Archive | June, 2006

Holy Drokk!

20. June 2006

Comments Off

Boing Boing directs me to a fun entry on Wiki for fictional curse words. Comics and SF have generated more than their fair share of such fictional expletives over the years; I’ve often found them to be a lifesaver when in a space where yelling something very rude is not a good idea but where [...]

Continue reading...

Neil talk’s Alan’s Lost Girls

20. June 2006

1 Comment

Neil Gaiman has posted the full version of his thoughts originally written (in a shorter version, although he didn’t know that when he wrote it) for Publisher’s Weekly on Alan Moore and and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls, which is due from excellent Indy comics house Top Shelf this August and is bound to annoy the [...]

Continue reading...

Ninth Art rings down the curtain

20. June 2006

Comments Off

Sad news this week – the extremely good and well respected comics commentary site The Ninth Art ceases operation with this week’s issue after five years of weekly updates. The original crew who started way back in 2001 (an eon in internet site time, as they observe) have posted a farewell to the readers and [...]

Continue reading...

Edinburgh SF Book Group June

20. June 2006

Comments Off

The June meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will take place next week on Tuesday the 27th of June, with this month’s book choice being the classic Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe; all are welcome to come along to Henderson’s on Hanover Street at 6pm to join in.

Continue reading...

Superman Returns – the first reviews

20. June 2006

Comments Off

The BBC gathers together quotes from a variety of media who have been lucky enough to see advance press screenings of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (sadly neither I nor my webslinging colleagues here were invited, sigh). The inspiring news for we fans is that the critics seem to have loved it, from the Hollywood Reporter [...]

Continue reading...

Craig Charles questioned

20. June 2006

Comments Off

Red Dwarf (and now Coronation Street and BBC radio presenter on the Funk Show) star Craig ‘Lister’ Charles appears to have dived back into the old drugs trouble again. Charles has been in trouble for drug use before, although after his incarceration for an alleged sex crime which he was found not guilty of he [...]

Continue reading...

Future headline contest

19. June 2006

Comments Off

Anthony and Dan’s excellent Shooting War webcomic, which Anthony discussed here last week, is set in 2011. For a bit of fun the guys are running a competition where readers can send in their own headlines for the year 2011 – go on, have a look, some of them are quite clever and funny. You [...]

Continue reading...

Locus Awards 2006

18. June 2006

Comments Off

Cheryl over on Emerald City has the list of this year’s Locus magazine awards, which were announced in Seattle the other night. Kelly Link’s novella Magic For Beginner’s continues to score more wins and more admirers (well done, Kelly) while another damned fine author and good chum of the FPI blog who has been racking [...]

Continue reading...

Flaming Carrot!

17. June 2006

Comments Off

I’ve always had a soft-spot for Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot – one of the quirkiest superheroes in all of comicdom. Our chums at Image have just launched a new series of the Flaming Carrot which hit the shelves this week, which gives me a good excuse to stick up a picture of FC: Another of [...]

Continue reading...

Casting for Shriek

17. June 2006

Comments Off

The Jeff VanderMeer experience has details of casting in the Shriek movie – which I am so looking forward to seeing – letting us know that the great author Elizabeth Hand will be the image of Janice Shriek. More as we hear it.

Continue reading...

Aardman pick up gongs in Queen’s Birthday Honours

17. June 2006

Comments Off

Two of the founders of the famous Aardman Animation, home to Wallace and Gromit, Morph and Creature Comforts among others, have been awarded CBEs in the Queen’s 80th birthday honours. Peter Lord and David Sproxton who started making animations way back in 1976; they join their well-known colleague Nick Park who was awarded a CBE [...]

Continue reading...

Josh Hartnett for 30 Days of Night flick?

16. June 2006

Comments Off

Josh Hartnett is in negotiations to play the sheriff in the David Slade-directed movie version of 30 Days of Night. Based on the fantastically monstrous graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, it tells of a group of very nasty vampires who decide to take a break in Barrow, Alasksa, where the sun will [...]

Continue reading...

Serenity charity screenings

16. June 2006

Comments Off

A number of screenings of Serenity, roughly timed around Joss Whedon’s birthday on June 23rd, are scheduled for around the world in order to raise money for the charity Equality Now – full details on their site (thanks to Cheryl for the tip).

Continue reading...

Book Festival site overloads

16. June 2006

1 Comment

Apparently demand was so huge that when the site for tickets for this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival went on sale the site crashed, while the physical box office had a queue right out the door at one point. How many people were trying to obtain tickets for Ken MacLeod or Charlie Stross is not [...]

Continue reading...

Meet the new Peter Parker

16. June 2006

Comments Off

No, not the one who has caused all sorts of spoiler trouble this week as it was revealed ahead of time that Spidey unmasks himself in Marvel’s Civil War, but Peter Parker Kirkman. Top comics scribe Robert Kirkman reveals a very good reason for being behind on some deadlines in the shape of his new [...]

Continue reading...