to put it, with a little hint of Carry On, but good Carry On GS: So a B-movie with plenty of good British humour thrown in DB: Exactly, you should pitch for me. That’s much better! But, yeah, that’s how I’d describe it GS: Feel free to use that!

Christophe Montoya IT CAME! Issue one is published by Titan Comics and is available in all good comic retailers and digitally from Comixology. Issue Two will be published mid-September.

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Geek Syndicate Fast Travel In Video Games - Is it Worth it?

It’s a common trope in film and on television. The harassed parents driving their kids to some exciting destination, the little brats in the back seat enquiring every few minutes:

sive. Some gamers love it and feel that it helps them enjoy the game. Some aren’t so keen and believe that it cheapens the experience – removing an element of immersion.

“Are we there yet Dad? Are we there? Mum! Is this it?”

I will admit that it is something I haven’t thought about too deeply. I know of, and use fast travel systems, but I seem to do so on a game by game basis. As I looked into the topic, a more pressing issue emerged, and that was whether fast travel covers up the flaws in weak games. My instinct said that it sounded feasible, and this article is a reflection of my thought process as I looked into it more deeply.

Usually it culminates in the parents turning the radio up or serving the ultimatum, “Be quiet or we’ll turn around and go home!”

Fast, or Instant Travel mechanics have become a mainstay of Open World games (Games in which a large world or area is

Not all games implement fast travel in the same way. Some will offer some form of thematically appropriate travel, a horsedrawn carriage in a western game (Red Dead Redemption) or a train in a city based game (Grand Theft Auto IV). Others may just offer something more instant, such as a teleportation device or some magic spell that transports the player to their destination immediately. Both of these variations may have rules and limits, Image © Bethesda Softworks, 2011

In this instance, I think most sane people would be thankful for some kind of fast travel system, some way or means that transports you almost instantly from your home to your destination. However, when this idea is applied and inserted into video games, it can prove quite divi-

portrayed, and the player is given freedom to explore and tackle various challenges at their own pace and whim). The feature is designed to cut out some of the monotony of traipsing across said large area multiple times, reducing the downtime between exciting clash number one and furious chase number two.

Getting from A to B ... To fast travel or take the scenic route? That’s the question that divides gamers!

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Image © Rockstar Games, 2008

Geek Syndicate

“In-world” solution: Take the train in GTA IV ...

The issue seems to be whether fast travel is simply being offered as an option, a nod to the fact that sometimes gamers just want to get on with things or have limited time due to life constraints. Or whether it is being used to hide some of the shortcomings of the game world.

A game that seems to use fast travel in the spirit it is intended is Bethesda’s Skyrim, a large open world filled with incidental detail and lots of random encounters.

Skyrim offers the ability to fast travel from any outside location to one which you have previously discovered, as long as your character is not near enemies or carrying too much loot. You are met with a loading screen and when you find yourself back in the game world, time has passed reflecting the length of your journey. If it is afternoon when you

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leave, it would very probably be night when you arrive if you are travelling far enough. If this kind of travel isn’t for you, the game gives you horse-drawn carriages which will take you to the major cities for a sum of gold, even if you haven’t yet visited them. As far as Skyrim is concerned, I feel that its fast travel systems don’t hide flaws or the lie of a vibrant world. In my own opinion at least, Skyrim’s world is amazing to walk around and to explore, and if anything, using fast travel causes you to miss or lose out on some of the games best experiences. Seeing a dragon attacking a grizzly bear on the road ahead,

On the other hand, we have a game like Rockstar Games’ LA Noire. LA Noire sees you driving around 1940s Los Angeles as policeman Cole Phelps. You mostly find yourself driving from crime scene to crime scene, although there are a few emergency calls that come in over the police radio that you can hasten to or ignore. So far, so good, but the actual city, while lovingly styled and produced, was empty of any real interactivity. It was an open world with very little to do or to explore, so there was little point in straying from the main linear story. The game offered the fast travel option of having your partner drive you to your next location.

It was very tempting but I carried on driving myself, if only to enjoy the look of the period cars and to listen to the various radio stations. I would have much preferred the open world pretence to be gone and a longer linear story to be provided. This is an example of a game where fast travel is almost a nod to the fact that the game world was barren of things Image © Bethesda Softworks, 2011

depending on the game. Often, you cannot fast travel somewhere until you have visited there once via the old fashioned route of getting there yourself.

There may also be costs for your character; a fare for the cab ride or some kind of statistical penalty such as increased hunger or fatigue. (Fallout New Vegas in its “Hardcore” mode).

or finding some half buried shrine with a powerful relic hidden within.

... or a carriage ride in Skyrim

Geek Syndicate to do and after awhile, the player really feels little need to drive around and explore it any more than is necessary for the main plot of the game. If I had been a player who had used fast travel throughout, I would have been none the wiser about this lack of depth.

Two ends of the spectrum but both linked with a simple question. Would we need fast travel if games were designed more sensibly and actually warranted your time. Now even Skyrim, my positive example, is guilty of giving you countless quests that send you all over the realm and back again like some armour clad orienteer.

Even with the best will in the world, it can challenge your resolve to role-play your “Antimagic anti-horse” character.

When two thirds of a quest is retracing your own steps, it doesn’t matter how interesting the world might be, you are going to get a little bit bored and want to get to your destination quicker. Should game designers be filling the world with these kinds of quest just to stretch out your playtime and then help you to skip some of this by giving you a system that will bypass a chunk of it?

That comes across as more than a little self-defeating to me.

One element that might contribute to this mentality is the inclination of some gamers to judge a game by its length over some of its other qualities. While it’s sometimes valid when a game may only be three hours long but is still a full price release, this holds less water with something like Skyrim which offers tens of hours of enjoyment at the least.

The flip side to this argument is this: does the drudgery add to our enjoyment? Many of the oldest philosophies of the world acknowledge the power of opposites and their dependence on each other. Would the exciting parts of the game be as exciting and enjoyable if they weren’t sandwiched between two periods of nothing much happening? In real life, some people sadly only live for the weekend. Would they enjoy it as much if they didn’t have five days of (potentially) dull, mundane work or school to get through first? Maybe the art, when it comes to games, is in balancing the tempo of these peaks and troughs, their length and severity, and trying to get all of those to give the gamer a satisfying experience. I certainly find that if I use fast travel to remove the “troughs”, I end up tensely playing the game and doing things faster and faster. I cannot sustain this pace for very long before I feel burnt out on the game and indifferent to finishing it.

It is also hard to achieve this balance when there are so many different kinds of gamer. There are the hardcore speed runners who blitz through a game in a few sittings for achievement points and kudos, and then there are the role-players who might write fan fiction about their character’s adventures as they progress.

There will of course be countless others who fall somewhere betwixt the two. A game would find it hard to please all kinds of gamer, and maybe fast travel systems are included in an attempt to do this. Fast travel ends up making open world games appeal to more people, but maybe at the cost of the integrity of the

game, and ultimately might end up feeling mediocre to all and pleasing none.

As an aside, other media also embraces its own version of fast travel. Be it book or movie, unless it is portrayed as a “road trip” story, characters are forever miraculously arriving at their destination with sometimes no mention of how they got there. I know that a book or movie is less interactive than a game, but they don’t seem to suffer for glossing over some of the more mundane mechanics of how things got to be the way they are. Is it fair to expect games to be held to a higher standard?

It’s a tricky topic and one which I feel there is no real answer to, hence the number of my sentences trailing off in question marks.

You can wheel out the best and worst of games that illustrate the pros and cons of fast travel and still find yet another which is the exception to the rule. As technology advances, it seems we will get more and larger open world games, each with its own ideas about the best way to enjoy its vistas and dangers, so I am sure fast travel will be around for a long, long time. The only thing that I do believe, is that, regardless of a game using fast travel, if it is a good game, the quality will shine through. If it is a stinker, any potential smoke and mirrors about how full or fun its open world might be will be the least of its problems.

Casey Douglass

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Geek Syndicate GS Interviews Five Ghosts Creator, Frank Barbiere Image Š Image Comics, 2013

INTERVIEW

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Geek Syndicate Here’s a bit about comic writer Frank Barbiere from his own website: Originally from New Jersey, he is a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in English & Creative Writing, as well as a Master’s in English Education. Barbiere has published a number of titles independently via his Atlas Incognita brand and currently writes the critically acclaimed comic book Five Ghosts, published monthly by Image Comics. Other current projects currently include The White Suits and Blackout, both from Dark Horse Comics.

Geek Syndicate took the opportunity to chat to the writer about Five Ghosts …

GS: Tell us a bit about yourself, if you would.

FB: My name’s Frank and I write comics. I grew up in NJ, but currently live in Brooklyn, NY. I used to be an English teacher, which I’d like to believe informs my writing a bit, but these days I’m mainly writing comics and having a blast doing so. Some of my passions as a creator are story, why we tell stories, the craft of writing itself, and of course comics.

GS: What was it that initially got you interested in comics?

FB: For some reason comics always resonated with me. I was lucky enough to have a comic book shop in my town growing up, so I started reading monthly comics around the age of seven.

This got me very invested, and growing up I was a total Marvel kid--I think the timely arrival of the X-Men cartoon helped with that. I think comics are such a great medium and not limited by budget like film--you can literally do anything on the page.

GS: Pretend we’ve never heard of Five Ghosts. What’s your elevator pitch?

FB: Five Ghosts is the story of an Indiana Jones-esque treasure hunter who can channel the powers of Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Merlin, Musashi Miyamoto, and Dracula. I find that telling people about these literary characters tends to immediately hook their interest!

GS: Five Ghosts features five literary “ghosts” that possess Fabian Gray.

Where did this idea originally come from? Was it just born from a love of classic fiction, or something more?

FB: When I was conceiving Five Ghosts I knew I wanted to write a period piece (the story takes place in an amorphous “1930’s” setting) about a thief. I liked the character of a charismatic thief-someone who wasn’t necessarily a “good” guy, but had a purpose and got into adventures--but I knew I needed something a bit more interesting as a “hook.” I thought maybe he should have “Sherlock Holmes” type powers, like hyper-attentiveness, logic.

Then I had the idea to have the character be able to channel Sherlock Holmes some way--and then I thought, why stop there?

As it turns out this was a great way to steer the direction of the story into the literary and really explore how we interact with fiction, etc.

GS: The Five Ghosts are the Archer, the Samurai, the Wizard, the Vampire, and the Detective. Who were the archetypes for each ghost? What made you choose this group of characters to possess Fabian?

FB: I literally was trying to think of recognizable characters that would have abilities that would be useful. These ones stuck out to me and seem to have struck a

chord with readers!

GS: The reveal of Iago shows us that the Five Ghosts aren’t the only literary figures in the story. Can the reader expect even more characters to pop up from classic literature?

FB: Absolutely. Part of the fun of playing in this literary world is to bring in many different elements from it. We’ll be really ramping up some literary appearances in our new arc, LOST COASTLINES, and the main villains of the series are all fun analogues for literary and historical figures.

GS: With the success of the first fiveissue miniseries, Five Ghosts became an ongoing series with issue six expected in October. Have you been surprised at how receptive readers were to the book and how successful it was?

FB: We always wanted to do an ongoing series, but it’s just so risky in today’s market. We were absolutely floored by the reception--we were so worried we wouldn’t be able to find a readership to sustain the book, but are amazed and so thankful that people seem to enjoy where we’re going. It’s very rewarding as Five Ghosts comes directly from me and Chris--we have no editor or outside interference, it is simply the purest comics we want to make. To know that that has a place in the market is truly humbling, and we hope we can keep telling our stories for a long time!

GS: Chris Mooneyham pulled art duties on the first five issues and Garry Brown is doing issue six. What made their styles a good fit for the stories you were trying to tell?

