It’s May The Fourth, so at some point my Mum will make the joke she’s been making every year since 1978. Of course, to an obsessive bantha hugging nerd such as myself, every day is Star Wars day. Recently the artist Ralph McQuarrie passed away and his contribution to the look of the Star Wars universe can’t be overstated – in fact it’s entirely possible that without his initial paintings, Star Wars wouldn’t have even got made. That story’s been told many times before, and far more eloquently than I ever could, but the best I can do is to say that he is the single biggest artistic influence on me. I probably didn’t realise that for many years. Even as a fairly ignorant kid growing up I knew who he was, as his work was all over various books and magazines (that was our equivalent of the world wide web, back in the 70s), but I certainly didn’t understand any of the principles of filmmaking. I thought his paintings were based on the films, rather than the other way around (It always baffled me that the stuff in the paintings was slightly different).

When I was a kid, I watched my Betamax copy of The Empire Strikes Back every weekend (every day on school holidays). I remember one time I paused the tape on one of my favourite shots (our heroes escaping onto the Cloud City landing platform) and drew my version of the scene. Turns out practically that entire image was Ralph’s. Not only did he do amazing concept art, but he also knocked out a bunch of matte paintings in his spare time. Talented bastard!

Shortly after McQuarrie, another legend of fantasy and science fiction art passed away. Jean Giraud, AKA Moebius. Although his work was probably not as widely seen, he was massively influential and his surreal, organic vistas and unique, off kilter characters are instantly recognisable. And, I was surprised to learn that Ralph McQuarrie’s design for the Imperial Probe Droid in Empire, was based on a Moebius drawing. Let’s all shoot at floating mechanical spider things, in tribute to Jean and Ralph.

Electronic comics, yo!

Yes, you heard right, we have made tentative baby steps into the digital revolution. Well, we did the same thing about six years ago and it went down like a lead balloon, but you know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed, keep blindly hammering away at the same idea until death.

So if you’re one of those people that wants to read comics, but you’re absolutely disgusted at the thought of the arcane technology of paper and ink, or if you can’t wait the 3-4 days it takes to get these things in the post, paypal us some sweet sweet digital cash, and we’ll email you some sweet ass futuristic sequentials. From space!

Hope For The Future Issue 13
Digital PDF version (via e-mail): £1.50/$2.39

Hope For The Future Issue 14
Digital PDF version (via e-mail): £1.50/$2.39

Well not quite. But I have recently come across a rather good  five star review of Hope For The Future 13 in Comic Heroes issue 10. Trying to get any sort of review of your independent comics in any publication or website is usually like bashing your head against a brick wall, (even when it’s a site that specifically covers independent comics), so you’ll forgive me if I start shouting about a well produced internationally published magazine actually giving my stuff a mention.

Yes, that’s my whale! MINE! The review itself is as follows:

There’s no such subtlety in Hope For The Future, but trust us that no bad thing. Now 13 issues in, Simon Perrins’ ongoing series combines tales of dread, a hefty scoop of weirdness, and some superbly creative swearing to devastating effect. The artwork is well handled (it’d be great to see in colour), the story telling well paced and the characters utterly, frustratingly believable. Equally as adept at pinpointing the subtle annoyances in every festival crowd as spinning a hilariously bad-mouthed Middle Ages dragon-slaying yarn, this is genuinely inspired stuff.

Pretty good eh? Almost as if I’d written it myself. Actually, if I had written it myself I would have mentioned that the comic is available here. And that the artist is really, really good looking.

and a Happy New Year. Yes I’ve been watching The Box Of Delights.

At a loss for Christmas present ideas for the Whovian in your life? Of course you are, because there’s barely any Who merchandise out there (sarcasm). However, you should definitely pick up SFX’s Doctor Who: The Fanzine, because in addition to more Time Lord related shenanigans than you can shake a… er… Dalek sink plunger at, there is also the latest instalment of our comic strip Arthur “Dies Daily” Darvill Vs Murderous Moffat. 

Now if SFX ever want to do a Star Wars special I have a great idea for a story about Sheltay Retrac and Don-Wan Kihotay.

So we were at Leeds’ fantastic Thought Bubble Festival. Now twice as big and twice as long (snarf snarf), it continues to be the most fun event on the UK comic book calendar. Judging by everyone I spoke to and all the reports I’ve read, a brilliant time was had by all and I’m sure everyone who went is looking forward to the next one as much as I am. Would it be too much to ask for two Thoughtbubbles a year? Or three? Make it happen, Obama!

