Ken Aldred

Congrats. When I started collecting seriously in 1977, one of the titles that was distributed to the UK was Marvel Team-Up, and I liked the nice run of Claremont / Byrne issues. Being British and never having seen SNL on our TV back then, I was absolutely clueless about who the Not Ready For Prime Time Players were, thought the issue looked rubbish, and passed on it. Yes, I'd know better now.

Yup. I mentioned that over in the Water Cooler. I agree.

Stu used to just appear, pick a fight, and get extremely angry if any of the older Water Cooler boardies mentioned Steely Dan in a music thread. An almost pathological hatred would manifest, time after time, back then. Quite amusing. A bit of a character.

Was that the pernts era?

Some of the best art, some of the worst. Just like any other comic book Age.

I like pretty much all of Jonathan Hickman’s mainstream series; FF, Avengers, Secret Wars, X-Men.

Manhattan Projects is good, but quite a bizarre comic book in places. The art might be polarising and not to everyone’s taste.

The problem with the earlier console versions was frame rate. The PS5 version runs very smoothly. Many PS3 era games still look great, though.

I did get the Niflheim Mist Armor in God of War, but found the upgrade process a bit too tedious. Instead, in New Game Plus there's some jokily-named armor which resembles metal fish scales, called the Cod of War Armor set. Fully upgraded to level 9 it's very powerful, and, having a sense of humour, the name appealed to me.

Just started Demon Souls PS 5 today, which looks fantastic. Didn’t find the melee combat too bad, once you got into the routine of block / counter attack / roll back on melee, although I’m using the Royalty build as I always like the flexibility of a battlemage character, and some ranged ability. Managed, after a number of attempts, to figure out how to make it through to survive and save just before the boss battle for the Boletaria Castle section. So, that should be interesting next time.

Just finished it on PS 5, with the console-optimised update which makes it run at a smooth 60 fps and looks stunning for a PS 4 era game. Finished it twice, including New Game Plus, only on Normal difficulty. I didn’t finish the Valkyries or get the Niflheim Armour, becoming very bored farming for mist echoes, and being quite weak with time limit gameplay anyhow. Great game and story.

Simon Spurrier’s John Constantine Hellblazer was excellent. DC Black Label.

Thor as well, especially the Jason Aaron and Donny Cates runs.

Daredevil has been a consistently good read throughout the 2000s, also including the Waid / Samnee, Soule and Zdarsky runs too.

You will be very surprised to discover how different Image Comics is today. A publisher of many high-quality comic series. More variety than you see at Marvel and DC, but with the same A-list writers and artists. Sure you’ll find something of interest there. Lots of genres, not just super-heroes. Have a look.

Yup. Started out well, but ended up with too many titles and crossovers switching about between them, and patchy quality. But, there is some good stuff in there, at least try the introductory House of X / Powers of X.

Called Action Man over here in Britain.

Interesting. One of my all-time favourite video game series, both the Rapture and Columbia storylines. If you already know about one of the greatest storytelling twists in the history of gaming, I’d be fascinated to see how they manage to top that.

War of the Worlds (Pal’s version) This Island Earth Forbidden Planet Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s version) The Fly (Cronenberg version) The Thing (Carpenter version) The Incredible Shrinking Man The Day the Earth Stood Still (50s version) All top quality science-fiction, all watched many, many times.

I recall that FF 20 being a really expensive book, unread and in mint condition because it’s basically unreadable without trashing it. Interesting conflict there. Looks nice in a slab, as long as you don’t dwell on the complications and obsess about the atrocious staple positioning. Of course, not the only example out there; far from it.

I recall a 9.6 copy of Fantastic Four 20 that had badly-offset staples as shown here, so it's actually possible.

Whenever I see that I always think it’s a Star Wars droid game, until the penny drops.

Teen angst and tantrums, cosmic entity style.

The Best There Is Comics featuring The-One-Above-All, and Wolverine.