FB: I’ve been working with Chris for a few years now and I just absolutely love the way he draws. I

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Geek Syndicate Image © Image Comics, 2013

conceived Five Ghosts with Chris in mind and knew he’d be the perfect fit for it--and I think he’s shown us all that he indeed is. He just has a great, iconic element to his work and channels a lot of comics greats that I don’t think are as influential as they should be these days. Garry has been our friend for a while, and also just has such a strong, iconic sense to his work. Both Garry and Chris are amazing storytellers as well, which makes them a dream to work with as a writer.

GS: Issue six is a one-shot, from what I understand.

What sort of adventure is Fabian getting into, and what can we expect from him in future issues?

FB: Issue six is a self-contained story in thirty-two pages. It takes Fabian to Japan to visit an old friend (the daughter of a sensei who trained him) and on the hunt for The Masamune--a sword from Japanese mythology that is said to be a sort of “ultimate weapon.”

There’s a lot of fun Japanese mythology in the issue, and some really awesome demons and monsters. Garry is really going all out and I think people are really going to be impressed by his skill. Chris will be back in all his glory in issue seven, but I’m so glad we have an amazing artist to provide us with a great jumping on issue. I think issue 6 also brings to light a lot more of Fabian’s character, which we also continue to expand in explore in the next arc, Lost Coastlines.

GS: Where can you be found on the vastness of the internet?

Issue 6 of Five Ghosts is out in October

Image © Image Comics, 2013

FB: My personal website/blog is http://www. atlasincognita.com and I can be found on twitter at @atlasincognita!

Five Ghosts is published by Image Comics available now from all good comic retailers.

The first trade collection, The Haunting of Fabian Grey is available on 18 September, and Issue 6 (mentioned in the interview) goes on sale 30 October 2013.

Leo Johnson

The Five Ghosts of the Series’ Title.

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Geek Syndicate The Five Step Guide To Capitol Fashion Image © Lionsgate, 2013

So you’d like to get to grips with Capitol fashion? Then listen carefully. Capitol fashion is flamboyant, extravagant and completely Over the top. Imagine a glamorous pantomime dame crossed with a Georgian dress and dipped in the bright end of a Dulux colour palette.

Big, bold and brilliant: this look is not for the faint hearted.

The new trailer for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire has recently been released. In celebration of this, here’s the five-step Guide to Capitol Fashion from Geek Syndicate. Whether you’re going for Capitol Cosplay or just want to try out a new style, you’ll find all everything you need to know about fashions of the Capitol right here.

1. Capitol Look Citizens of the Capitol dye their skin and hair vivid and whacky colours and many undergo extensive cosmetic surgery, all in the name of style. If you’d like a change to your normal hair, by all means dye it a crazy colour.

But unless you’re a diehard fan of Capitol fashion and want to live like that for the rest of your life, we don’t advise the surgery!

Capitol fashion is larger than life and very ostentatious. You aim to make a statement with this look. Ruffles, pleats and volume, specifically around the shoulders are essential. The style of hair and make up in for this style are as equally flamboyant and daring as the clothing, but must match and work well with the rest of the look.

2. Effie Trinket

Effie Trinket - Style Icon of District Twelve. A Dedicated Follower of Capitol Fashion.

The Queen of Capitol fashion, Effie Trinket encompasses everything that Capitol fashion should be: confident, classy, sophisticated and she aims to make a statement with her clothing.

She is the escort for District 12 tributes and keeps an upbeat, positive attitude, despite the unfortunate situation the tributes find themselves in. She is seen as a fashion icon by the citizens of the Capitol and therefore has to sustain her high maintenance image. She must keep her looks bold and daring to match her eccentric style, never wearing the same outfit twice.

3. Influences So where did inspiration for Capitol fashion originate from? Costume designer for The Hunger Games Judianna Makoysky says she took inspiration from designers from the 1930s to 1950s, especially Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

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Geek Syndicate “…We love the silhouette of the early 30s and 40s, with big puffy sleeves.”

Schiaparelli’s use of audacious fabric structures and her work that mixed fashion and art are also clear influences for Capitol fashion.

Schiaparelli was also a major design influence for British designer, Alexander McQueen. I had always thought that The Hunger Games costumes had a strong resemblance to McQueen’s work, so this is perhaps why. McQueen’s designs are the epitome of Haute Couture, balancing glamour with unnatural shapes and materials. Big, bold and daring, they fit perfectly with the Capitol look.

A few weeks ago I heard about a site called Shiro Cosmetics. They specialise in nerdy themed make up with equally amazing names, such as “The Legends Collection” and “The Super Effective Collection”. It’s also pretty reasonably priced, vegan, handmade and animal cruelty-free. Most eye shadows are available in sample, mini or full size, ranging from $1- $5. However, there are special Image © Lionsgate, 2013

With a much bigger budget for Catching Fire, the designers have managed to secure a few of McQueen’s pieces for Effie Trinket. This purple ruffled dress, belt and shoes were shown at the Autumn/Winter 2012 show in Paris. Very fancy!

at Emma Yeo’s work for unusual but elegant headpieces.

shadows such as “The Hobbit Collection” that cost up to $6.

Intertubes are also available in sample, mini or full size and cost between $1.80$6.50.

Wait! There’s more: you can order custom lip-glosses. If you see an eye shadow or blush that you fancy and it is “lip safe”, you can have it turned into a lipgloss! SNAZZY.

Image ©Emma Yeo, 2013

Effie Trinket wearing McQueen A/W2012

4. Hair & Make Up You can’t have Capitol clothes without the Capitol hair and face. Theatrical and bold; fancy false lashes and quirky colours are essential. Pick a colour scheme to match your outfit and you’re away!

Hair’s pretty simple: make it big, curly and a muted, pastel shade of the main colour of your outfit. If you think your hair isn’t tall enough or as dramatic as you’d hoped, add some sort of a headpiece. This could be anything from a flower to a crazy sculpture thing. Take a look 82

Capitol Headwear by Emma Yeo

After you’ve looked at the ones below, take a look around the whole site. It’s a bit like Etsy, in that you’ll be looking around for ages and end up getting side tracked by all the cool stuff and ruin your social life a bit but it’s brilliant fun.

They do have “The Tributes Collection” and it is amazing.

However, I thought the eye shadows from “The Super Effective Collection” were more suitable

Geek Syndicate Eyelashes

From “The Super Effective Collection”: Elite Four merged with Smell Ya Later and lined with a bit of Team Rocket.

Rose Lashes from the “British Collection” at PAPERSELF are beautiful and wonderfully dramatic. Perfect for the Capitol look. (£12.50)

Blusher

Image © Shiro Cosmetics, 2013

Get those cheeks rosy with this Potion mineral blush…

Image © Shiro Cosmetics, 2013 Image © Shiro Cosmetics, 2013

All of the following products are from Shiro Cosmetics unless otherwise stated.

Image © Shiro Cosmetics, 2013

Image © Shiro Cosmetics, 2013

Elite Four, Smell Ya Later and Team Rocket from Shiro Cosmetics.

Image © Paperself, 2013

Eye shadow

Lip Gloss Insanity Wolf. A white gloss that’ll compliment purple eye shadow and add to the quirkiness of Capitol dress.

Image © Shiro Cosmetics, 2013

for getting the Capitol look, as they are brighter and bolder than “The Tributes Collection”.

Although this beauty has Effie Trinket written all over it:

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Geek Syndicate Image © Lionsgate, 2013

5. Accessories

Image © ASOS.com, 2013

Accessories must match your outfit. Hairpiece, belt, and heels as high as you dare to go. Take inspiration from Effie Trinket and wear shoe boots. These from ASOS are perfect. The style is bang on the Capitol trend and if that isn’t enough to convince you, look at the name of the style: Trinket.

Need I say more?

A belt will add shape and structure needed for the Capitol look. Wide or narrow, both are acceptable, so long as it’s a contrasting material and colour to the outfit, such as a shiny metal one.

Any accessories should be bold but elegant, adding style and sophistication to the whole look.

You’re all set to make a statement with your new Capitol look! If I can make it to the premier of the new film, I’m dressing up for it. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is out November 22nd and I’m so excited to see what the costume designers for this one have come up with.

From the press photos that have been floating around, it looks like they’ve really gone all out with the costumes for this one!

May the fashion odds be ever in your favour.

Jess Hawke 84

Effie returns in style this November in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Geek Syndicate Frazer Hines, Doctor Who’s Longest Serving Companion

Frazer Hines is most known for his roles in British television series. In 1954, the young actor was cast in perhaps his most iconic role – as Jamie McCrimmon, a young highland warrior from the nineteenth century. Initially cast to appear in only the one, four part story (The Highlanders), Frazer impressed cast and crew so much that he was invited to join the TARDIS crew. Frazer went on to portray Patrick Troughton’s second in one-hundred and seventeen episodes of Doctor Who, including return appearances for The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors.

Frazer’s career does not start and end with the BBC show. Viewers of ITV’s Emmerdale soap will be more than familiar with the actor, who has starred in upwards of one hundred and twenty episodes of that programme. Frazer has also appeared in over sixty other drama episodes and films in his career.

Image © Shaun Hines (http://www.shaunhines.com)

INTERVIEW

At this year’s Sci-Fi Weekender, we at Geek Syndicate were lucky enough to grab a few minutes with Frazer to talk about his time in the long running science-fiction programme as well as his work outside of it …

GS: So tell us Frazer, how did you get into acting?

Image © BBC Worldwide

FH: I was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire and every Saturday I used to go to Marjory Newbury’s School of Dancing. When I was seven years old she put on a show at the Harrogate

Frazer’s first story. A 4 episode appearance turned into 117

Theatre Royal and I had to do this impersonation of Maurice Chevalier’s Louise.

We weren’t a very rich family so my mother got these potato sacks, cut them up, dyed them white and made me a suit. Now I can’t stand itchy clothing next to my knees and so when I went on stage and went “every little breeze...” and it came to the tap dance, I was stiff legged, and the next day the newspapers said “Stiff legged seven year old stops show! He even had the Maurice Chevalier stiff legged walk” and somebody at Corona school saw this and came up to Harrogate and saw my mother and said “We’d like Frazer to come to Corona” and my mother said let’s leave him another year at home. My mother and I went down to Chiswick, London and I joined Corona School. The itchy trousers got me into acting!

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Geek Syndicate FH: Well I was one of the fortunate ones because at Corona there was Richard O’Sullivan, Francesca Annis, Susan George, Dennis Waterman so it was a good year to join, and Jeremy Bullock of course who played Boba Fett in Star Wars. We were quite fortunate we kept working and we transformed from the cherubic little face to the teenager and a lot of them lost the look and then couldn’t make the transformation, so I was one of the fortunate ones.

“that’s fine, do you fancy playing Jamie McCrimmon” I said yeah.

“There’s the script, have a look at it. Do you fancy doing it?” I said “do you want me to read for it?”

“No no that’s fine; we’ll see you in a month’s time for filming”.

So that was it. No audition, no reading the lines. After about two episodes had gone out the fans were sort of ringing up the BBC and I think my agent had been asked to have an option on my services. Sean had an idea

and waved goodbye to the Laird and that was it. What was supposed to be four episodes turned into three of the happiest years I’ve ever spent in my career.

GS: You mentioned earlier about how people had remembered you from The Silver Sword and they’d grown up with you. How does it feel to have grown up knowing people are watching you on screen?

FH: It’s great to know that people have grown up watching me and sometimes they’ll say “I’m the same age as you” I try and keep the age quiet, but what is strange is to have little kids of twelve years old coming up and saying “I wasn’t alive when you were in Doctor Who but I love the programme”.

Image © BBC Worldwide

GS: So following on from how you got into acting, how did you get to one of the roles you’re most famous for in Doctor Who?

I was just doing television work and I did five or six episodes of Coronation Street and they wanted me The kids love the to be in it a bit longblack and whites. I er but I was playing think upstairs the a terrible square so BBC went “oh no I didn’t really want it’s colour now” but to play a Roy Cropkids actually like per sort of part and the black and white.

