Went along to the Artbots exhibition at Trinity’s Science Gallery yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.  There were fifteen works in all.  Took a couple of snaps on my phone’s crappy camera.

Pictured below is What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It by Riley Harmon.  I really liked the idea behind this one.

When players shoot each other in a live on-line game of Counter-strike, the valves release a dribble of fake blood. You can just see the Counter-strike screen projected onto the wall at the left of the photo.

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My favourite work of the show was this, Untitled by Chris Kaczmarek.

Four solar panels send power to capacitors which then dump the energy into small motors causing the eggs to pull apart, when the power is spent they spring back together producing an unexpectedly loud and intensely satisfying clicking noise.

Here’s a couple of launch dates for Wasted.

Great cartoon from Steve Greenberg.

“From 9^th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70^th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.

What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9^th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7^th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.”

First entry is up, here.

I subscribe to a great site called pulp of the day.  Every day they put up a new pulp magazine cover.

I love this stuff.

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These next two aren’t from pulp of the day, just found somewhere on the net.

Tales To Astonish issue 27 - January 1962.  The first appearance of Hank Pym/Ant Man - soon to star in his own movie from Marvel.  Cover and interior pencils by the great Jack Kirby.

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Crime SuspenStories issue 22 - May 1954.   Cover by Johnny Craig.  This cover brought a lot of trouble to EC, there were claims that they were corrupting the youth of America which lead to calls for comics to be censored. The great thing about it was that this was a censored cover.  Before publication they sliced the bottom inch off of the original which showed strands of bloody muscle and sinew hanging from the woman’s neck!

This could be my favourite photo of all time.

Found on Strange Maps. An annotated floor plan of 221B Baker St.

‘The floor plan was “drawn from notes taken while reading all 60 Sherlock Holmes stories twice in a row. If it appears in the books, it appears in this drawing,” says Mr Stutler.’

There’s a link to Russ’s site at the end of the article.

Dave Evans emailed me last week to say that FQP have accepted my five page script, Bad Static, for publication in their horror title, Something Wicked.

I have a lot of respect for Dave and everyone at FQP, they work their arses off to put out three quality titles.

No word on who’ll be providing the art yet.

So, a few weeks ago I mailed a six-page script over to Alan Grant in Scotland, he’s starting up a new comic called Wasted.

Alan has always been one of my favourite writers, particularly his work at 2000AD and on Batman. One of my favourite issues of his long stint on Batman was Detective Comics #583 which was co-written with John Wagner and illustrated by Norm Breyfogle. This issue not only included the first appearance of The Ventriloquist and Scarface but also had a brilliant cover by Mike Mignola.

Anyway, back to my script, Alan wrote back with a very encouraging letter pointing out a few problems and asking me to cut it down to four pages and try him again.

So, I did, and then he emailed me and said “Congratulations, this should look good in Wasted!” and I emailed him back saying “That’s great. You just made my day! Thank you very much,” and then I decided to celebrate but it was midweek and all my friends had work the next day and so I just got really drunk by myself.

I was in the local recycling centre yesterday and liberated this from the free book shelves. What kind of person would throw this away?

The dust jacket is a little tattered but apart from that it’s clean and brand new looking.

I could understand people throwing out really, really crappy books - and yet the shelves remain unburdened by the works of Dan Brown and Cecilia Ahern. Puzzling.