Socks in Malta - the video

The Socks play Malta on Feb 2 & 3, and now there's a video to promote it. Enjoy (and do please circulate as far and wide as you can. To everyone in Malta.

One Pound Fish - Scottish Falsetto Socks

Never one to let a bandwagon roll by without jumping on, here's the Socks' first video of the year. We promise it gets better from here on up.



Anyone not living in the UK watching every trivial item on the news might not have the faintest idea what this video is about, in which case well done you.

Socks in Malta

Last year it was Adelaide, the year before it was Denmark, not long ago it was The Hague, and now the Socks continue their slow but steady trickle around the world with a pair of shows in February in Malta.



The tickets are 15e / 12.50e concessions. Excuse us while we go off and find out how much an "e" is worth. And the guys running the shows, James & Erin the Wembley Store Boys, designed the poster themselves adapting our own Titanic image from last year's Socks calendar because the gig is taking place on a Pirate Ship. You heard me. Booking details will be up soon, so let's spread the word to everyone we know in Malta shall we?

January in the Socks calendar

This is how we celebrate January on the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's 2013 calendar, with the Socks doing Star Wars.

Click on the picture to see it full size and, if you wish, to see all the pages of the calendar, and last year's too. You can still buy the 2013 calendar with its 12 unique brand new specially drawn cartoons by Kev F formerly of The Beano. It's good for another 12 months and is a collector's item joy to treasure. Buy it here. This unique celebration of the Scottish Falsetto Socks will see you through the year 2013, containing as it does every single day - with none missing - and all public holidays lovingly hand-mentioned, and costs just £10.25. Have a look for free and order now, you know it makes sense.

And if you're still not convinced, enjoy this musical number...



A video with a specially recorded song by the Socks promoting the 2013 Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre calendar. Order it now.

Predictions - how'd we do on 2012?

Hi Futurology fans, and did we all enjoy last night's BBC2 showing of Blade Runner, set in 2019 with its flying cars and smoking indoors? Well, the time has come once more to try predicting the coming year, and looking back on how well we did last year.



Last year, in this column, I tried predicting what might happen in 2012. How hilariously inaccurate was I? Let's see. The questions were...

1) Which classic TV show will be remade in 2012?
2) Which TV shows will be cancelled in 2012?
3) Who will surprise by getting their own hit TV series?
4) What new movie franchise will be announced/made?
5) How much will litre of petrol cost in Dec '12 (currently approx £1.30)?
6) Who will win Edinburgh Comedy Award 2012?
a) Best act? b) Best newcomer?
7) Celeb on the Slab?
8) Who will win the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest?
9) Who will become Mayor of London?
10) Who will be 13th Doctor Who?
11) Who will win US Presidency?
12) Who will be Labour leader at end of 2012?
13) Will any countries leave the Euro? If so who?
14) Surprise country to have a revolution/uprising?
15) What will be surprise invention/technicological advance?
16) Will average UK house prices rise or fall by Dec '12?
Predict:
17) Biggest scandal
18) Biggest change in national newspapers
19) Biggest weather news
20) Christmas Number 1

Here were my guesses on Jan 1st 2012. How did I do?

1) The Good Life, The Avengers, Danger Mouse, Adam Adamant Lives, Fawlty Towers (the musical)
0 out of 5
2) Top Gear, Doctor Who, X Factor, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Hollyoaks
0 out of 5
3) Christine Bleakley
Not that I'm aware of
4) Desperate Dan
Should have put him in the cancelled column
5) £1.30 (ie no overall change)
YES - I got one right! Go - me! Go - me! Go - me!
6) a) A former Cambridge Footlighter b) An Avalon act
a) No. Wrong, it was an American, Doctor Brown
b) No, Wrong, it was a Norwegian, Daniel Simonsen
7) Prince Phillip - during the Olympics
Quack quack oops. Nope, even that didn't kill him. 
8) Croatia
No, Wrong, it was Sweden
9) Boris Johnson again
Yes. Got another one right. Less proud of this one, but right all the same.
10) Himish Patel (plays Tamwar in Eastenders)
The jury is still out on this one, but now I've changed my guess
11) Barack Obama again
YES - Third one right. And I bet I am the ONLY person who predicted that one. Right?
12) Ed Miliband still
YES - Another one right. Not that it was in question, but well done in getting the obvious ones, me.
13) No. Italy.
YES, and no
14) Southern states of USA
Silly suggestion, not even worth considering
15) The roll-up iPad
Was there a technological advance? If so, I missed it.
16) Fall by 5%
Up by 3.5%
17) Ricky Gervais jailed
Didn't happen, despite all his best efforts
18) Sun adds Sunday edition
YES, another bleeding obvious thing went ahead and happened
19) Snow & ice begins in October
No, rain and rain continued from May to December
20) Poverty charity single inc Bananarama
No, it was a Hillsborough justice charity record, and Bananarama were conspicuous by their absence.