This shot from The Web of Fear really shows the cameraderie between them then I was working I think black and with Sean Sutton as white is scarier. The a little boy in a thing shadows are worse called The Silver Sword, and peo- that Jamie would work but he in black and white. In colour, well ple still remember it today and never told me. Innis Lloyd came black’s not really a colour, so you say “oh we’ve been following up after about episode two and have to step out of the shadows your career since The Silver Sword” put his arm around me and said and wade back in, but black and about a little boy called Jan in “now how do you fancy joining white, you can walk straight out world war two. So the audience the old TARDIS crew for a year?” and grab somebody out of the has grown up with me, Sean Sut- and I said “I can’t Innis” because shadows. I think the old Hamton was head of children’s TV and I’d already filmed waving goodmer Horror films, the Bela Luhe was looking after Doctor Who bye to Patrick Troughton, Polly gosi, it’s more creepy. But that’s and he said to Innis Lloyd there’s and Ben. The TARDIS de-matethe strange thing, when little kids a character called Jamie is com- rialised, I’m left in Culloden with are coming up and saying to me ing up, how about Frazer Hines? my Laird and Kirsty (played by “oh we love the black and whites, Hannah Gordon). we love the classic Doctor Whos, So I went to see Innis Lloyd and that got me watching it” and they he said “Sean said you can do a “Hell with that, I’ll sort it out” so love it!

Scottish accent” and I said “well the next day we went to French yeah my mother’s Scottish” and Ponds, I got into the TARDIS 86

Geek Syndicate

FH: Well I was quite, not depressed because it’s not life and death, however we were talking in Los Angeles last week (last week Los Angeles, this week Pwllheli! What a great life!) and we worked out there’s actually seven of Patrick and my stories all complete and that doesn’t include The Two Doctors or The Five Doctors so it’s not bad, there’s seven complete stories and they’re bringing out The Ice Warriors now with animation, which is almost like another completed one. (The Ice Warriors is released on DVD in September, 2013 - Ed) The Underwater Menace they’ll probably animate the missing episodes as well, if The Ice Warriors does well. I am always amazed how you’ve got episode one and episode two missing, and you think well if there was one missing it would be from the front end or the back end. I always thought they were in a big silver film can so who’s gone and snipped episode two out and glued the rest together? That always amazes me how one episode, episode two is found?

have a summer holiday, then a few more episodes, Christmas off, few more episodes, summer holiday...we were having a ball.

But Patrick’s wife at the time was saying “you should be doing other stuff, it’s children’s television, you should be doing other stuff, you’re a better actor” and my agent said “Darling you’ve done three years of TV you must do a film” and I said “no I’m having a good time” and it was “you’re not here to have a good time, career, career, career” and I always say that if I’d known Leela was going to join, I’d never have left because we were the only two companions that carried a knife, or were armed, none of the other companions were armed if you think about it.

I have this vision of Patrick Troughton in water, tied to a stake, the water is rising, an alligator is coming out and I’m going to dive in and she says “NO! I’ll rescue him, I’ve got a knife” “No, I’ve got a knife!” and in the end Leela and Jamie are rolling

around and Patrick’s going “For God’s sake will one of you just cut this rope!” and we’d be going “I’ll be with you in a minute!”. I have this lovely vision of the kilt and the loin cloth wrestling.

GS: That sounds brilliant! Since leaving the show, what involvement have you had, I know you’ve been involved in some of the Big Finish productions and some of the BBC recordings? Can you tell us more about those?

FH: I’ve done a lot of the BBC dramatisations where they’ve got all the soundtrack but they’ve not got the pictures so I do the voice “meanwhile back at the cave, the Doctor...” and then you can hear the Doctor.

But Big Finish is great fun for me because I get to play Patrick. I just did it as a gag one day and my first Big Finish was Helicon Prime and the first scene was where I just did Patrick as normal; Frazer Hines but a bit gruffer. Then I was just messing about with the voice and the producers said Image © BBC Worldwide

GS: It’s interesting because with new Who and lots of new fans, it’s made a huge impact on them seeking out some of the older episodes, but I know that some of the episodes that you’ve been in have been long lost, or we only have the audio. How does that make you feel?

GS: In terms of your character, it is known as one of the favourite companions, and the longest running. Is there anything you would like to have seen your character to do in terms of a character arc or development, working with script writers?

FH: Yes! I always say that and I must say that Patrick and I never wanted to leave, we were having a ball. We worked hard then we’d

On set with Patrick Troughton for Enemy of the World

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Image © BBC Worldwide

Geek Syndicate

With Colin Baker for The Two Doctors in 1985. Jamie worked well with the Sixth Doctor and Big Finish returned to this idea for several audio adventures.

“Frazer, you sounded like Patrick Troughton then!” and I said “well when I do conventions I always talk about Patrick...” “Just do that first scene again but do it as Patrick with Jamie”. So I did and they asked me to carry on like that.

I only get paid as Jamie for Big Finish but I do Patrick for love because that’s my little homage, that’s keeping his memory alive for the fans, rather than just say “now come along Jamie, let’s do this” I’d go: *adopts Patrick voice* “now come along Jamie, let’s do this” with the sort of stuttering. The last one I did was with Michael Troughton and I thought “God it’s like doing an impersonation of your father in front you, and he’s gonna go “that’s nothing like him” but god bless him we did a long scene together, I was in my booth, he was in his booth and he said “Frazer there were a couple of lines you said, I got goose 88

bumps all down my neck because it just sounded like my Dad” so that was great, lovely for me to hear from Michael Troughton.

GS: In terms of you mentioned before about the different types of reactions or the different types of conventions and you were saying about the British ones seem a bit more relaxed. You’ve obviously been travelling around the world with Doctor Who. Tell us about some of the experiences you’ve had.

FH: Through the programme I did forty years ago, I’ve seen most of Australia; Perth, Darwin, Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart. I’ve seen most of America as well, and the American conventions, particularly Gallifrey which is in Los Angeles with about three and a half thousand people, all walking around in costumes, they tend to leave you alone. You can walk through “Hello Frazer!” and then they’ll all come and see your panel and come for autographs but they’re all friendly.

In America there’s probably bigger fandom, but then again America is a bigger place. The fans here are lovely people, you walk through, you’re not going to be pounced on, they know you’re there having a ten minute break “he’s having a glass of wine, leave him alone”. They’re lovely.

GS: Why do you think the Who fans are so passionate about a show that’s been going for so many years?

FH: People keep asking what is it about Doctor Who, and it’s the fans, the fans have kept it alive, when it took off the fans kept it going, and then Big Finish kept it going with all their stuff. The BBC saw Big Finish were doing rather well and thought let’s bring it back. But I don’t know what it is.

Maybe it’s the Britishness of the show.

People used to say the sets were wobbly and no our sets were never wobbly, what our set designers

Geek Syndicate had to make a set to make it into a space station; ping pong balls and rubber tubing and an old TV set from a Lysander bomber.

They should get BAFTAs for special set designs. Probably the quirkiness.

Colin Baker always says if it wasn’t for Patrick Troughton you’d never have heard of David Tennant because Patrick was the first regeneration. If that hadn’t worked the show would have been off and would never have been seen again. The fans are very loyal.

GS: The fiftieth anniversary is coming up. What would you like to see happen?

FH: We’ve just recorded something for Big Finish where all the Doctors are in it and most of the companions who are all trying to rescue this thing and meeting each other “hey I’m here to rescue you!” “No I’m rescuing you!””No, you’re rescuing him!” that sort of thing. Little cameos “who are you?” “I’m Jamie McCrimmon”.

I would have loved for the BBC to have done an hour and a half special using as many people who wanted to be in it. The Big Finish thing for me is what the BBC should have done.

Also in America, Australia and New Zealand in January they

showed a four part Billy Hartnell, February four part Patrick Troughton. Eleven months, eleven Doctors up until November 23rd. and again I thought the BBC would do that. They could have shown a story from each Doctor, they could have shown it at 5.15pm on BBC after Grandstand or whatever. They could have shown this is how it was all those years ago. People that have stopped watching would watch it, people who watch it now would watch it and it would probably have been number one!

All the fans that say they don’t watch it anymore, would be “oh I’m going to watch it” and people that have only just tuned in to it with Matt Smith or Christopher Eccleston would be able to see how it actually began. One story from each Doctor and it would have led up. Eleven months, eleven Doctors and they didn’t do it.

Also Tony Lee, (writer of IDW’s ongoing Doctor Who Comic as well as the Big Finish audio adventure Rat Trap) about six months ago said “Frazer we’ve got to get you back on TV. I’m going to write something for you. What kind of ideas do you have?”, so we kicked a few ideas around and he asked who I wanted to work with. I said Colin Baker, Vicky Michelle, and John Challis. So he’s written this marvellous thing called The Mild Bunch about these old guys who meet at a funeral. We used to be paintball guys and we get together again and have one last hoorah. The BBC want an option on it, which we’re waiting for them to come through with a contract but I’m going to be Associate Producer on that as well and be one of the stars!

GS: It’s a shame considering Who comes from Britain and we didn’t do it how it should have been done.

Hopefully it will be a bit like that thing David Jason did called The Booze Cruise or something, a one off with a lot of good actors. I want to get all my pals in it even if it’s three or four lines. Everybody with no egos, no attitudes.

Can you tell us about any other projects you’ve been working on outside of Who?

GS: That sounds great! So can you sum up in one sentence you’ve had from Doctor Who?

FH: Yeah there was a movie I should have done last year which keeps getting put back, called Tarot where I play a blind man so they’ve asked me to be Associate Producer.

FH: I travelled space with Doctor Who and now I’m travelling the world with Doctor Who.

Christophe Montoya

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Geek Syndicate THE CREATIVITY PLAYLIST

Whether you are a writer, an artist, a composer, an actor or something else we all have a way of working that helps to keep us on track and enhances our work throughout the day. For many that methodology comes in the form of music. Since joining the world of social media and following a lot of creative types online we began to wonder what kind of music provides the soundtrack to their imagination? To help us find some answers we reached out across the void of geekdom to see what musical delights we could discover.

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Geek Syndicate Drew Pearce - Writer, Producer and Director (No Heroics, Iron Man 3, Mission Impossible 5) “I sometimes have to flit between projects, and I find a different, distinct soundtrack to each really helps. So I make a playlist for each movie, with no musical crossover - and locking back into it drops me (usually) into the zone of writing that particular project.

What follows are some highlights from the Iron Man 3 playlist...

I usually start with a key song, which in the case of Iron Man 3 was “Sympathy For The Devil” by the Stones. There was something about the lyrics that played into a ton of things we were doing with the movie, and it’s a good track to kick off a writing session, whether I’m at my office or in some shithole hotel on location.

Then, it’s a shuffle through some of the following albums. Looking at it now, this is a more soundtrack-oriented playlist than I sometimes write to, but I’m not sure I even noticed that at the time...”

Drew’s Playlist • • • • • •

Dirty Harry OST - Lalo Schifrin Revolver OST - Ennio Morricone Out Of Sight OST by David Holmes Raw Power by The Stooges On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by John Barry Beggar’s Banquet by Rolling Stones

Adam Hamdy - Writer, Film Producer and Director (Pulp, Battalion, The Hunter, Starmaker)

“I’ve been listening to The Journey Mix while writing my second novel, PHASE.”

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Geek Syndicate Steven Sims - Writer/Artist (Kaiju)

“I’m not sure about a whole playlist but there is one album that I listen to a lot when I’m working, It’s an album by Daevid Allen called “Gong on acid 1972”. It’s one long weird psychedelic remix/jam of his late sixties work and I find it works really well as background music, It runs for about an hour and a half I think, and helps to keep my mind occupied and chilled out whilst working through things.”

My new project is called “The worm and the well” and should hopefully be finished early next year.”

Paul Cornell – Writer (Wisdom, Demon Knights, Saucer Country, Wolverine, Doctor Who, Primeval and more)

“I’d actually have to lie: I can’t listen to music while I work, it stops me working! I have cricket on in the background instead, and look up when I hear the sound of a wicket or a good shot.”

