Margaret Attwood does Alan Moore - shocker.
Have I just found an example of Margaret Attwood ripping off Alan Moore? Watching Alias Grace on Netflix, there's a trope that occurs in every episode where the doctor asks Grace what an object suggests to her (eg an apple), we get a flashback to what it brings to her mind (eg a death) then she gives the doctor an innocuous alternative answer. This is exactly what happens in Watchmen, with Rorshach and his doctor.
Watchmen is from 1987, Alias Grace was written in 1994. Had anyone used this trick before, or have we got an example for the Swipe File?
Johnny Hallyday
Ironically his last word was the 'H' he kept forgetting to say at the start of his surname.
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"Justice League may well sell fewer tickets than the first Twilight did" - why would anyone be surprised by this? Middle aged comic fans seem to think that a movie can succeed because it features characters that they have an obessesion with, but that's not how movies work. Word of mouth, as a result of it actually being A Good Film, is their biggest seller. That's how you get a Twilight and a Frozen. Disney & Dreamworks know that they've had successes and flops from Shrek to Sharks Tale and it all boils down to whether the film works or not. Not whether you'd heard of the picture book Shrek before you went.
So Justice League (a comic book that no civilian I've ever met has ever heard of) featuring Aquaman (who?) and Cyborg (double who?) and Flash (what, off the telly, never seen him) and Batman & Superman (what, from the most slagged off film of 2 years ago?) turns out to have nothing that would help its advance publicity (to real people, not forty-somethings who frequent Forbidden Planet), and is only a so-so film. How could that compete with Thor Ragnarok, which seems comparable to a better Pirates Of The Caribbean movie in that it gets great word of mouth and, er, that's all it needed.
So a 3 star movie featuring 75 year old characters does worse than one of the most audience-catchingly novel movie franchises of a generation? Durr.
Sudden realisation: when the Marvel & DC movies both start failing, THIS is what happens next... (Superman vs Spider-Man, 1976).
DC vs Marvel
Do you remember when you were at school and you'd have loved to have had an argument about which Marvel and DC characters were best, but there was only one other guy in the whole school who read comics, and he liked the same ones you did?
The 1980s. You had to be there.
Has anyone else had an email like this from booking dot com? Why was I sent an email asking me to 'Finish My Booking" for a booking I'd already had confirmed? It says "are you still interested in staying?" as if there was some doubt. I ended up booking the room twice & had to cancel! Just me?
Zimbabwe
Do you think when Stevie Wonder sings that line in Masterblaster from 1980 now he sings "Peace has come to Zimbabwe... and this time we mean it" ?
Black Friday
Since 2006, there have been 7 Black Friday-related deaths & 98 injuries in the USA. There, that's cheered you up hasn't it?
Apparently the term is first recorded in Philadelpdia in 1961 referring to the weekend's bad traffic, and it took 20 years before retailers started using it to mean "in the black". It wasn't until 2013 that Asda (owned by Walmart) tried to popularise it in the UK, and Amazon started using it here. Before that, it had been a term used by the Police & NHS to refer to the Friday before Christmas when emergency services needed special contingency plans to cope.
Essentially it's like when the Catholic Church nicked our Solstice & Yule festivals and started calling them Christmas.
Plus ca change.
Bonus fact, fact fans: Long before the term came to denote the shopping frenzy on the day after Thanksgiving, Steely Dan released this song about the original "Black Friday," when on Friday, September 24, 1869 a failed ploy left many wealthy investors broke. The investors tried to corner the market on gold, buying as much of it as they could and driving up the price, but when the government found out, it released $4 million worth of gold into the market, driving down the price and clobbering the investors.
Official DONALD TRUMP IN COMICS BY KIDS calendar for 2018 on sale now.
The Official Kev F's Comic Art Masterclass calendar is on sale now. https://tinyurl.com/comiccal18
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