Ken Aldred

Just read that there's been a patch released for the frame rate issue on PC.

Seems many Dead Space fans, myself included, anticipated far too much from the game, and have been disappointed. A good, fully-new game, not just the remake of the original this year.

Doesn't really get going until the Starlin era. The Thomas and Kane issues are nice as well.

For me, the classic Icarus example is pre-Unity Valiant, where dealers sat on boxes of the stuff, with high market prices up until soon after the period during which the comic company was constantly pumping out very low quality drek, the polar opposite to the initially brilliant Jim Shooter books, alienating readers, and the wings then melting off the investments with them crashing back down to Earth very quickly. As someone who actually wanted to read the books but was not willing or able to afford to pay nosebleed prices, I had little sympathy.

In his head he’s ready for world domination now. Doctor Doom must be scared.

Looks like John Byrne art. His Spider-Man run is one of the few things of his I’ve never read.

He’s like a zero budget, wannabe version of Silver Surfer, without the cosmic power.

The Spanker.

Cocaine Bear.

Rocket Racer? And, let’s not forget The Big Wheel.

Glad you added English, as the first thing I thought about was one of my favourite musicians of all time, Prince Rogers Nelson, reimagined in comics as an ex-Foreign Legion mercenary.

90s Superman was generally quite readable, though.

Strangely enough I was trying to figure out who your writing influences are, and I was thinking Bob Burden for one. I'm waiting for the appearance of Bondo Man, The Man of Living Bondo.

Yup. It's an important question, all too frequently ignored. Progress is being made, but still not enough.

Could do with a bit more going on, though. Seems a bit decompressed.

Sorry, but it's really ridiculous seeing this all over again, 30 years on.

If it's not the Death of Superman they can shove it.

And a trading card.

Where's the plastic bag? If we're going retro, do it properly.

They first appear as Squadron Sinister, issue 69 and 70. Super-villain team appears first. Then it gets into parallel universe confusion, more and more.

I was quite lucky. My mother only rifled through my vinyl collection. Otherwise, I might have had to explain to her that my Heavy Metal magazine and Richard Corben trade paperback collections "contained stories that were a fresh alternative to the mundane predictability of mainstream comics and that I genuinely admired some of the incredible artwork contained within". Something like that.

Yup. Frazetta, Buscema, Pini, Starlin, Suydam. Some of Starlin’s career best, especially.

Ambush Bug 1 First appearance of Cheeks, The Toy Wonder. Astonishing that this brilliant character hasn’t at least been given an animated series.

Byrne or Perez.

I didn't realise you also did it over there in the States. It can become an absorbing, stimulating pastime, and very addictive... Brass rubbing was originally a largely British enthusiasm for reproducing onto paper monumental brasses – commemorative brass plaques found in churches, usually originally on the floor, from between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The concept of recording textures of things is more generally called making a rubbing. What distinguishes rubbings from frottage is that rubbings are meant to reproduce the form of something being transferred, whereas frottage is usually only intended to use a general texture. Brass rubbings are created by laying a sheet of paper on top of a brass (then called "latten" - a zinc-copper alloy produced via the obsolete calamine brass process) and rubbing the paper with graphite, wax, or chalk, a process similar to rubbing a pencil over a piece of paper placed on top of a coin. In the past rubbings were most commonly made using the equivalent of what nowadays is called "butcher's paper" [a 22–30-inch-wide (560–760 mm) roll of whitish paper] laid down over the brass and rubbed with "heelball", a waxy glob of black crayon once used to shine shoes. Now most brass rubbers purchase special paper rolls of heavy duty black velvety material, and the crayons are gold, silver or bronze (other colours are available). According to the Monumental Brass Society, the practice of brass rubbing does not harm a brass if competently carried out, assuming the brass is securely fixed.[1] Nonetheless, in many cases creating rubbings is banned by historical sites and churches. Brass rubbing centres with replicas of original brass plaques have become a prime source for brass rubbings in the UK.[2] Replicas are often not the same scale as the original.