The Thing Is ...

As You Should Surely Know By Now

Conrad maintains the hilarious conceit that all John Carpenter's films are documentaries, which is plainly silly.  "Dark Star" is patently NOT a documentary, and I'm beginning to have some doubts about "Big Trouble In Little China", a film probably twenty years ahead of it's t

     ANYWAY One of Conrad's favouritest films is "The Thing" DO NOT MENTION THE REMAKE which is probably the most frightening film ever made.  Imagine it at the end, with McReady and Childs, and John with his cameraman, soundman, lighting expert and - hang on, this is beginning to seem a bit suspicious.  Art!

"Art successfully diverted the readers to cover Conrad's confusion"

     Let me take you back to last week, when we were at the pub with Darling Daughter and Tom, and we were talking practical effects versus CGI in the remake and DD mentioned that Tame, their fellow housemate, had mentioned that the storyline was continued in the comic sequels.

     Enter Conrad.  Conrad knew exactly what Tame meant, since he possesses those very same Dark Horse sequel comics himself.  Being an acquisitive little goblin I never throw any comics out, either, so I still have them, and DD expressed an interest in reading them.

     Ah but.  Art!

My comics collection

     I think there's about two thousand comics in there.  I recall the format of TTFAW and it's not in any of those three stacks at the front.  There's a stack of boxes behind the loose ones, which proved to be nearly all "2000 AD", fifty per box, so I could ignore those.  Eventually, after innumerable trips up and down the ladder, we got to this point.  Art!

     I went after that pile in the corner and Hay Pesto! It was a stack of short-run and one-offs, with a lot of Dark Horse publications, and - Art!

     "Climate Of Fear" is the best of the three in terms of artwork and storyline, and - you may be ahead of me here thanks to those cover illustrations - they are definitely NOT for minors.  Nope nope nope.  Also, in the Letters page of Issue #4, a familiar name crops up.  Art!

Conrad's Sunday-best name

     Another interesting thing cropped up when I was on Abebooks, checking out another purchase - you'll find out all about that one when it arrives, O Yes Indeedy Ally Sheedy - and I idly wondered how much TTFAW was going for.  Yes yes yes, I should check it out with Overstreet's Comic Guide except I don't have one so GREAT SQUEAKING BATS!  Check this out gentle readers - Art!

£1,649!

     Egad!  It should be pointed out that this is the trade paperback of the first six issues, rather than the first six issues themselves, which might be worth even more.  Don't read them with greasy fingers, Sal!

     Conrad wonders what some of his other, old editions are worth now.  I have a handful of "Century TV 21"s from back in the Sixties, you know, where the storylines were a bit rubbish but the artwork was awesome.  Art!

     Motley, put on this silly hat, suspenders and a false nose and you, too, can be a comic*!

Further To Futurology

Conrad, as we all know, right royally reveres futurologist Gerry Anderson FUTUROLOGY NOT PUPPETS <eyes Remote Nuclear Detonator longingly> and noticed an interesting aspect of Thunderbird One, that most iconic of all International Rescue's craft, capable of Mach 28**.  Art!

     Here it is in take-off profile, with the wings retracted, meaning less space needed for the above-ground exit.  Once in level horizontal flight the wings are extended to provide aerodynamic flight control  Art?

     When TB1 arrives on-site, the main engines cut out, a cover slides back and out comes the HTOL engine, which fires up and allows TB1 to descend and land, terminal speed also being cut thanks to the deployed wings.  Art!

     This is a pretty neat technical trick, going from VTOL to HTOL and back; I don't think there are any current aircraft that can manage such a feat.

     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

More Bridge-y Stuff

Don't worry if you're not at all keen on such architectural wonders, the BBC feature I'm cribbing from only has six examples.  Mind you, with such an inspiration I might go out and search for more!  What's that?  'Please no'?  Hmmm we'll see.  Art!

     This is the Rakotzbrucke, also known locally as the "Devil's Bridge" because why not.  It dates back to 1860 and now stands in the splendidly named "Rhododendronpark Kromlau" in Saxony.  All the stonework, including that supposed outcrop beyond the bridge, is artificial.  Ironically, in order to preserve the fabric of said bridge, you are not allowed to cross it <sad face>.  Art?

     This guarantees that a few visitors will defy authority in order to cross it, probably at night, having snuck in with ladders and torches <happy face>.

And Now For More Long-Form Fiction

You've had plenty of reprieve since "Tormentor" came to a finish, so now you're going to get a long-form fiction again, and this time I have a blurb to go with it.

"The Doctor and Sarah Jane are stuck in the desert war of early 1941, contending with suspicious British soldiers and hostile Italian ones.  Not only that, there's the sinister architectural dig at nearby Makan-al-Jinni - Arabic for 'Place of the Spirits' - where people vanish without trace ..."

    Don't worry, Conrad does NOT make a Mary-Sue appearance and there's not the slightest smidgeon of hanky-panky with Sarah Jane.  We do have some standards.

"The Sea Of Sand" 

1)  Operations Commence

 

Makan Al-Jinni

Cyrenaica

Libya

9^th June 1940

 The man ran.  Ran without hope, without looking and without caring, in the unco-ordinated, flailing  fashion of a runner nearing exhaustion.  He had already lost his turban, after falling in a patch of soft sand, and his burnouse flapped raggedly in the chill desert night.  A stitch wracked him and he stopped running, drawing in rasping breaths, leaning forward and resting his hands on his upper thighs.  Above, diamond-hard stars looked down uncaringly.  Apart from the gentle soughing of wind, nothing disturbed the centuries-old silence of the Libyan desert.

Looking back across the sands, nothing showed up against the desert.  Ibn Al-Hassan allowed himself a momentary flash of hope, which dimmed and died within seconds.  The Demon rolled over a dune top, following in his footsteps.  Whilst not fast, it never slowed down or stopped, following him implacably.  It’s devil senses allowed it to track him over bare stone where his feet left no trace; he’d tried that an hour ago, when the demon first appeared out of the sands.  Legless, squat and not bothered by the soft sands that slowed Al-Hassan considerably, it had emerged straight out of a dune and came directly at him, waving spindly black arms.

Yes.  Only an hour ago, at dusk, Ibn had been squatting comfortably atop a dune, smoking one of the cigarettes the expedition distributed generously to their labourers.  He was the night watchman for the site, a job he anticipated being easy – after all, out here at Makan Al-Jinni, there were no other people but the ferenji, the foreigners who came to dig and explore.  The Bedu never came near the place.  So a night watchman would have an easy time of things.  Never mind that the other workers had left, making claims of demons, hauntings and spirits of darkness.

Ibn Al-Hassan cursed the ferenji for putting him near the excavation, he cursed the Demon following him, he cursed his own poverty and greed that made the expedition payments look acceptable, and he cursed his stupidity for dismissing uncle Hassan’s warning about Makan Al-Jinni.

Hopefully that's whetted your appetite.  If not, you're not going to enjoy the next nine months***.

Finally -

Ooops, the margin won't Left Align!  Jolly good thing we're near the end then, hmmmmm?  I'd like to inform you that I'm at Page 995 of "Reclaiming History" or 2/3s of the way through this breeze-block sized tome, and only now is Vincent Bugliosi tackling the conspiracy theorists head-on.  He's already subjected quite a few to incidental and tangential criticism but now he's really getting his teeth into them.  Art!

Book with puny human for scale

     And with that we are done!

 

* Ouch

**  With a following wind

***  Only joking!  Eight months.