Kelly Williams - Artist (Metaphase, The Cabinet and more) “I listen to a lot of music. I spend more money on records nowadays than I do on comics.

This playlist includes a lot of bands that have just been in heavy rotation for me lately. I need my mind occupied more than needing a tone set most of the time. That’s not to say I never go for tone though!

Kelly’s Playlist on Spotify Kelly’s Current projects • Seven Stones • TreeBeerdStuff • Kelly’s Facebook Page “Then there is the usual, I’m the artist on the soon to be completed THE CABINET, artist on METAPHASE and a contributing artist to the SEVEN STONES GRAPHIC NOVEL as well as numerous anthologies from GrayHaven Comics.”

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Geek Syndicate Graeme Buchan -Writer (Creepy Scarlett) “I jumped from learning film-making and making short films, the Creepy Scarlett short being the last one I made, before going into making the comic book. Making a comic without a soundtrack always bugged me, since to me it’s always been part of creating something.

So I decided to make a soundtrack list for the comic. These songs sort of fit to the narrative of the comic book, but they are things that I would listen to or things that inspire during creating a story etc.”

Graeme’s Spotify Playlist

Daniel Warren Johnson – Artist, Illustrator and Designer (Space Mullet) “Right now I’ve been listening to metal when I thumbnail, to get myself active and gestural. I have mastodons “leviathan” on vinyl so I’ve been dipping into that a lot, along with converge, black sabbath, and the chariot.

Pencilling is kind of a drudge, so I distract myself with talk radio and this American life podcasts.

As far as inking goes, I need something serene, so a lot of Bach, some epic musical soundtracks (right now it’s the music of Skyrim), And my fave band, mewithoutYou.” Daniel’s Spotify Playlist

Nilah Magruder - Writer/Artist “Let’s see, so when I’m doing general art tasks, pencilling, inking, colouring and such, I’ll just listen to my full playlist, which is a heavy mix of j-pop, classical music, a few favourite bands and songs, and film soundtracks. I go less for mood and more for music that keeps me awake.

When I’m writing or brainstorming, I’m keen on music that hits the right mood - a lot of it’s instrumental or not in English cuz the lyrics can become distracting. I’ll cherry pick from the list above and create an appropriate playlist for the scene. When I’m writing something especially difficult, Ellie Goulding, Florence + the Machine, Persona 4, and Kalafina are my top four go-to albums. They probably get more play than anything else in my playlist.”

Nilah’s Spotify Playlist

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Geek Syndicate Here’s some of the stuff that keeps me in a working mood: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

Modest Mussorgsky Muse Paramore Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Porno Graffitti The Protomen Relient K Shakira Utada Hikaru UVERworld Within Temptation Yaida Hitomi The Great Gatsby soundtrack • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix soundtrack

Aaliyah BoA Coldplay Dragonforce Ellie Goulding Every Little Thing Florence + the Machine Frederic Chopin Glen Hansard High and Mighty Color Kalafina Kitaro LiSA Mika

• Persona 4 soundtrack • Cristofori’s Dream by David Lanz • Connect by Claris • Hall Om Mig by Nanne Gronvall • Hanabi by Ikimono Gakari • Magic Rabbit by My Brightest Diamond • Opheliac by Emelie Autumn • Shakin’ It for Daddy by Robin Thicke feat. Nicki Minaj • Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega

Andra Passen – Writer (Crowded Thoughts and Crooked Teeth) Andra’s Playlist on Spotify “Top Five Artists I listen to while creating: 1. The Lawrence Arms-Influenced me enough to name my comics after them.

2. The Smiths- “I bet she sits at home and listens to The Smiths.”

Yep, she does.

3. Descendents- Sometimes I have to remind myself to put on a different band, because I’ll never get sick of this one.

4. RVIVR- Proof that I’m not completely living in the past.

5. Weird Al” Yankovic- Leave the misery strictly to the pages and off the airwaves.”

Chip Reece - Writer (Metaphase) Chip’s Playlist on Spotify “I’m generally a sucker for synth and odd genre mash-ups. Love me some people with interesting voices as well. For the most part, I’ve been digging this stuff lately:

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Geek Syndicate Daft Punk:

Atoms for Peace:

• Random Access Memories • Tron: Legacy • Tron: Legacy Reconfigured (Fall - Remixed by M83 vs. Big Black Delta) Radiohead: • Amnesiac • Kid A

• Amok (Album) Depeche Mode: • Sounds of the Universe (Album)

Buffalo Daughter: New Rock (Album) Bjork: • Biophilia - Thunderbolt, Crystalline

Active Child:

Joy Electric:

• Curtis Lane - Take Shelter • You Are All I See - Hanging On, Shield & Sword

• The Otherly Opus”

Curt Pires – Writer (Theremin) Curt’s Playlist on Spotify • Da Doo Ron Ron- Crystals • Phoenix: Trying To Be Cool , Phoenix: Drakkar Noir (I named issue 2 after this), Phoenix- Don’t • The Strokes- You Only Live Once , The Strokes-Slow Animals, The StrokesEighties Comedown Machine • Washed Out - Feel It All Around, Washed Out- It Feels Alright • Wavves- Afraid of Heights • Kanye West- Paranoid (love 808 and heartbreaks) • LCD Sound System- Home And as I’m writing the final letter copy for THEREMIN 3 / Finishing the issue up I’m listening to the 15 minute version of : BECK- I Won’t Be Long

Andi Ewington – Writer (Forty-Five, Blue Spear, Overrun, Year of the Worlf Gone to Hell The 12, Ian Livingstone’s Freeway Fighter and More)

“All these projects were written with the same songs - I generally hit repeat and only change between them depending if I need a chilled scene or a frantic dramatic one. Let me know if you need me to drill deeper into these as to why/what kind of scenes.”

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Geek Syndicate Andi’s Playlist Tron Legacy (Daft Punk)

• Outlands • Fall

10,000 Hz Legend (Air)

• Electronic Performers DJ-Kicks - Chromeo (The Alan Parsons Project)

• Pipeline Intercept! (Bent)

• Exercise 7 Programmed to Love (Bent)

• Exercise 2 Art of Chill Vol 5 (Bent)

• As Seen From Space Hanna - The Chemical Brothers

• The Devil is in the details The Campfire Headphase - Boards of Canada

• Peacock Trail • Dayvan Cowboy In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (EP) - Boards of Canada

• Zoetrope I<3 U so - Cassius The Crimson Wing: The Cinematic Orchestra

• Exodus Moon - Clint Mansell

• Welcome to Lunar Industries • Memories (Someoe we’ll never know) Crash - Mark Isham

• Flames Instrumentals of Rust - The Doves

• Kingdom of Rust Skechbook - Echaskech

• 7th Fall

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Right of Way (Ferry Corsten)

• Star Traveller Fleet Foxes - (Fleet Foxes)

• White Winter Hymnal Inception (Hans Zimmer)

• Dream is Collapsing • Time Man of Steel (Hans Zimmer)

• Flight • What are you going to do when you are not saving the world • You die or I do Woozy with Zider (Jon Hopkins Remic/ James Yorkston)

• Woozy with Cider 28 days later (John Murphy & Various)

• • • •

Taxi An Ending In Paridisium In the House

Bourne Supremacy (John Powell)

• To the Roof • Berlin Foot Chase Bourne Ultimatum (John Powell)

• Man vs Man Indiana Jones Collection (John Williams)

• Desert Chase • The Map Room: Dawn The Star Wars Triology: John Williams

• The Asteroid Field (ESB) • Battle of Endor II (RotJ) Valley of the Bears (Laroca)

• The Elevator Tester ‘64-’95 (LemonJelly)

• ‘79 Aka The Shouty Track Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (M83)

• Splendor • Where the boats go

Destroyed - Moby

• The Violent Bear It Away Mojo 2002-06: the Score - Moby

• God Moving Over the Face of the Water Wait for Me (Moby)

• JLTF Lemodie - Ochre

• 111 • Bluebottles Works (1968-2005) Roedelius

• Hollywood (Zuckerzeit) The Understanding (Röyksopp)

• Alpha Male • Someone Like Me Colette Ville (Various)

• Naum Gabo - Theme for Great Cities Invincible (Two Steps From Hell)

• Freedom Fighters • Moving Mountains • Fire Nation For Nihon (Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters)

• Balcony Sunset Breaking & Entering (Underworld & Gabriel Yared)

• Happy Toast War Stories - Instrumental (Unkle)

• Broken • Restless • Keys to the Kingdom Helium - Urban Myth Club

• Breathe • Secret So there we have it - music fuels creativity. Some top talent helped us here and we thank them all!

Barry Nugent Leo Johnson

Geek Syndicate

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Geek Syndicate Pacific Rim Image © Legendary Pictures, 2013

FILM REVIEW

Writers: Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro Director: Guillermo del Toro Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba & Rinko Kikuchi

When legions of monstrous alien creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity’s resources for years on end.

To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are synched via a neural bridge, called “The Drift”. But as the enemy grows more powerful with each attack, even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju.

First off, I liked the way this film started and got into the action, there was no major origin story or anything like that going on here – a quick run through of news stories gets you up to speed

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and you realize you are in the middle of a war where we’re just about holding our own. However, the Kaiju (The aliens of the piece) just keep on coming and are getting bigger, stronger and uglier.

and feeling to the sci-fi monster movie genre. The portrayal of mankind’s struggle for survival against overwhelming odds draws you in right from the beginning and will have you on the edge of your seat throughout.

The action starts straight away with a battle between a Kaiju and a state of the art Jaeger, which is piloted by Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and his brother Yancy. The Jaegers are cool, they are 25 storey high robots that can clearly give it to the Kaiju … but lets just say this fight doesn’t go exactly to plan.

The casting hit nearly all the right notes with solid performances from all the main characters and most of the supporting ones. The effects were great with the monsters being huge, scary and conveying a real sense of impending doom. The 3D adds to the immersion rather than distracting the viewer and the film is back up by a solid musical score that draws you in, adding emotion when it’s needed.

From this point we jump forward a few years and see Raleigh who has retired as a pilot now working as a construction worker on a defensive wall to hold out the Kaiju. The intention is that this defensive wall will make the Jaegers obsolete. Funnily enough this plan doesn’t work and Raleigh is persuaded to come out of retirement by his old commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) and take one of the pilot positions again. This is when we also meet Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) who is there to help Raleigh pick a new co-pilot but we find out that she can really fight with the best of them when required. The war at this stage is clearly going in the Kaiju’s favor and the ability to fight back is getting harder, Raleigh has been brought back to take part in a mission that is intended turn the tide against the invaders. This is where the real action and fighting starts, we now get to see multiple Jaegers and Kaiju fighting and things start to get really messy.

Guillermo del Toro has managed to bring an all new epic scale

If I was to be a little critical there were a couple of things that were a bit irritating. The first of these is Dr Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) who was a rather annoying character. I’m not sure whether my dislike of the good doctor stemmed from the way the character was written or Gorman’s portrayal. I was also a little disappointed that they changed the computer voice used in the trailers which sounded exactly like GLaDOS in Portal.

On a positive note, as with a number of other blockbuster films this year there was an incredible amount of destruction going on, with swathes of buildings being destroyed. The way Pacific Rim differs from the year’s other blockbusters is that I actually felt more for the human cost as it seemed like there were consequences to their actions, rather than it just being glossed over or ignored (like in Man of Steel).

To me an action film is about be-

Geek Syndicate Image © Legendary Pictures, 2013

ing able to unplug your brain and enjoy the pleasures of the story the director is trying to tell you – if it’s well-directed and the story is reasonably believable then that’s what counts and Del Toro pulls this off in style.

JMS1701 Rating

Image © Legendary Pictures, 2013

Image © Legendary Pictures, 2013

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Geek Syndicate Peter Pan Image © Soaring Penguin Press, 2013

COMIC REVIEW

Writer: Regis Loisel Artist: Regis Loisel Publisher: Soaring Penguin Press

Before he became Peter Pan, before his arrival to Neverland, he was a boy fighting for survival.