So, out of 20 possible predictions, I got 6 right. Is that good? Let's move on and start predicting 2013 shall we..?

(NB: Here's how I fared in Paul Cornell's This Time Next Year quiz, which may well have inspired my own guessing game.)

My review of 2012 (in pictures)

And if that don't tell you all about our 2012, then I'll probably have to go back over it and write out the details so you can read them. For the time being, enjoy the pretty picture.

If you can't make it all out, this picture records that in 2012 the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre played a record 110 full length shows (mostly an hour, some 90 minutes) inc 42 shows at Edinburgh (2 a day), 38 tour dates, 30 days at the Adelaide Fringe plus 34 slots on stand up and variety bills.

I stayed in 33 hotels, plus 60 nights in our flats in Adelaide and Edinburgh and 30 nights with my family (10 with my sister's family, 17 with my Mum, 2 with Val & Rosie in Aberdeen and 1 with Hev's parents in Bodelwyddan) giving me a record 123 nights away from home.

On the less record breaking side I did fewer days teaching comics in schools - 82 days, compared to 2011's 124 days and 2010's 109; only did 8 caricaturing gigs (to 2011's 13) and only took 12 flights (to 2011's 46), though the distance to Australia and back meant I've hardly been a gift to global warming.

The picture also mentions the Socks 81 videos, including the Never Seconds song which got mentioned in a book, my 13 Amazon Kindle publications including the appearance at last of The Tock, the return of The Sitcom Trials to Bristol, Manchester & London, the appearance of the World's Biggest Comic at the British Library (I really must collect it soon, it's been there since February), Louise's funeral in January, and the few illustration jobs I squeezed into the year (not enough comics this year, has to be said).

I'm sure I've missed a lot (I haven't detailed anything Heather got up to, which suggests her own review of the year will be worth looking out for) and as for what went on in the rest of the world, clearly I wasn't paying attention. Hope your 2012 was just as full. Here's to 2013 everybody.

My illustrated review of 2011
My illustrated review of 2010

In Praise of Marvel Comics The Untold Story

I have just finished reading a book I received for Christmas, Marvel Comics The Untold Story by Sean Howe, and it has been totally engrossing and a wonder to read.



At 437 illustration-free pages, and between hard covers, I'm grateful I had the holiday haitus to read it in, its bulk might have ruled it out as a travel read (it would have easily tipped me over Ryanair's hand-baggage allowance).

I'd love to recommend it to everyone, and being a proper book rather than something on a Kindle I can happily lend it to my friends who want a gander, but I'm not sure who would be as interested as me in what is, to a very great extent, a 400 page fanzine article.

That's not to say it's not well-written. It is very well written, and exhaustively so, listing hundreds of interviewees and people who've helped with research. It is expertly structured, drawing the reader through a narrative that remains compelling even through its hardest-to-follow events.

But those events are the 60-odd year history of Marvel comics. And who's interested in that?

Well, I am. And as I say I am unsure who else would be whose life had not been so influenced and intertwined with Marvel's. I read the comics as a child, and was one of a privileged generation of British kids in the 70s and 80s who were able to read reprints of the earliest Marvel classics from the 60s in weekly pocket-money comics at the same time as being able to buy the most exciting of the brand new comics fresh from the States. I then found myself writing and drawing for fanzines in the 80s as Marvel and the whole comic business went through an explosion of popularity and a creative revolution. And to top it all, in the 1990s, I wound up writing and drawing for Marvel comics, answering directly to the House Of Ideas in New York city.

