Today\u2019s been a comic-reading day mostly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the Christmas break I\u2019ve been re-reading comics that tie into the recent Doomsday Clock<\/em> by Johns and Frank. As I always do – it\u2019s a curse – I go back too far, really and also spend too much time reading criticism and interviews. Where I was reading Flashpoint<\/em> (2011) a few days ago, I\u2019ve now moved further back to DC Universe #<\/em>0 where Barry Allen returns after a twenty-two year death and will work my way through Final Crisis<\/em> (2008) and Flash: Rebirth <\/em>(2008). Eventually I\u2019ll have read up to Doo<\/em>msday Clock and by then should have a better understanding of it. Or, by then, be completely fed up with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We watched the new Doctor Who<\/em> episode tonight. It was better than I expected. No, not the story (though I did like the sequences in the alien forest or whatever it was) which stank. It was Sacha Dhawan\u2019s Master who stole the episode. You could tell his character, O, wasn\u2019t the endearing geek he presented himself. He had a full set of Fortean Times<\/em> after all, which was a dead giveaway. When he revealed himself and showed off the real tissue compressioned O who he carried around in a matchbox, I thought it was great. The last couple of minutes made up for the tedious hour or so that preceded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doctor Who <\/em>just needs some good science fiction writers, that\u2019s all. Or horror writers. I\u2019d die for a Ramsey Campbell episode. I really would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you consider how inadequate Doctor Who<\/em> looks alongside a programme like Lost in Space<\/em>, you realise how badly the British show needs good scriptwriters. It\u2019s obvious that Lost in Space<\/em> has a much bigger budget. I don\u2019t think money is the determining factor here, though. There are lots of expensive programmes that are just junk. Lost in Space<\/em> is, like Doctor Who<\/em>, character-driven. But it\u2019s been written by people who can actually construct an engaging plot. Yes, there are dull moments in Lost in Space<\/em>, but it never descends into the silliness Doctor Who<\/em> gets caught up in. Maybe it\u2019s British mainstream comedy. I\u2019m not sure. Certainly, I\u2019m enjoying the American series far more than any season of new Dr Who<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alice worries we spend too long in front of screens. I\u2019m not sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the moment I\u2019m trying to read 10% of a novel and 10% of a non-fiction book a day. Perhaps I should add that to my New Year\u2019s resolutions. Last year I didn\u2019t read nearly as much as I wanted to. I used to read quickly, but now seem to take ages reading. I wonder if it\u2019s anything to do with my eyesight?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also found out that Syd Mead, the futuristic designer of worlds like Blade Runner and Tron, has died. When I was a child, his visions of vehicles of the future and their environments was what I expected to drive and live in. I\u2019ve never understood why cars look so boring when they could so easily look like a Syd Mead vehicle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today\u2019s been a comic-reading day mostly. Over the Christmas break I\u2019ve been re-reading comics that tie into the recent Doomsday Clock by Johns and Frank. As I always do – it\u2019s a curse – I go back too far, really and also spend too much time reading criticism and interviews. Where I was reading Flashpoint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyhollingsbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}