Born into the suburbs of harsh, Dickensian London, to an alcoholic mother who leaves him in an almost-orphan state, Peter’s only retreat from reality is the fantastical stories given to him by a friendly neighbour — allowing him to escape temporarily from the darkness of the adult world.

Told in language as strong as his mother’s brandy, Peter’s story is no less intoxicating. While nearly devoid of comfort and compassion, Peter’s world becomes rich in magic. Lost fairies, pirates and sirens form a cast both shocking but strangely familiar — this is J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan story for an adult audience.

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For the first time this six-volume series has been translated into English and collected in one cloth-bound, omnibus edition. Th rough his emotive and engaging artwork, Loisel offers a unique take on a well-known tale that goes into a grim and dark world; the type of childhood where not growing up is not an option.

Don’t even think about skipping this one. I know you’re rolling your eyes and muttering about “kids stuff” but don’t be fooled.

This is a labor of love that truly deserves your attention.

The whole tale was written & illustrated by multiple awardwinning comics creator Regis Loisel between 1990 and 2004.

Bizarrely, despite its universal acclaim for artistry and incisive themes, the work has never been previously published in the UK. Soaring Penguin Press have done a spectacular job collecting together and translating the full run of this Peter Pan prequel, and it needs to go on your wishlist now.

You may think you know the story, but you don’t know the half of it. When I first posted about this book on the Geek Syndicate website, I had to wonder whether this hardback megatrade could possibly be worth the cost. Well let me tell you, it’s an absolute steal for what you’re getting here: Six volumes of triumph and tragedy, heart-ache and wild abandonment for a flat fiver apiece. Bargain! The crocodile skin cover-design is subtle, beautiful and ominous (perfectly capturing the tone of the book) and tiny Tinkerbell punctuates

it beautifully. While it’s a slight shame the cover isn’t textured to match the image, the sheer weight of the thing, coupled with the classy lettering, is reassurance enough that this is money well spent. Now, let’s open that cover and take a look inside.

“To keep from ending up as a pathetic adult, there is one thing to do. Believe in all your dreams.”

It is clear from the first panel that Loisel has no interest in giving us a white-washed narrative: “London… cold, hunger and misery merge to set the scene…”

It’s a Dickensian nightmare. The houses are cramped, the streets are full of cynical, selfish people and all is awash in the ordure of poverty. While it’s clear that they all suffer together, there is precious little sense of community. The Londoners prey upon each other like rats in a cobblestoned coffin. The single factor connecting the adult world and that of the young is a gnawing hunger to escape. We meet Peter as a ragged child holding forth to a group of orphans in a tiny yard. When we first meet him, his only magic lies in his words, transporting the children with marvellous stories of far away places and warming their hearts with the “words of tenderness” he claims his mother whispers to him (That damned harpy!).

His struggle to maintain innocence in a tawdry world is heartbreaking and renders the book firmly in the arena of adult reading, for reasons we’ll explore later. Loisel does an excellent job of portraying the darkness and terror of the adult world from a

Geek Syndicate pre-pubescent perspective, in imagery, language and inference – laying down the psychological tracks that lead to Peter’s perpetual childhood in Neverland. This is not a world for children.

Although he chooses to root the story in reality, the bulk of the adventure takes place in Neverland - though I don’t recall actually seeing it named in the text.

If there is one thing that Peter Pan represents, it’s the joy of unfettered imagination, and Neverland fits him like a glove. I was surprised by how much I dreaded this flight to the fanciful after the revelations of the opening volume – and the tonal shift is pretty sudden – but it doesn’t take Loisel long to find his balance.

His artwork is always of the very highest quality, but the flames of his creativity burn brightest in Neverland.

The island is brought vividly to life, in all its contradictions: blending Greek mythology, fairy tale, stories of the blood-red waves and the wild west; and I fell in love with it again for the first time since my own childhood.

The character design is fabulous throughout: from Hook’s haggard and be-stubbled face to Peter’s gap-toothed grin, while the Lost Boys have never looked wilder.

The pirates’ attempts to steal the fairy treasure (and latterly exact revenge on poor Peter) are perhaps the weak point of the story.

These plots suffer from the same malaise as Barrie’s original, with outlandish ploys and schoolboy tactics. That said, Hook is a formidable bully when roused, representing (as he does) all Adults in his grasping nature and cruel injustices. If this is a “story for children”, then it’s the kind they tell each other when there are no grown-ups around: one full of brutality and bloody excess.

Loisel builds ambiguity into the tale from the ground level up, with parallels and analogues connecting London to that blissful island paradise: not least of which are the fantastical tales told to Peter by Mr. Kundal, his mentor and closest friend. The tension between reality and the imagination is the very backbone of the story, and is personified in the Peter/Pan dichotomy.

Pan exists already, you see: a separate being, plucked from the world’s imagination and leading the fairy folk. It is only in the second half of the book that Peter and he become one and, in doing so, cement Peter’s position with the Neverlanders. The constant gravitational pull towards the adult world (most obviously embodied by the saucy sirens of both worlds but, more subtly, with chains of guilt and responsibility) sets up an internal conflict which lends Peter a real pathos in the midst of his cocky charm.

Of course, it is in the denial of the “dirty” Adult that Peter Pan derives his greatest power: the boy who never grew up. It comes with a price, and that price is forgetfulness – allowing some particularly chilling events to occur.

What many readers will find astonishing is Loisel’s inclusion of a Jack-The-Ripper sub-plot back in London. It is akin to the Tales Of The Black Freighter sections of Watchmen in its mix of apparent irrelevance and essential thematic link. I have theories about the psychological depths of this book that I could just go on and on about, but that’s a conversation for another day.

the drama intense and the emotional punches are near-crippling. How many comics delve into gnaw-knuckle nastiness one minute and move you to tears the next? Precious blooming few, and that’s a fact!

This is one of those rare books that gives more and more each time you read it, whether it’s in the spectacular detail of the artwork, fresh insights into the story, theme or meaning of the book. The artwork is sumptuous,

“May your madness be joyful!

Forget all to live.”

I’ll state it clearly one more time though – this book is not for children. On first flick through I thought it was an “adult” title because of the copious amount of boobs on display, but that’s really not the case. While the sirens (read mermaids) have a sexual nature to them, there is nothing that they actually do which is overt enough to be unsuitable for children. It is the emotional trauma of Peter’s abusive mother that I would protect my daughter from; the salty language used by adults and children alike; the pants-wetting terrors of nighttime London; and the horrible lengths to which Tinkerbell goes in her jealousy. I dare say the tick-tock croc would give her nightmares too, but I don’t want to put you off too much. Just be careful where you leave it, eh?

Is it a perfect book? Not quite.

Ambiguity makes for a more interesting and interactive read, but it also stops it from ever being wholly satisfying. Critical questions of plot and moral character are tossed in the air without ever quite landing, and remain so, no matter how much you grasp. I suppose that’s Peter Pan all over though: a crowing, glorious, bloodthirsty little bastard; hovering just out of reach – tormenting the grown-ups… forever.

Dion Winton-Polak Rating

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Geek Syndicate

Designer: Matt Leacock Publisher: Z-Man Games

“Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out.

Players must work together, playing to their characters’ strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. But the diseases are outbreaking fast and time is running out: the team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while also towards cures.

A truly cooperative game where you all win or you all lose.

This new edition has been entirely redesigned and includes two new roles: The Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist.”

It’s only really been the last year

or so that I would call myself a fan of table-top games. I’ve always owned some games and had some great evenings with some of my friends when I worked as a wandering IT consultant in Nuclear Power stations, but I was never a gamer… Of course, then I started watching Geek and Sundry’s TableTop show and got off my console and PC gaming bum to gather round a table with some friends … and I’ve realised that, actually, I do enjoy playing games this way with friends and family. I’ve also realised something: my favourite type of game is co-operative, where everyone is playing together against the game. Games like Castle Panic (reviewed on the Geek Syndicate Site), Gears of War and now: Pandemic.

Gameplay Pandemic pits two to four players against four virulent diseases which are spreading across the globe. Each player is randomly assigned a role within the group – each of whom has specific abilities. For example, the researcher can trade cards (used to cure the diseases) more easily than others, the scientists can cure diseases quicker (requiring four relevant cards instead of five) and the quarantine control officer can prevent diseases from spreading in their vicinity and so on. Once roles are assigned, the outbreaks begin, with nine cities being infected – three with three disease cubes, three with two and three with one.

The game’s difficulty can be controlled by choosing the number of epidemic cards that are shuffled into the player deck – either four five or six. The player deck

Image © Z-Man Games, 2013

Pandemic Image © Z-Man Games, 2013

TABLETOP GAME REVIEW

Gather your team. Well, be assigned a role

is divided into roughly equal parts, an epidemic card shuffled into each and then the deck restacked.

The rules are simple and easy to pick up – each player has four actions to perform which include curing one “cube” worth of a disease (or all cubes if the disease has been cured), building a research centre, moving to another city, trading a research card and so on. After a player has used their actions, the player draws two player cards into their hand … possibly unleashing an epidemic and then the diseases spread by turning over cards and infecting designated cities.

There is one way to win the game and three ways to lose: To win, the team must cure and eradicate all four of the diseases. The team can lose if eight outbreaks occur (an outbreak being when a city would be infected by a fourth disease cube which adds one cube to each of the adjoining cities … possibly unleashing one or more further outbreaks!). The team also lose if they run out of disease cubes for one of the diseases – it has become so virulent that there’s no stopping it. Finally, if the players run out of player cards (the ones they draw two of after taking their actions) they lose.

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Geek Syndicate The second game I played, we lost from that third method. For the third game, we implemented a house rule: if the player deck runs out, we re-shuffle it back up in exactly the same manner as for game setup. We lost two turns later due to an eighth outbreak, triggered from an early appearing epidemic card, so even changing the rules to the players’ benefit doesn’t make the game too easy!

As mentioned, players could draw an epidemic card during their turn. Epidemic cards are the game’s big guns against the team. If an epidemic is drawn, not only does a city get infected to critical level, but the epidemic track is increased – meaning more cities could be infected after each player’s turn AND the discarded infection cards are shuffled and placed back on top of the infection deck. This means that already infected cities WILL have their infection level increased some time soon!

What’s really fun about this game is the level of co-operation involved. Players really work together and plan ahead:

friends occupied for many hours.

It’s weird, but I’ve lost to this game one-hundred percent of the time … but this in no way detracts from the experience of playing.

Components The latest edition of the game is a really well presented product and certainly seems like value for money. The board looks superb and everything is clearly marked and each city easily locatable (even for someone with as rubbish geography knowledge as I have) and there’s enough room to comfortably hold virus cubes, the game cards and the other playing pieces.

This second edition’s components are really nice: coloured wooden pawns represent the players, wooden houses the research centres used to cure the diseases. The disease states are represented by phials and the outbreak tracker and urgency tracker are also fine wooden tokens. The disease “cubes” are brightly coloured translucent plastic which do somehow give

“OK, if I move through Asia, clearing up a couple of disease cubes and you keep to the Americas then player C can meet me in Shanghai so on my next turn I can trade that card …”

For me, working together really helps the social element. Sometimes with a competitive game, things can become a little tense and chatter around the game board can slow to a crawl – the game is still fun, but some of the social element can be muted. Because of the randomising nature of the card decks and even the assignment of roles, Pandemic is a supremely re-playable game which should keep families and 104

a “virus” feel. That or jelly. Don’t eat them. If for no other reason than if you run out of cubes you lose!

This may seem like a small thing but I really love the artwork on the infection and player cards.

I don’t know what it is: they’re simply maps showing the relevant city, but they just fit so well.

Roundup As Wil Wheaton points out in the episode of Geek and Sundry’s TableTop that features the game, Pandemic is the most fun you’ll have losing to a game!

