The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

It’s Thursday afternoon once more and that means its time for Alex Fitch to update us on the radio and podcast shows he’s involved with over the next week. Actually Alex said they decided to abandon talking about comics and just devote themselves entirely to talking about how wonderful Obama is. No, I’m joshing, they didn’t. As ever check the Panel Borders site for more info and links to archived podcasts of previous shows:

Strip: The art of Ken Reid, this evening at 5pm on Resonance FM (and available as a podcast on Panel Borders soon after)

In the last of this month’s quartet of shows about four generations of British Cartoonists, Alex Fitch talks to writers Alan Moore and Pat Mills about their favourite cartoonist, the late Ken Reid who drew Rodger the Dodger in the 1950s Beano and a variety of underrated strips in children’s comics such as Wham! and Whoopee! including the creepy classics Faceache and Frankie Stein, up to the 1980s…

(Rodger the Doger by the great Ken Reid, from the 1953 Beano, borrowed from Peter Hansen’s fine tribute page, where he has a good bio of Ken and the entire page of this strip, image (c) DC Thomson)

Recent podcasts…:

Electric Sheep Magazine podcast: Hitchcock, Hyde and Houdini – the Magic of Classics

In an interview / Q & A recorded live at the Roxy Bar and Screen, Alex Fitch talks to magician Granville Markland about depictions of magic and magicians on the big screen, focussing on the work of Harry Houdini in such films as The Man from Beyond (1922) and the more recent blurring of fact and fiction in movies like The Prestige and The Illusionist. Also, Alex talks to musician and comedy writer Robin Warren from the band Liberation Jumpsuit about the recent BFI cinema rereleases of Hitchcock’s Notorious and Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr Hyde (1932) which combine suspense and eroticism to beguiling effect.

Panel Borders: The work of Peter Doherty (originally broadcast on Resonance FM on the 22nd of January)

In the third of this month’s shows about four generations of British cartoonists, Alex Fitch is talking to an artist who started work in the early 90s on Judge Dredd megazine, illustrating the acclaimed serial Young Death – Boyhood of a superfiend, has worked on a variety of titles in America such as Batman / Superman, The Dreaming and Grendel Tales, before returning to the world of Dredd again more recently. Peter Doherty has worked as a penciller, a fully rendered artist and as a colourist on off beat titles such as Shaolin Cowboy and Grant Morrison’s absurdist Sea Guy.