As I mentioned (moaned about) previously, my copies of Hope For The Future 14 had not arrived from the printers on time, but even with this potentially disastrous mistake, we still managed to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. I felt it was necessary to have something new  to flog, so I did a bunch of sketches of various comics characters (and not, as I had threatened while at my lowest ebb, a series of pics of cock and balls). People seemed to like them anyway, so much so that I struggled with the number of requests I got. The lesson we can take from this is clear: charge more money for them!

I accidentally got up an hour early due to drunk alarm setting and a poor grasp of the concept of time, but for once I was prepared and remembered to bring such essentials as a pen, some change and a bottle of vodka. I’m getting better at this conventions lark. What I haven’t mastered yet, clearly, is the art of going in for the kill, sales wise. Our fantastic brand new comic Pizza The Action, drawn by Award Winning Artist Andrew Livesey and written by me, was available for a reality shattering low price of 10p – officially the lowest priced comic at the convention (I decided). Look, I’m sure there was stuff being given out for free but this comic is actually good. I should have been screaming this at the top of my lungs every second of the weekend in order to publicise it. I would make a terrible prostitute.

The nearest I got to any cool creators was surreptitiously taking this photo of the top of Woodrow Phoenix’s head, and staring creepily at Peter Milligan from across the room. Never meet your heroes, kids. Especially if, like me, you are incapable of forming a comprehensible sentence at the best of times, let alone in front of someone whose work you admire.

There are always plenty of cosplayers at Thoughtbubble. I never tire of seeing stormtroopers. They look brilliant even if most of them are too short. At one point I passed The Joker at a urinal, which really isn’t something that happens enough in my life. Talking of which, this Harley Quinn was so perfect she could have sprung fully formed from the pencil of Bruce Timm. Mr J would be happy.

If you don’t want to cosplay yourself, you can always dress up your kids. I saw a mini Jedi and a mini Han Solo. Why doesn’t anyone dress their kid up as an ewok? Or Grievous?

Far too late on the second day I realised that we were opposite the bar prompting me to tell people Come over, buy some comics and get pissed! By this time, everyone (including us) was recovering from a hangover, but I reckon if that had occurred to me on the first day we would have sold ten times as many comics. Other ruses that we missed were procuring an endorsement from someone famous, and getting hot girls to pose for photos with our merchandise.

Contrary to my carefully constructed image of a socially inept curmudgeon, I did actually speak to some folks over the weekend. Apart from everyone who came to our table (hello), I had a chance to catch up with some old friends. Lee Carter’s a brilliant illustrator who’s currently doing some truly jaw dropping stuff for 2000AD. I knew him when he had long hair and listened to Steve Forbert. John Welding‘s a good pal and is currently doing some wonderful artwork for a new comic for kids called The Phoenix (incidentally, if you’re a fan of his work, he once drew a story I wrote in Hope For The Future issue 4). I hadn’t spoken to Terry Wiley for a while so it was good to bump into him. I say it all the time but his Sleaze Castle was a massive influence on my stuff and his new comic Verity Fair looks total aces. Also big ups to my convention chums and Twitter pals Jason Cobley (whose Frontier: The Weird Wild West collection is soon to be published in hardback) and Richard J Smith (who gave me a copy of his new opus Dino-Might, the everyday tale of a luchador who may or may not be a dinosaur). I hope I didn’t forget anyone. If I did, tell me off in the comments!

I dunno what my highlight was, but being mistaken for a student was up there. Or maybe when my new comic arrived THE VERY NEXT DAY! Argh! Ah well, there’s always next year.

More pictures over at Flickr – get taggin’!

Holy Guacamole! There’s a new issue of Hope For The Future! Check out this thrilling (and misleadingly coloured) pic -

Hannah is determined to work out what’s been going on in the series up to this point, and who can blame her? In order to find a connection between various secret societies, murders, hauntings, genetically engineered monstrosities and demonic incursions, she takes a trip to the coast and ruminates on an adventure from her early life in which she kicked it with some friendly talking animals, became a wizard and hunted monsters. Also features some guy getting abducted by aliens, but there’s a chance he’s lying about it.