I’ve played three times – twice with two players and once with three and lost each one. But losing doesn’t detract from the enjoyment Pandemic brings. That is it’s main charm. Couple this with the fact that a game (using default rules) will last around an hour or so (including setup) makes for a great start or interlude to an afternoon or evening’s activities.

On the next page, I present a few photos from a game in progress for you to peruse. Please also check out the TableTop episode – which gives a far better feel for the game than I can present in these pages.

Pandemic is available now, distributed to your Friendly Local Game Store by Esdevium Games Ltd. and can be ordered from - currently priced around £30.00 which I think is great value for money considering the amount of fun on offer here.

Antony McGarry-Thickitt Rating

Some of the game’s key components

GGGGG

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The calm before the viral storm. The board before the first infections are placed ...

... Things start to go wrong - the first Epidemic strikes the world...

... Two diseases cured & eradicated. Things are going well for the Team ...

... Out of time! All diseases eradicated but no player cards remain to be drawn!

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Geek Syndicate Kick Ass 2

Writer: Jeff Wadlow Director: Jeff Wadlow Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz & Morris Chestnut

Kick-Ass, Hit Girl and Red Mist return for the follow-up to 2010’s irreverent global hit: Kick-Ass 2.

After Kick-Ass’ (Aaron TaylorJohnson) insane bravery inspires a new wave of self-made masked crusaders, led by the badass Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), our hero joins them on patrol. When these amateur superheroes are hunted down by Red Mist (Christopher MintzPlasse) — reborn as The Mother F%&*^r — only the bladewielding Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) can prevent their annihilation.

When we last saw junior assassin Hit Girl and young vigilante Kick-Ass, they were trying to live as normal teenagers Mindy and Dave. With graduation looming

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and uncertain what to do, Dave decides to start the world’s first superhero team with Mindy. Unfortunately, when Mindy is busted for sneaking out as Hit Girl, she’s forced to retire—leaving her to navigate the terrifying world of high-school mean girls on her own. With no one left to turn to, Dave joins forces with Justice Forever, run by a bornagain ex-mobster named Colonel Stars and Stripes.

Just as they start to make a real difference on the streets, the world’s first super villain, The Mother F%&*^r, assembles his own evil league and puts a plan in motion to make Kick-Ass and Hit Girl pay for what they did to his dad. But there’s only one problem with his scheme: If you mess with one member of Justice Forever, you mess with them all.

First let me say this. I wasn’t a massive fan of Kick Ass. I didn’t hate it but much like Scott Pilgrim, Sin City and Watchmen, I found it to be more style than substance.

For me, it was too aware of its own geek cool and not afraid to

point it out at every moment.

Yes 0=9 Mortez was great, no I didn’t care she said ‘Cunt’ at the tender age of eleven and yes the action was brutal, but nothing I hadn’t seen a million times before. I liked the central idea of an everyman becoming a superhero but overall I walked out thinking “that was okay” and I haven’t revisited the film since.

With this in mind I pretty much stayed away from the hype and promotion for Kick Ass 2, fully aware that I’d probably see the film but didn’t need that geek cool to be rammed down my throat once again.

The basic premise of the film is as follows: With graduation looming and uncertain what to do, Dave decides to start the world’s first superhero team with Mindy - but when Mindy is busted for sneaking out as Hit Girl, she’s forced to retire. With no one left to turn to, Dave joins forces with Justice Forever, run by a bornagain ex-mobster named Colonel Stars and Stripes. Just as they start to make a real difference on Image © Universal Pictures, 2013

Image © Universal Studios, 2013

FILM REVIEW

Kick Ass Joins up with new team “Justice Forever”

monsters vs Monsters stick of the studio Marvel films and goes with something a little… different. The battle is FAR more entertaining because of it. Hit Girl vs Mother Russia is for sure the fight of the year to date.

On the subject of Hit Girl, Props go to Chloe Grace Mortez who once again shines and shows that, as long as she doesn’t go all Lohan, she has an amazing and probably award winning career in front of her. Also a massive shout out for Jim Carey who delivers the best performance of his twilight career, even if he was too much of an arse to promote the film (even though his whinging actually created even more publicity for the movie, rather than detracting from it … ). MintzPlasse is also great as the selftitled Mother F*cker, even if he does just deliver the TradeMarked Mintz-Plasse performance.

Image © Universal Pictures, 2013

Image © Universal Pictures, 2013

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Aaron Taylor and Chloë Moretz duke it out in training.

In fact, as much as I loved Iron Man 3, for me Kick Ass 2 is the best superhero film of 2013. Cool in its own way, with characters I actually cared about. Okay, so apparently it’s toned down from the comic (I’m not sure we really needed the gang rape of a main character) but as I’m not a fan of the source material that doesn’t really bother me. Moreover, the fact that it doesn’t just set out to shock is for me what stands out about its predecessor.

Kick Ass 2 also has some strong action sequences, not least a Good Guys Vs Bad Guys battle that loses the now standard CGI

With assured but not overly showy direction, some social commentary about what it is to fit in, a host of solid action sequences and characters you actually care for, Kick Ass 2 is that rare beast of both a sequel that ends up being more enjoyable that the original and a superhero film that didn’t feel the need to collapse into a CGI want fest.

Image © Universal Pictures, 2013

Looking at the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes this morning, I was shock to see this film sitting at a paltry 28%. That’s less than the critically mauled Lone Ranger. Especially surprising as I thought, overall, this was a much more enjoyable film that the original Kick Ass, less concerned about looking cool, shocking for shock’s sake and shouting “I Was Based on a Really Cool Comic Book Don’t You Know” and more about just interesting characters in even more interesting situations.

Mother Russia - Hit Girl’s new nemesis?

Kick Ass 2 ... Kicking Ass?

Image © Universal Pictures, 2013

the streets, the world’s first super villain assembles his own evil league and puts a plan in motion to make Kick-Ass and Hit Girl pay for what they did to his father.

In short: F*ck the critics, f*ck the source material. Just go make up your own mind. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Phil Hobden Rating

GGGGG

Carey’s on Form

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Geek Syndicate IT CAME! Issue #001 Image © Titan Comics, 2013

COMIC REVIEW

Writer: Dan Boultwood Artist: Dan Boultwood Publisher: Titan Comics

Witness a very British invasion!

Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will love this hilarious Bmovie romp, a knowing throwback to the heyday of low-budget SF cinema – in comic book form!

In IT CAME!, ‘director’ Dan Boultwood has unearthed a lost classic from the forgotten Pinetree Studios.

An enormous alien robot lays waste to the English countryside, annihilating bunting, villages and diagonally-sliced sandwiches alike! Only the pipe-chomping space scientist Dr. Boy Brett and his assistant Doris Night (a lady) stand a chance of stopping it from marching all the way to London but can they possibly escape the grasp of GRURK and get the might of the British Army on their side?!

Keep your upper lips stiff, your ties immaculately knotted, and your notions of gender equality dialled back sixty years – for the sake of the planet!

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Dan Boultwood has been a busy artist over the years, working with some talented writers. With It Came!, he goes it alone in a project that takes us back to the golden era of Sci Fi. I myself love the old black and white films of the 1950s and have made it my mission to own and watch everything that came out during that decade.

What Dan is doing here is given us a chance to see a “missing” tale from the period. Most of the films back then were about aliens or monsters from the deep but here we get a giant robot. This immediately brought one of my favourite films to mind - The Iron Giant, based on the Ted Hughes book and I was please to find out that Dan also loved this film. We were on the same page which boded very well for It Came!

Dan has a very distinct art style and here he brings something recognisable but also something new, giving It Came! a unique style that works. It helps put you in the yarn and the right frame of mind.

The style of the Robot is detailed yet simplistic in design which is both enjoyable but also gives you a feeling of dread that something more dangerous lurks underneath that clean exterior. The art of the human characters is just pure fun and I know that Dan changed his style from issue 1 to issue 4 so look out for that change.

The story is quick to get going and within the first issue we go from introducing the various characters to being in full attack mode.

Knowing this is a limited series of 4 issues is also a blessing because you know the end is in sight and things will only get worse for our main “leads” as the next issue arrives. The comic is marketed and written as a parody of a film – Dan isn’t the writer / artist, he’s the Writer / Director / Producer.

The main stars of this “film” are

(fictional!) actors Dick Claymore and Fanny Flaunders who play Dr. Boy Brett and Doris Night respectively both of whom are your typical personas of nineteen fifties America but in England and this is what makes this a pleasure to read. All of our memories of the black and white B movies are set in America but Mr Boultwood wanted none of that and placed our tell of GRURK the giant robot firmly in the land of beer and cricket. This means that we see all types of British humour and stereotypes that will make you smile and chuckle at every turn. Dan has also hidden some very amusing Easter eggs in the series so make sure you read everything and look at the various signs and pub names.

The dialogue is smart, witty and completely in tune with its setting and you get the impression that Dan has sat and watched every single alien invasion movie made just so he could make one better and funnier. The men are chauvinistic but loveable and the women are curvy and sassy yet also provide the key to success in other ways.

The book also includes adverts that Dan has created that just shows how much extra he wanted to make this series authentic. There will also be some surprises for future issues like a cutaway diagram of the robot which will have you remembering when you read the Eagle or stuck the poster on your bedroom wall. No? Ok just me then.

Titan are taking this series and running it with some cool ideas like the trailer available on youtube. Pure genius if you ask me.

Christophe Montoya Rating

GGGGG

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Geek Syndicate Reviver Image © Pan Macmillan, 2013

BOOK REVIEW

Author: Seth Patrick Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Death won’t silence them.

Revivers. Able to wake the recently dead, and let them bear witness to their own demise.

Twelve years after the first reviver came to light, they have become accepted by an uneasy public.

The testimony of the dead is permitted in courtrooms across the world. Forensic revival is a routine part of police investigation.

In the United States, that responsibility falls to the Forensic Revival Service. Despite his troubled past, Jonah Miller is one of their best. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence.

Something is watching. Waiting.

His superiors tell him it was only in his mind, a product of stress.

Jonah is not so certain.

Then Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered, and Jonah finds himself getting dragged into the hunt for answers. Working with Harker’s daughter Annabel, he’s determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Soon they uncover long-hidden truths that call into doubt everything Jonah stands for, and reveal a threat that if not stopped in time, will put all of humanity in danger ...

Pan MacMillan have just published Reviver, a book which has already had its film rights sold to Legendary Pictures (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception and Man of Steel) – can this début book from Seth Patrick live up to the hype it’s creating?

Reviver tells the story of Jonah Miller. He is a Reviver – someone who possesses the ability to wake the recently dead and either find out how they died or enable them to say goodbye to their loved ones.

All is proceeding as normal until the deceased in a recent murder that Jonah brings back, begs to be let go: warning of something waiting in the dark. This is just the start of Jonah’s problems, which lead him down a path of murder, terrorism, and the possibility of corruption within the

revivers’ own ranks. However, all that will seem minor when compared to the horrible truth of what has been patiently waiting in the dark to be set free.

Reviver is definitely a book that should go into your reading list for this year. The plot is original and very well paced, drawing you in from the very beginning right the way through to the last page.

The characters are believable, and again the writing draws you right into their lives.

In case that isn’t enough, the publishers have also come up with a clever digital campaign which will help draw you into the world of Reviver even more – through the use of an app called Blippar. It turns you into a Reviver yourself by bringing the person on the cover of the book back to life so you can hear what she says. For a video demonstration on how this works go here…….. then head over to the Forensic Revival Service website for exclusive content surrounding the book.

Talk about getting your moneys worth! This is not only an excellent book but interactive gizmos to make the experience even more immersive.

Darkphoenix1701 Rating

GGGGG

“Something is watching. Waiting.”

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Geek Syndicate Orbital Volume 1 - Scars Image © Cinebook, 2009

COMIC REVIEW

Writer: Sylvain Runberg Artist: Serge Pellé Publisher: Cinebook

In the 23rd century, humans and Sandjarrs are allowed to join an intergalactic multiracial organisation set up 8,000 years before.

