Waffle

I have added The New Sheriff to the ROCR archives at Modern Tales. I now feel confident enough to tackle the two longer stories that still need to be added; I expect to be able to do each of them in an hour or so.

Some presentation aspects are still being worked on. The archive pages will look better in a day or two.

Keenquest/Even in Arcadia won't be added to the Modern Tales archives — too much hassle with permissions from the various creators involved.

After a long wait, Modern Tales has finally changed to its new codebase and editorial formula. Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan is featured as part of the "Strip Lounge" section, meaning that the comics that were on Modern Tales before October, 2005 can now be read on Modern Tales for free, by anyone.
Yes, I do intend to start updating there again. As soon as I get the hang of the new control panel and have some time to catch up.

Joey Manley on the changes and the reasons for them.

(more...)

The Webcomic Crossover & Cameo Archive is handy when you want to know exactly when a character from webcomic A appeared in Webcomic B, or which of the FRAMED!!! Great Escape comics survive where, sort of thing. It's been around for quite a while and appears to be in good working order, with an active forum and livejournal. Webcomics cross over with one another all the time, so it's good to know that someone is keeping track.

I really thought I was going to go a whole month without buying music, but here I am. Yesterday I got two DVDs: 1000 Years of Popular Music by Richard Thompson and Pulse by Pink Floyd *). I haven't watched the Floyd DVD yet, partly because I think it'd be a crime to watch it on a tiny laptop screen and partly because it's very long and I want to watch it from beginnning to end at least once, but I have seen the Thompson one. It's great!

1000 Years of Popular Music was previously released as a mail-order only single CD recorded live in 2002. This new version is based on a new concert, with a new setlist and a new line-up of musicians. If you already have the original, there's still plenty that's new on this version. But for the most part, what makes it worth buying is being able to see Thompson, singer Judith Owen and drummer Debra Dobkin tear through some of the classic songs from the Middle Ages onwards. Especially the money shots — by which of course I mean the close-ups of Thompson picking his guitar and fingering the chords. Oh, and the interview and between-song banter from Thompson.
Musically it's all very strong stuff. Lovely guitar work, great vocal support from Owen in particular. Thompson's own voice may be limited but he uses it to great effect and he sings these songs better, overall, than he did on the first version of the album. I did think that the three-part harmonies in some of the songs (especially the madrigal "O Sleep Fond Fancy") didn't work too well, with Dobkin's voice in particular not quite gelling. She did fit in on the more rock-oriented songs towards the end though.

There's something odd about Dobkin's drum kit setup, by the way. She uses a left-handed kit, but has the bass drum where you'd expect the floor tom to be, positioned horizontally to be hit with a stick instead of placed vertically on the floor to be kicked with a pedal. This is a bit of a handicap when providing the driving rhythms for songs like the Easybeats' "Friday On My Mind"; Dobkin simply has one appendage less than other rock drummers (well, most of them) to play the rhythm with, and as a result, the beats occasionally sound a bit strange to my ears. "Friday On My Mind" still sounds blistering, though, thanks to Thompson's rhythm guitar skills.

Dobkin is also the only rock musician whose online biography was written by Cicero. How's that for credibility with the intellectual elites?

While I enjoyed Judith Owen's vocals on this and other Richard Thompson albums (Adam, by the way, insists that she is miscast for the Gilbert and Sullivan number "There Is Beauty In The Bellow of The Blast" but I've grown quite fond of her interpretation), her stage presence gets a bit irritating here and there. I think the problem is that she's used to being a solo performer - her arm movements and facial expressions would work in the sort of show where the attention is on her anyway, but are distracting when someone else is supposed to be the star of the show. Thompson himself, of course, is not a very animated performer, so Owen's movements become extra distracting in this particular combination.

One nice thing about the DVD is that the first printing comes with two extra audio CDs containing the full concert, albeit without Thompson's banter. This is really convenient if you want to just have the tracks in your MP3 player or don't have a DVD player handy. I wish more DVD releases had this extra feature.

*) Links go to Amazon UK. Readers in the US may want to use their local Amazon store.

I.
Sass is very difficult to pull off in genre fiction. Not that there aren't tonnes of writers out there trying to write convincing scenes in which their plucky hero or heroine utters witty comebacks to the threats from the baddies who have just captured them and wouldn't think twice about killing them; the problem is rather that few of them succeed. Most of the time, one is left with the feeling that a real person, in that situation, would not be able to do anything other than wet their pants in fear.
But last night, when Rose Tyler totally sassed that Dalek, I believed it. I believed that she would do that, I believed that Rose had enough presence of mind to come up with retorts that sounded good, and I believed that Rose knew what she was doing, that she had learned how to keep a Dalek wound up tightly enough to start making mistakes, but not so tightly that it would lose its patience. Thanks to Billie Piper's acting ability, even the annoying, poorly-written Rose we saw too much of during Series 2 is always believable; but this wasn't poorly-written Rose, this was Piper's acting coupled with writing that actually worked. I was cheering her on.