And for most of this time I'd had a vague idea of what went on behind the scenes. In the 80s we read about the raw deal that had been given to the creators of these star characters, we knew Jack Kirby got nothing for being co-creator of everyone from the Fantastic Four & The Hulk to the Avengers & The X-Men, and that Steve Ditko was similarly hard done-by over Spider-Man. And in the 90s I knew, first hand, that the comics business was prone to ups and downs when I was on the wrong side of Marvel's filing for bankruptcy and was one of the two-thirds of the company's employees who found themselves suddenly out of work.

Now this book spells out in excruciating detail what went on behind the scenes. Great parts of the book are romantic and inspiring and make me want to rush to my desk and draw comics. (Indeed, when just one chapter into the book, I did just that and drafted half a dozen pages to a graphic novel/film proposal that I'd plotted a year ago). The story of how Stan Lee & Jack Kirby had gone from the highs of the wartime Captain America comics to the lows of the McCarthy era when, in the late 50s, Stan is given the job of firing most of the staff as the comics industry teeters on the brink of collapse, only for their little-noticed back-room not-quite-superhero comic The Fantastic Four to begin a renaissance in comics that no-one could have imagined, is a legend that deserves telling well and gets just treatment here.

The creative highs and lows and the struggle between the various waves of idealistic storytellers and money-minded executives is something that will come as no surprise to anyone who's read histories of any creative industry from the music business to Hollywood. And by the time we get to the 1970s, this book may start to shake off the attention of anyone who wasn't there at the time. But to someone who was a reader, as I was, it is a genuine revelation to me just what was going on behind the scenes. I guess, were this about about a car manufacturer or a chain of grocery stores, it would have no more nor less in the way of action and incident - and apart from a shocking number of people dying young, through stress or unhealthy lifestyle, this book is not full of events that would pass muster on even the dullest of soaps - but because it involves names I know well, comics that were the centre of my life, and a good few people I've subsequently met and worked with, it is riveting. I know things about, and have read stories from Jim Shooter, Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Sol Brodsky, Joe Quesada, Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Steve Gerber, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Todd Macfarlane, Grant Morrison and dozens more  that I didn't know before and that I'm glad I do now.

As I think back over it to pick out anecdotes worth repeating, I'm finding myself thinking that no-one else might much care what Jack said to Stan on a radio phone-in in the 80s, or what bizarre suggestions various editors-in-chief made to writers over the years, or how come Vince Colletta ended up inking so many comic strips despite being the fans' least favourite. And I'm amazed at myself when the book gets to the corporate buyouts of the 1990s and what began as a story of bright young creators bustling with ideas that excited a generation turns into an arcane Financial Times article about leverages, buyouts and takeovers, and I'm still reading and enjoying it.

See if you imagine this sentence coming from an interesting book: "Perelman's various holding groups... filed for Chapter 11 protection in Wilmington Delaware: Mafco Holdings, which owned MacAndrews & Forbes, which owned Andrews Group, which owned Marvel III Holdings, which owned Marvel Parent Holdings, which owned Marvel Entertainment Group and Marvel Holdings." Well it does. Though I will concede it's not the book's most interesting sentence.

I feel proud to be part of Marvel's history. Not that I'm mentioned in the book or anything. But in the book we find Stan Lee in the late 60s asking colleagues "Why would you want to get into the comic book business?... the most you can say for the creative person in the business is that he's serving an apprenticeship to enter a better field". And ten years later we have Gerry Conway saying the same thing to fans at a con. Well now I say stuff like that to the kids I teach. And luckily, just like it did back then, it just makes them want to get into comics all the more. Comics are funny that way.

Congratulations to Sean Howe for dedicating himself to writing this book. I hope he will find a host of readers as satisfied by it as I am.

Marvel Comics The Untold Story, on Amazon