The humans are seen as a belligerent, underdeveloped race by the other members of the organisation and have been kept out of it until now. The Sandjarrs had stayed out of interplanetary politics until a war between themselves and the humans broke out. Now Caleb, a human, and Mezoke, a Sandjarr, are paired up and trained as special agents to keep the intergalactic peace. This is a controversial and historic alliance, and a lot of people are watching them. Their first mission is to keep war from breaking out between humans and Javlodes on the planet Senestam.

In Orbital, Sylvain Runberg and Serge Pellé have crafted a sci-fi spectacular that takes humanity

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into space (as bottom-feeders) to join an 8,000 year old confederation of alien civilisations.

If I had to compare Orbital with anything I would call it a cross between Babylon 5 and the Green Lantern Corps but that’s only give you a very generalised shape of the set-up. We open on Earth at the last conference before voting begins on joining the Confederation. Considering how hard it is to get a single country to agree on the benefits of joining the EU - imagine how hard it would be to convince our whole race to join the intergalactic equivalent.

A terrorist attack by an Isolationist group sets the tone for the piece and the course of the story for our human protagonist, Caleb Swany. Years later, Caleb is the first human to be recruited into the ranks of the Inter-world Diplomatic Office (IDO), in a role that seems to blend peacemaking with arse-kicking action in equal measures. The Confederation already perceives humanity as a violent, uncivilised species, so Caleb’s promotion is cause enough for scandal.

The fact that he is partnered with a Sandjarr (an alien species nearly wiped out by humans in a recent war) raises a lot of eyebrows, but the IDO is determined to use them as an example of the healing power of diplomacy.

This is the raison d’être for the entire comic and, although it’s pretty slow-burning to begin with, it does set the scene nicely for the prejudice and wholesale intolerance our heroes will have to combat across the Confederation to preserve the balance of peace.

Pellé’s artwork is the major draw for me with this book. Where Leo’s Antares favoured the clean lines and pristine machinery of golden-age sci-fi, Orbital takes a grimy future approach in the vein of Soldier and 2000 AD. Every panel is full of mood and texture, and Pellé spills imaginative details across the backgrounds to make the place bustle and give a sense of extra-terrestrial design.

It’s a tough universe out there, despite the high-tech SF on display: a working universe where people struggle to make a living through the storms and upheavals and war.

The menagerie of aliens is a pleasure to pick through, and Pellé manages the job of differentiating members of the same species with a deft touch and an eye for comparative anatomy. I hope we get to see more of them as main characters in future volumes rather than the largely background roles they play here.

Another aspect which bears particular note is the artist’s use of flat screen holographic devices for communication – really tricky to pull off in terms of perspective, the integration of colour and the passage of light “though” them, but it works to great effect.

The colours are (as usual in European comics) very muted in comparison to the bright-hues and flashiness of their US counterparts but they really fit the tone of muddied morality and practicality that Runberg reaches for in his writing. I look forward to seeing what he has in store for us in later volumes as we explore new worlds and their environments.

Geek Syndicate The story itself suffers a little through the sheer weight of exposition.

When it eventually comes, Caleb’s mission is a real trial by fire – attempting to get an unauthorised Isolationist human colony to up stakes – but the bulk of this first volume is taken up with explaining who Caleb is, how the human race is viewed by the Confederation, the history of the Human/Sandjarr war and showing us around the IDO on Orbital, their base of operations.

In other words there’s an awful lot of world building and not a lot of story, per say. Neither of the main characters are particularly well-developed by the end of this first volume but we get enough beats to understand that Caleb is noble and troubled, while Mezoke is talented but taciturn.

I was expecting a more explosive mixture but the personal drama seems to be in their combined efforts against prejudice rather than against each other. It makes for a decent working partnership - but not a classic one as yet. One element I enjoyed was the fact that Mezoke looks like a female but could quite possibly be male.

Like Pratchett’s dwarves, Sandjarr sexuality is kept very private indeed. It engenders a nice little

discomfort in the hetero-male reader about eyeing up exotic ladies. It also makes for a neat touch that many of the humans we meet are, if not reprehensible, at least a little unsavoury.

The bar-tender is a good example, spouting poisonous remarks in a poorly judged conversation with Caleb. It’s a good mirror to hold up to ourselves and easy to apply to how we think about foreign peoples and the wider world beyond our walls.

Over all I’m pretty pleased with Orbital. The future feels realistic in terms of the multiplicity of people. Of course there are still bigots and lowlifes, terrorists and scum. Just like there are still decent people trying to make things a little better in whatever way they can. There are grafters, ambassadors, policemen and everything between – all trying to make sense of the new world they find themselves in. I hope that future volumes will step a little farther from the human sphere, or at least have us in a less concentrated mass, if only so we can explore what else is out there. There is so much promise to this series, it’d be a shame for it to just focus on human colonies.

Some of Cinebook’s first volumes have been doubled up with the second – e.g. The Scorpion, Insiders, Largo Winch. As a marketing strategy it was ultimately unsuccessful but I can’t help feeling that Orbital would really benefit from that extra story-telling space. For one thing, when the mission finally does get going, things really kick off, with an infestation that could easily be Mike Mignola’s redesign of the Aliens franchise. These things are skin-crawlingly hideous, fast and utterly inhuman. The excreta hits the extractor and by the final panel you’ll be raging as to why it has to stop there. Well it doesn’t of course, because the next three volumes are available right now, with a fifth due out on October 17th 2013. I’ll be picking up a few of them at Thought Bubble this year. I think you should, too.

Dion Winton-Polak Rating

G G G GG A three page preview of Orbital Volume One starts on the next page.

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Geek Syndicate The World’s End Image © Focus Features, 2013

FILM REVIEW

Writers: Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright Director: Edgar Wright Starring: Rosamund Pike, Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman

Trying to capture the heyday of his youth, Gary King (Simon Pegg), decides to re-unite his four childhood friends to conquer a feat which beat them in the past.

The Golden Mile – an epic pub crawl of twelve pints in twelve pubs ending with The Worlds End of the title. At first, the friends grudgingly go along, all the while realising that whilst they have all grown up, Gary most certainly hasn’t and is as annoying as ever.

The disturbing discovery that all is not quite right with their old home town means that Gary and his friends will have to put their differences behind them and work together. Will they survive to make it home? Even more importantly, will Gary make it all the way to The World’s End?

This was a brilliant film as the plot was different and takes time to build up. You get an inkling that something isn’t quite right as do the guys on the pub crawl.

Then the reason is revealed – and it’s certainly something a little different than what you’d expect.

The acting by everyone is superb and the comic elements are, as you would expect very well-timed and excellent. There were lots of times when everyone in the cinema were roaring with laughter or simultaneously clapping. We haven’t laughed out load in the cinema so much in ages.

I would also like to give a proper mention to the music used which included nineties classics such as: • There’s No Other Way – Blur • So Young – Suede • Do You Remember the First Time – Pulp • Fools Gold – The Stone Roses • Step Back in Time – Kylie Minogue

Image © Focus Features, 2013

For Gary King (Simon Pegg) and Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) it was supposed to be the ultimate reunion - one night, five friends, twelve bars. A boozy quest to the ‘Worlds End’ pub on which only the strongest will survive. Having the time of

their lives, they’re ready to take on the world.. but tonight they might just have to save it. From the creators of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’ comes a wildly entertaining thrill ride of outrageous humour and explosive action that will raise a glass to the apocalypse.

Re-visting their youth will be more than a nostalgia trip

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Geek Syndicate Image © Focus Features, 2013

• Here’s Where The Story Ends – The Sundays As a couple whose teenage years were in this decade, this made the film feel even more special – some real classics from our past are in this. As the final piece in the Cornetto trilogy, The World’s End certainly goes out with a big and enjoyable minty bang.

The story of a pub crawl gone wrong could in some hands become a tired and boring story.

In Edgar Wright’s hands it is one full of comedy and laugh out loud moments all the way through – due in no small way to the performances of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and co.

Down it, down it! Before things get ... different.

Head to the cinema and see The World’s End - honestly you won’t be disappointed and you’ll enjoy a really good night out – don’t forget your ice cream though; mint appears to be the way to go!

Darkphoenix1701 JMS1701 Rating

GGGGG

Gary must be drunker than he thought!

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Geek Syndicate The Pirate Cinema Image © Titan Books, 2013

BOOK REVIEW

Author: Cory Doctorow Publisher: Titan Books

Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.

Trent’s too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly he learns the ways of staying alive on the streets.

This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativ-

ity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke.

Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powersthat-be haven’t entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people’s minds….

just tomorrow, such as hats that zap mosquitoes with mini-lasers (which perform a useful function later in the book). Doctorow has an excellent knack of taking today and extrapolating it forward a few years.

Pirate Cinema is a Young Adult novel by Cory Doctorow. Or more accurately, it is a call-to-arms. It is a manifesto and I imagine Cory hopes every teenager reads it for its political messages. But what of it’s plot? Protagonist Trent’s hobby ends up with his family having their internet connection cut meaning his Dad can’t work, his ill Mum can’t claim her benefits and his younger sister starts suffering at school. He runs away to London where adventure – pirate adventure – awaits.

Doctorow’s greatest talent, however, is creating stories out of potentially dull political topics, in this case internet piracy and copyright law, and making an eminently readable book. Pirate Cinema has loads going on and is the very definition of a pageturner. The characters are all interesting and different and the reader will quickly come to care for them. The author knows how to tell a story. He knows how to make technical stuff fun to learn about. He knows how to make his point. This latter point is one of two issues with this novel that need highlighting.

Trent finds himself squatting in an old pub and making remix films under the name Cecil B. DeVil. He meets a girl called 26 and the other members of what will become his gang. These are Chester, Rabid Dog and Jem. Together, the group are called the “Jammie Dodgers”. Trent’s mission – and that of the reader – is to learn about copyright law and how the big corporations and the government use it to make the rich richer and to put the poor in prison. Trent’s adventures include the creation of a literal underground cinema, dealing with his runaway sister, being filled a lawsuit and pulling off his greatest stunt while trying to get a law repealed.

The first is that this is a polemic.

Doctorow is known for his liberal views on internet piracy and copyright. If you’ve read any of his books or blogs before, odds are that you’ll already know his politics and this won’t be anything new or surprising. If you disagree with his point of view (and this reviewer doesn’t), you might find that you quickly tire of being lectured to. There is of course, nothing wrong with a shouty, preachy, science fiction book. Many of the best regarded sci-fi works are exactly that. But they also tend to be subtle or nuanced. This book is certainly not.

The problem with Pirate Cinema is that everything comes too easy to Trent.

There are some nice touches of science fiction that take the plot a little further into the future than

Which brings me to my second issue with the book. Trent is in-

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Geek Syndicate troduced as a genius, but when this story begins he is an underage runaway who arrives in London with no knowledge and no friends. It seems to me that everything comes tom him a bit too easily. Within a short time of arriving in London he finds himself in a gang of equally talented, cool and smart friends.

They dine on the best free food and spend all day perfecting coffee. He meets his dream girl and they quickly fall in love. When Trent needs something, such as a new bit of technology, or a way to avoid being kicked out of the squat, someone turns up at the most opportune moment with the solution. Whenever he screws up, everyone forgives him. At one point, he gets nervous and leaves a meeting just before it is raided by the police meaning

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that unlike all his friends, Trent avoids arrest. And it’s fine. They all get out of jail quickly and noone minds he didn’t share their troubles.

Whenever you expect 26 to berate Trent or point out his flaws, she just kisses him. There’s a lot of sexuality in the story and for a young adult book, again, it all comes too easy for Trent. He gets his first kiss with 26 and then they have sex. Soon after he discovers two of his friends are gay and that plot thread ends with everything being just fine. There is no struggle, especially considering most of the characters are a bunch of homeless misfits. Drugs are fine.