It’s currently available from our friends at Indieplanet. However, you won’t be able to buy it from us at the ThoughtBubble Festival, in beautiful Leeds, on November 19-20th. Bit weird, I hear you cry. Well, the comics are currently at an unspecified location, somewhere between New Jersey and Leeds. If you see them, let me know, yeah.

We’ll still be there, in the stately surroundings of The Royal Armouries Hall with smiles on our faces and songs in our hearts. And a merciless desire to sell you comics. Not the new HFTF, obviously. I can describe the plot to you in person, but I suspect this is a poor substitute. We will, however have all three collected editions (collecting issues 1-12), issue 13 (screaming ghost monkey cover), issue 12 (sexy goth girl cover) and loads of skanky old back issues that we are selling for pennies. Bargain!

In addition we’ll also have something brand spanking new, yet heavily redolent of the past. Thought Bubble will see the debut of our new all ages, all action, all fun old school minicomic PIZZA THE ACTION! Drawn by Flying Monkey Comics’ very own Andrew Livesey it’s our attempt to revive the days of scratty photocopied black and white A5 comics at a recession busting price of 10p. You can’t afford not to buy a copy for you and all of your entourage. Check out these awesome  and totally out of context preview images!*

*complete with non sequiter, non final dialogue, for added intrigue

Of course, by “My Book” I mean “a book”. Written by someone else. However, I did draw the cover. Check this bad boy -

Why not truck on over to Amazon and pick up a copy (or maybe just to read the “About The Author” section, for more crucial information as to the identity of the enigmatic Mr Ross)? I can assure you that, based on the two and a half chapters I read of the original manuscript, it’s a proper laugh.

There’s more changes to the Star Wars movies on Blu Ray and certain parts of the internet are blowing up with outrage. Most of these tweaks are pretty inconsequential (as ever), aside from one, namely at the end of Return Of The Jedi when Darth Vader finally turns and pitches The Emperor down one of the Star Wars Universe’s many bottomless shafts, he bellows “NOOOOO!!!”, seemingly a cut and paste of the audio from the heavily memed and much hated ending of Revenge of The Sith. If you’re going to do a callback to something in a movie series that’s mostly awesome, why go for something so risible? It’s exactly the same as Chewbacca in Sith reprising his Tarzan roar from Jedi. Yeah, like that was anyone’s favourite bit.

I'm not sure about some of these changes to the Star Wars movies on Blu Ray

It’s a pretty ridiculous change, and undercuts the epic nature of the scene, where the music tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on in Vader’s head. And I got a little depressed about it when I first heard about it. This just seemed so baffling a choice that it sent my tiny nerd brain into a tailspin. I’ve never really had a problem with the changes in these movies, and ultimately, none of them change the movies or make them worse, but none of them were necessary. Adding extra stuff in is just gilding the lily, or as I believe it’s called in modern parlance “Vajazzling”.

After reading a ton of tiresome “Lucas raped my childhood by changing the movies again even though I hated every version of them for the last decade” style invective, I came across this measured and thoughtful article on GeekPlanet, and it got me thinking about choice. We have become so accustomed to having every possible choice presented to us, when limited choices come up, we tend to lose our shit. People want the original versions of those movies, and it’s a pretty reasonable and understandable point of view.

Leaving aside what you consider to be the original version (even back in 1977 there were two different sound mixes of Star Wars in circulation), or which version you grew up with (for me it was a recording of the first showing on ITV in 1981 or 82, complete with ads for Bisto and Allied Carpets, not to mention a different voice for Aunt Beru and the presence of the line “Close the blast doors”), I think people forget that we live in a privileged age of unlimited on demand entertainment. Listen carefully younglings, because this crazy old man’s gonna teach you a few things about the past.

A long time ago, in the 1970s to be precise, there was one Star Wars movie and it was called Star Wars. Darth Vader was some asthmatic dude who killed Skywalker senior, The Emperor was just some politician who got lucky and people didn’t allow droids in drinking establishments. Luke still never really had a chance with Princess Leia though, even though we thought he did. There was no video version. The only way to own a part of that movie was to get reels of “selected scenes” on super 8 film. They were silent and in black and white, but if you were willing to fork out the price of a small house you could get them with sound and in colour. I dread to think what the quality was like, but the very idea of it was so far out of my reach, it seemed an impossible fantasy.