II.
Daleks vs. Cybermen! And they exchange taunts! That bit, of course, was 4 the kidz, but I'm clearly well in touch with my inner child. I loved it! And the Dalek who said they could take on 5 million Cybermen with just one Dalek was just soo right. Of course, there are people with more credentials than sense who disagree with me, but come on. Daleks are better because they're such clumsy designs. A Dalek is a creature you have to learn to fear. Its appearance is stubby and bigheaded, like a mis-shapen robot baby. One appendage is a plunger, the other an egg-whisk. It looks comically helpless until you learn what it can do - until you learn that the egg-whisk is a deadly laser weapon, the plunger can suck your head dry, and God only knows what hidden uses that eyestalk has. And it hates everything on general principles. Giant line-dancing robots just can't compare.
If it was me producing the episode, I'd have had them actually stick with just the four Daleks instead of the massive army that emerged from the Phallus of Rassilion or whatever that thing was called. But that's just me, and even then I have to admit it made for great visuals.

III.
Some people didn't like the long, drawn-out ending with the crying, the final goodbye and then more crying. I think the emotional release was vital to the sort of ending that this episode had, and its length was proportional to the viewers' emotional investment in the characters and their relationship. By all means let them both have a good, long blub. They'll feel better for it in the end.

IV.
Nearly everyone hated the appearance of Catherine Tate in a bridal gown at the end. It seems to me that the reason was mostly that nearly every Doctor Who fan can't stand the sight of Catherine Tate. I had never heard of her before, and so I found that this sudden post-ending surprise was utterly, almost hallucinatorily jarring - but in a good way. Poor Doctor, he doesn't get a moment's respite. The moment he finally gets the waterworks running, he gets to deal with a psycho bride right there in his home.

V.
David Tennant? Aaawyeeeeeeah, hewasalright.

I loved "Doomsday" It wasn't perfect (hey, it had Cybermen in it), but it worked. Possibly better than last year's season finale, although I'd have to re-watch that to make sure.

René van Densen reviews Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan at the Clickburg forums. The review, in Dutch, is pretty favorable - not quite glowing and definitely not uncritical, but I for one got a positive vibe out of it. Positive things highlighted include the world-building, the "subtle, intelligent humour" and the formal play found in the many stylistic and narrative approaches over the years. Critical notes are struck concerning the pacing and the tendency to nitpick, and as with many other reviews, the frequent nudity in the stories is given a brief, neutral mention. Oh, and I need a better tagline for the site.

My pioneering role in webcomics is also brought up - I tend to downplay that these days because it makes me feel like one of those old-timers in the Lucky Luke comics, but in this case, the review mentions that I'm still keeping an eye on new developments, which neatly balances that aspect out.

Mike Wytrykus of the webcomic Grimstone has kindly given me permission to repost his old Keenquest contributions on the Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan website. I've inserted them into last week's archives, so they now follow my first Keenquest page. Read Mike's first, second, third and fourth pages.

It just might be possible to resurrect the whole event. If you were a Keenquest contributor and would like to see your work reposted on a fairly well-visited webcomic site, please contact me.

Meet my stalker, Shep's guide to what to do if you're a man who gets stalked. Executive summary: Your stalker is mentally ill, and a stalker is like malaria: having got one, you may live normally for years and then have the problem flare up again.

In my capacity as an admin on Talk About Comics, I've had to deal with two flare-ups of Shep's stalker problem, including one shown in screenshots, so I remembered this page when the issue of stalking came up in IRC conversation this afternoon.

Apart from the useful advice, I like Shep's writing style in these pages. It is very similar to Dave Sim's essay-writing style, though the content is much more sane.

Today Reinder and I threshed out the next RoCR plot, Feral, from my memories of the last revision (now lost), and, during the discussion that ensued, well... it was one of those wonderful productive periods in which everything suddenly comes together. All of a sudden this script, which I had thought was a little thin but very well executed, started gaining depth, themes, and then suddenly, minor subplots bloomed. Exciting new plots burst forth from them, and locked in perfectly with the rest of the script. What were odd coincendences before suddenly began resonating, and they were right and they were how the plot should be. Characters revealed hidden depths as we explored why they'd be motivated to do various things. It was one of those vastly productive days that make being a script editor so immensely rewarding, and all was good.

...In short, the next RoCR storyline may be a while off yet, but it will be well worth the delay.

-Adam

Addendum by Reinder: Yes, it was that good. If I smoked, I'd have needed a cigarette after that. And it won't be that long before I get around to drawing it.

Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan was down for a few hours this morning. The server admin says this was the result of the gallery software being hacked. The hackers didn't do any lasting damage, but did tie up all the resources for the subdomain.

Since I find Gallery a pain in the arse to run and maintain anyway, I have disabled it and removed the link to it on the front page. I have left its database intact in the hope of importing the contents into WillowCMS some time, but until then, the material in there is gone. All the arty action now takes place on my DeviantArt site anyway.

Some link cleanup may be needed. We'll see.