Not having money is fine. Nothing Trent does ends badly. There is no sense of peril or real difficulty, so you know that in the end, despite all the barriers that

Doctorow throws at him, he will succeed.

To be fair, there is a bit of a downer coda, but even that, you feel, will work out ok in the end.

Despite all that, I thoroughly enjoyed Pirate Cinema. It was fun. As I was reading it I knew its flaws and failings and I knew it would end well. I expect a lot of disenfranchised teens will enjoy it too, as well as existing fans of Doctorow. I doubt, however, it will appeal to anyone else. Nothing is genuinely earned by the characters and there is no honest counter-balance to the story.

Ian J. Simpson Rating

G G G GG

Geek Syndicate DVD REVIEW

Doctor Who: Regeneration The “Book” It’s perhaps a bit unfair to review the book element of the set separately, since its sole purpose is to supplement the discs themselves. However, if the box set is intended as a “way in” to classic Doctor Who for people unfamiliar with the classic series, then the information is pretty important. Each page contains three or so paragraphs introducing the reader to each incarnation of the Doctor’s personality as well as briefly introducing the reader to the Time Lord’s companions for the adventures contained on the discs.

Publisher: BBC Worldwide

As I’m sure pretty much everybody in the country is aware right now, 2013 is the fiftieth anniversary of the BBC television series, Doctor Who. In addition to various celebratory events, television programmes, audio adventures and books, BBC Worldwide have seen fit to release a DVD box-set to commemorate this auspicious occasion. The theme they chose is regeneration – the stories in the set? Quite simply the stories which feature The Doctor’s regeneration from one actor into another.

itself is sturdy, and the “front” has the white fiftieth anniversary logo and an image of the current Doctor, Matt Smith from behind in what seems to be the initial stages of regeneration. The back lists the stories contained within.

Presentation

The overall quality of the box, the book and the discs themselves is high, giving the box-set a true collectible feel. However, the discs do just slide into unprotected cardboard sleeves which has me worried about repeated usage.

The DVD set is presented in a coffee-table book sized box and is limited to 10,000 sets released, though I have to imagine this refers to the original print run only and further copies will in-fact be produced over time. The box

Out of the box. The DVDs are presented in a book format similar (for those who saw it) to the recent James Bond fortieth Anniversary film collection. The main difference here is that the DVD sleeve / pages contain information about each Doctor and the story in which they regenerated in turn.

Information about each story is interesting, providing a brief overview, production concerns and so on that were present during the production of the stories in the set. Having said that, I’m not sure what value the information would have to a newbie.

The DVDs The set contains six discs with a total of ten stories. While it seems that this would add up: one story for each Doctor regenerating into the current, a quick examination reveals otherwise. Everything is fine until after The Caves of Androzani. Due to the way in which Colin Baker was replaced, he never received a regeneration story.

Instead, we’re given Sylvester McCoy’s first story in which that actor falls over in Colin Baker’s costume and a bad wig to turn into himself. Then we come to Paul McGann – we see his performance in two thirds of the Doctor Who movie after Sylvester McCoy regenerates, but again he has no

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Image © BBC Worldwide, 2013

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The “Book” component is nicely presented in monochrome with splashes of colour on the image. A quote and Doctor / Story information.

exit story. As an introduction to each Doctor, the set is lacking.

Image © BBC Worldwide, 2013

The DVDs contain no extras at all and there is no extra disc containing a celebratory documentary or some such. Pop a disc in the drive, and there’s no nice TARDIS in the vortex animation that owners of other Classic Doctor Who DVDs will be familiar with. No. Instead, a simple static menu is presented with a list of episodes. Not even a scene select.

Special mention must be given to the first adventure in the box set.

It’s the first time that The Tenth Planet has been on DVD and it includes an animated reconstruction of the missing fourth episode. Previously, the story’s VHS release featured the soundtrack over surviving photographs of the episode and I have to say this animated version is top quality.

Those who have seen The Invasion and its animated episodes will know what to expect. The likenesses to characters are superb and the direction certainly matches what one expects, having viewed the previous three episodes in live-action glory.

The Six-Disc Set in all it’s glory

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Overall The set is a nice collectible for any Doctor Who fan, though perhaps redundant to anyone who owns the stories contained here on DVD already.

This is compounded by the lack of any extras on the discs themselves. As an

introduction to classic Who? I’m not sure the stories here provide the best examples for all the Doctors – with Colin Baker in particular losing out by not featuring AT ALL in the box set.

Perhaps this is a missed opportunity for BBC Worldwide to produce a box set that included some classic stories from each Doctor.

While the regeneration theme is strong on the face of it, I can’t help but think a trick has been missed here.

Buy it if you’re a hardcore fan and want a coffee table collection, but honestly I’d get hold of these adventures separately and wait for the “proper” release of The Tenth Planet.

Antony McGarry-Thickitt Rating

G G GG G

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Geek Syndicate EVENT PREVIEW - MCM Expo (October, 2013)

Synopsis: MCM host Comic Con events 5 times a year with MCM London Comic Con and 60,000+ consumers at its core. The show is held over three day and is a showcase of entertainment and modern popular culture from various segments of the entertainment industry including but not restricted to Science Fiction or Fantasy Films & TV, Animation, Comic Books, Anime & Manga, Pop Art, Collectables (Action Figures, Autographs etc.) & Merchandising.

Dates: 25 Oct 2013 - 27 Oct 2013 Geek Syndicate Says: “So excited for MCM Expo this year in October. I’ve been to the past couple and they’ve been a stupid amount of fun! The atmosphere there is incredible and the range of costumes is amazing. I cosplay with friends at conventions and the whole planning and making the costume as a group is brilliant. ”

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Geek Syndicate BOOK PREVIEW - Skin Game, By Jim Butcher

Synopsis: Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard PI. Turns out the ‘everyday’ world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in.

But he’s forgotten his own golden rule: magic - it can get a guy killed.

Release (UK): 03 Dec 2013 Author: Jim Butcher Publisher: Orbit Books Geek Syndicate Says: “I am looking forward to the new Jim Butcher novel. It is in the 15th book in the Harry Dresden series.

I absolutely love these urban fantasy novels about a wizard PI. They are intelligent and have a great humor running all the way through them. Jim Butcher only does a book a year and this one is due out nicely in time for Christmas - so I just cant wait, especially after the ending of the last book.

These books are the only ones that have to buy in hardback as soon as they come up - I just cant wait! Wendy Sims Stars and Stones, surely it must be December by now!”

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Geek Syndicate COMIC PREVIEW - Five Ghosts (Ongoing Series) Synopsis: NOW AN ONGOING SERIES! Fabian travels to Japan to aid an old ally in the search for a mythical weapon: the legendary sword known as MASAMUNE! A special stand-alone tale featuring artist GARRY BROWN (The Massive, Mass Effect)!

Release (UK): 30 Oct 2013 Creators: Frank J. Barbiere, Chris Mooneyham Publisher: Image Comics Geek Syndicate Says: “The thing I’m most excited about is the Five Ghosts ongoing series starting up at the end of October!

One of the best comic miniseries of the year gets an ongoing series and only furthers the awesome pulp adventures, this time with Fabian in Japan. That art form Garry Brown looks darn good too. ”

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Geek Syndicate VIDEO GAME PREVIEW - Grand Theft Auto V

Synopsis: Franklin, a former street gangster, now looking for real opportunities and serious money; Michael, a professional ex-con whose retirement is a lot less rosy than he hoped it would be; and Trevor, a violent maniac driven by the chance of a cheap high and the next big score. Running out of options, the crew risks everything in a series of daring and dangerous heists that could set them up for life.

Release (UK): 17 Sep 2013 Developer: Rockstar Games Geek Syndicate Says: “I’m looking forward to GTAV the most. I always love those games for that feeling of getting away from things, a nice detailed world to explore and play in. I am curious how the three character system will work out but I trust Rockstar enough to think I will like it however it is implemented.”

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Geek Syndicate TV PREVIEW - Doctor Who Fiftieth Anniversary Episode

Synopsis: The Doctor is back. As is The Doctor. And ... The Doctor?

The fiftieth anniversary sees the Eleventh incarnation of the Time Lord team up with his former self (selves?) and the Unified Intelligence Taskforce to battle Daleks and Zygons.

Release (UK): 23 Nov 2013 Writer: Steven Moffat Starring: Matt Smith, David Tennant, John Hurt, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Billie Piper & Joanna Page Credit: Name Geek Syndicate Says: “I’m looking forward to the doctor who 50th anniversary. I’m a huge whovian and the end to the name of the doctor was just incredible. And Tennant is coming back!!!!! Tennant!!!!!!!”

Luke Halsall

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Geek Syndicate ELEVATOR PITCHES What’s an Elevator Pitch?

Imagine you have a production that you’ve put a lot of work, life and soul into. You love it.You know others would to. You get into an elevator, maybe in a hotel at a convention. At the same time, in walks a well-known editor. The doors close and you are alone. This is your chance - but you only have a short time to get your work noticed ...

That’s the concept of Elevator Pitches. Provide us with a single sentence summarising your production and another explaining why we should pick it up. Follow this up with a preview and the pitch is done - let the work sell itself.

If you would like to submit a production for this section, email: thegeeks@geeksyndicate.co.uk.

Reynard City Buy It From: www.reynardcity.com

What is Reynard City?

“It’s an online comic but also working on animated pilot, video game and graphic novel. It’s about three superhero foxes who come to Earth and take on a robot fox.

Think Saturday morning cartoon meets Yellow Submarine!”

Why should we pick this up?

“Reynard City is full of odd touches and surprises- whether it’s a psychic vixen who inflates on contact with caramel or our heroes being trapped by a villain designed to humiliate them there are twists and turns that both evoke Silver Age comics and subvert them!”

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Man From Space Writer: Marc Jackson Artist: Marc Jackson Publisher: Weirdo Comics Buy It From: manfromspace.co.uk

What is Man From Space?

“Man From Space is a Saturday morning cartoon style comic that follows the ridiculous adventures of a schlubby rascal with an awesome beard and his sidekick Michael, the Goldfish. We follow them on their quest to make money to pay off Michael’s escalating gambling debts by any means necessary. Along the way they encounter fine-art loving aliens, teleporting robots and mustachioed midget wrestlers... of course they do. ”

Why should we pick this up?

“Man from Space is a surreal, fun and funny ride reminiscent of Nickleodeon style cartoons – and who doesn’t love those? So buckle up, strap-on your fun-pants and leave your good sense at the door, MAN FROM SPACE is coming to you, via Uranus...

You can check out the comic in full for free at manfromspace.co.uk. Follow me on twitter. There’s also a fan-club too!”

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Zoë Out of Time Creators / Writers: J. Michalski & Alexander Lagos Artist: Derlis Santacruz Colourist: Oren Kramek Letters: Antonio Rojo Buy It From: Available on Comixology, Amazon and at ZoeOutOfTime.com

What is Zoë Out of Time?

“It is the year 2050, and rebellious sixteen year old, Zoe Black has stolen her famous father’s prototype time travel device, the Kronos Traveller, risking her life to journey back to the year 1990 all to meet legendary rock singer, Trent Darrow of the band Rebel Lions- only to discover once she arrives that the doomed singer has fallen for her, and worse, that his death was no accident but…a planned murder.

A full color, four issue mini-series.”

Why should we pick this up?

“Genius” … “Supersedes many mainstream titles” - AIN’T IT COOL NEWS “Time travel to save Rock’n’Roll” ... “a solid first issue” ... “coming back for #2” - COMIC SPECTRUM “What the hell happens next?” ... “begs for issue #2” “Zoe: Out of Time gets a 10 out of 10”

- THE CRITICS DEN - GEEKY UNIVERSE

“Story is fun, characters have depth and it’s rendered in gorgeous detailed, atmospheric art” - PANELS AND PIXELS “A definite must read” ... “Enjoyed every page!”

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- WHAT’CHA READING.com

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