Years later (many years later) the films were available on video. I won The Empire Strikes Back on Betamax in some competition or other. It had trailers for The Cannonball Run and All The Right Moves (featuring a pre Scientology Tom Cruise), and in the actual film you could clearly see the plains of hoth through the snowspeeders. That tape withstood several hundred plays, and that suggests to me that audio visual nerds are right when they say Beta was the superior format. Incidentally, why did they name it “Betamax”? Isn’t that automatically dooming it to runner up status in the format wars? They should have called it “Alphamax” at least.

I remember reading about the Laserdisc collection in the early 90s. Not only did it have the movies in a digital format that would never degrade (like a CD!), it had – gasp! – bonus material like documentaries, photo galleries and audio interviews on something called “alternate layers”. The very idea blew my fucking mind! But again, this was something I could only dream of, surely only millionaires owned such a thing as a laserdisc player. With actual LASERS!

Yet more changes to the Star Wars movies on Blu Ray

When it comes down to it, if I want to watch Jedi without that weird outburst from Vader, I can just watch the DVD. And if I want to watch Jedi without creepy old Hayden Christensen’s head pasted over avuncular old Sebastian Shaw’s (Star Wars FACT: Sebastian Shaw had a long term relationship with John Peel’s mother), I can watch my bootleg versions of the original trilogy (dubs of the laserdisc versions). If only I’d waited a couple of years I could’ve bought them legitimately as Lucasfilm went ahead and released pretty much the same thing in 2007, although I think mine were put together by someone whose love of those movies is a little more casual than mine, as the case of the first movie reads “The New Hope”. I have the choice to watch whichever version I choose.

Those bootlegs aren’t perfect of course – a source of fan rage is that they want HD remastered versions of the original versions of the movies, presumably unaware that once you remaster anything it can’t be considered to be “original” anything. They are however, perfectly watchable  - better than the video versions I had growing up (when the shield generator on Endor blew up in Jedi, the tracking always went mental), but the DVDs aren’t perfect, and guess what, the Blu Rays won’t be either. In a few years we’ll be watching everything in Super High Definition that will make HD look like dogshit  (or, more probably, it will be ever so slightly better if you look closely).

People will continue to bitch, loudly proclaim that they’re not buying it, and make fan edits. Fair play to them if they want to painstakingly piece together their preference as to what those movies should be (a bit like one G. Lucas seems to do every few years – everyone’s gotta have a hobby), but I have no interest in watching some ridiculous version of The Phantom Menace with both Jar Jar Binks and Jake Lloyd edited out. I bet that makes sense, and after all the original is ridiculous enough (HEYOOO!)

Being surprised about Lucas changing his movies after the fact is like being surprised about all the porn on the internet. He’s being doing it ever since the first movie, and will keep on until he becomes a force ghost. The biggest change he ever made was making Darth Vader Luke’s father. It’s pretty clear they were unrelated in the first movie and by including that plot twist in the second (and the full explanation in the third), it changed the meaning of the first movie and the whole shape of the saga. And yet I don’t recall anyone ever complaining about that.

My heroic fundraising run is fast approaching, and, while I have every confidence that I will finish the race, I am uncertain that I will be able to do so with my dignity, not to mention my bodily functions intact. This occurred to me after I watched Emmanuel Mutai finishing the 2011 London Marathon – legend! And let’s not forget Paula Radcliffe’s performance in 2005, even though I’m sure she’d rather we did.

To this end, I have formulated a brilliant plan, ensuring I can complete the race in style. I recently watched Iron Man, and while I realise that movie is science fiction, it’s three years old, so I bet most of what is presented onscreen is now possible. My scheme involves creating a pair of robot legs that will be fitted with shock absorbers, a built in MP3 player (with skip feature enabled) and some kind of turbo boost for the final stretch. Although my experience in engineering, electronics and coming up with a cool colour scheme is limited, how hard can it be? I am almost certain that I can make it work without the mechanism trying to put one foot twenty one miles in front of the other, at any rate.

Of course, there’s a slight chance that this might not come to pass, as some of the parts I’ve ordered take a maximum of 28 days for delivery. If that happens, I will have to revert to the original plan and tackle the race au naturel. Either way, I would appreciate you sponsoring me.

EDIT: Well, I did the race and finished it in 56 mins and 12 seconds. Not bad until you find out my official finishing position was 675th. All done without the aid of robot legs because, well, that was just an idiotic joke. Sorry to ruin the illusion. Next time I’ll just run faster. However, you may, if you wish, still sponsor me.