BERSERKOTRON page 14 at WEBCOMICS NATION












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DAN O'BANNON

Dan O’Bannon has died. He’s well known as a movie writer. Among his credits are Alien, Blue Thunder, Dark Star, Heavy Metal, Invaders from Mars, Lifeforce and Total Recall. He also directed Return of the Living Dead and worked on special effects for Star Wars.

In the 70's, O’Bannon wrote an incredibly influential comic story called The Long Tomorrow. It was drawn by Moebius. The finished comic is acknowledged as being a major influence on Ridley Scott when he was working on Blade Runner, as you can see from these pages...

RIP Dan O’Bannon 1946-2009

CHRISTMAS COMICS 2

Another cracker...

















In 1973 Raymond Briggs depicted Father Christmas as a miserable git who felt well put out by everyone and everything. It's a great comic.

It was no surprise when Briggs declared that he hated Christmas a couple of years ago on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. This book is enjoyable because Father Christmas' bad attitude is presented with Briggs' art, which looks so...warm and inviting. You would give this to a kid quite happily.

CHRISTMAS COMICS

I have a liking for Christmas comics. Probably my favourite is Christmas with the Super-Heroes, a DC compilation.

It features Neal Adams, Nick Cardy, Dick Dillin, Mike Friedrich, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Dick Giordano, Bob Haney, Paul Levitz, Frank Miller, Denny O’Neill and others. It was published in 1988, a time when a nostalgic feeling for my own Christmases past was starting to come through.

Mark Waid wrote a nostalgia fuelled editorial for it...

I think my favourite story is the charming Superman and Santa Claus. Written by Len Wein and E. Nelson Bridwell, and drawn by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, it neatly tied together both fictional characters by playing on the idea that they both lived in the North Pole.

Great stuff all round. Pick up a copy if you can find one.

BERSERKOTRON page 13 at WEBCOMICS NATION















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MALABAR

Clearing out the loft, I came across these again recently. Bubblegum wrapper inserts given to me in 1986 by visitors to France.

I still think they're really nice...

WHOHUB








Have a read of my whohub interview here.

BERSERKOTRON page 12 at WEBCOMICS NATION













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SCOTLAND IN COMICS 4

In 1987, Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri brought the X-Men to Edinburgh. Dazzler, Rogue, Psylocke and Longshot had a big fight with Juggernaut on Princes Street...


































At the time, I liked Silvestri's art. There was a certain lack of weight to everything and it all looked dashed off, but it was different. In retrospect, it was the first of the "Image" style of art I'd come across.

I like the cheeky Doctor Who reference on this next page. Also the mention of Captain Britain, at this time a Marvel UK character that the US comics ignored almost completely. Claremont was already writing towards his later Excalibur series, which featured Captain Britain prominently.

















Next, we have some locals having a chat after the X-Men have sorted out Juggernaut.


















Just for the hell of it, here is the cover. It's a goodie.

















It was good to see Art Adams draw Longshot again - I liked the original series drawn by him.

A few months after this X-Men issue, Colossus visited Edinburgh. This story had a nice personal touch for me. More anon...

BORDERS IN TROUBLE

Wow. Something really was going on at Borders. I observed they were pretty switched on regarding comics, i.e. a decent graphic novels section, stocking Crikey! magazine, and US Marvels. I then saw that they had Nickelodeon Magazine on sale too.

Over the years, I’ve read online on various bulletin boards people discussing this kid’s comic based on the TV cartoons of Nickelodeon, and how it features a lot of top notch cartoonists including Nick Bertozzi, Sam Henderson, Kaz, James Kochalka, Roger Langridge, Jason Lutes, Brian Ralph, Scott Roberts, Art Spiegelman, Jay Stephens etc. Really a ludicrously good roster of people, and many more too. But this was the first time I’d seen it in the flesh, as it were, and so I was all set to write it up, when news of Borders going into administration appeared. It’s a great shame.

Then I saw yesterday they are even stocking Dodgem Logic, Alan Moore’s new magazine!

I hope something can be sorted out, because someone at Borders really knows their stuff and is making a good effort to get in quality stuff.