Steve Does Comics

Everyone knows Stonehenge is for wimps and that Avebury's where it's at, a stone circle so big there's an entire village inside it.

And we all know it's where it's at because of one thing; Children of the Stones, the 1976 originated children's TV show that put it on the map for an entire generation and taught us never to trust anything vertical that's made of rock.

In the spirit of nostalgia and because the current heatwave has got everyone talking about the legendary one of 1976, I've just been rewatching the first episode, in order to regain that summer of '76 vibe - and what an episode it is, quickly introducing us to a village populated by strange people who stand in front of speeding cars for no good reason, stare in through your windows, watch you with telescopes and invite you to accompany them on bike rides when you've never met them before.

Not only that but it has a school filled with children who're far too cheerful and far too good at complex equations, everyone greets you by saying, "Happy day," and your new landlord's in the habit of appearing from thin air, in the middle of your living room.

Admittedly, I suspect that last thing is down to clumsy editing rather than him actually having the power to teleport but, still, it all adds to the sense that something isn't right.

What's going on is that astrophysicist Adam Brake and his son Matthew arrive in a village that's clearly Avebury (although it's never admitted that it is) and things immediately start to get weird, thanks to strange locals and a sinister painting of the stone circle. As Adam sets out to research the standing stones, Matthew finds himself in the local school and being one of only three children there who could be called normal. The episode ends with Adam touching one of the stones and instantly discovering why that's not a good idea.

It's hard to write a drama about stone circles that isn't good and this episode is as irresistible now as it was back then. It's a little heavy-handed when it comes to its sense of weirdness and mystery; it's not hinted from the start that something's wrong in the village, every single exchange between every single character in every single scene tells us there is.

But who cares? If God had wanted us to do subtlety, he wouldn't have given us stone circles in the first place. The story's compelling, the mystery's engineered to suck you in, the music's unforgettable and, most of all, the standing stones are suitably enigmatic. You have to credit our primitive ancestors. They might not have known much about television but they knew how to design a backdrop for it.

Many much-loved children's TV shows from our past don't stand up to later scrutiny. This one does and I can, thus, give it the highly-coveted Steve Does Comics seal of approval which all shows with any sense crave.

As everyone knows, Steve Does Comics has always been the world's main bulwark against despotism, and this week has been no exception, with it over-seeing yet another of its votes upon which the fate of civilisation itself might hang.

And that was the vote to discover just who had the most groove; the Bee Gees or Michael Jackson.

Millions voted and, after consultation with the UN electoral observers, I can proudly announce that the results of the poll are as such:

• Michael Jackson. 5 votes.
• The Bee Gees. 8 votes.
• "I can't decide." 1 vote.
• "Neither of them have the levels of groove that I have." 4 votes.

And so it's official. The Bee Gees were groovier than Michael Jackson. In fact, according to the poll results, they were a hundred and sixty percent groovier than Michael Jackson - and that's an awful lot of groove to have.

But what could be groovier than even that?

Batman could.

After all, he was the man who invented the Batusi, surely the greatest dance of all time and one that I still insist on performing every time I go down the disco.

But Batman almost wasn't the only super-doer to be given the TV treatment back in the grooviest decade of them all because, powered by the triumph of that show, William Dozier, its executive producer and narrator, decided to have a second stab at success by launching a Wonder Woman show.

And that show is posted above, in the form of a 1967 five minute try-out that was made to see if it could tickle the fancy of studio executives and lead to an entire series being commissioned.

Amazingly, it couldn't.

I wish I could claim the world missed out on a golden opportunity to thrill to the adventures of Diana Prince long before Lynda Carter, Gal Gadot or even Cathy Lee Crosby came along but such a claim would be madness as, quite frankly, it has to be the worst five minutes of television I've ever seen.

For a show that was designed to cash in on the success of Batman, it seems strange that, other than Dozier's narration, he imported nothing of the feel of the Batman show. Instead, we get a weird low-level sitcom that would even insult the intelligence of someone who thought On the Buses was the height of Wildean wit.

Oh well, at least its failure to be commissioned means that its star Ellie Wood Walker escaped a fate worse than death.

Oddly enough, her reflection in the try-out was played by Linda Harrison, perhaps best known as Nova in the original Planet of the Apes movie, which meant she went from playing a reflection to playing a woman who probably wouldn't recognise her own reflection. Acting, it's not always a dignified profession.

If there's anything the world needs more of right now it's adaptations of comic books. Why, there are barely any films or TV shows being made nowadays that are based on the adventures of people from Super-Hero Land.

And so it is that, to fill this massive gap in the market, this September, ABC and Marvel are going to be giving us their TV version of The Inhumans.

As we all know, Marvel have been keen to make the Inhumans a thing for some time now, in an attempt to make them fit the hole created by the rights to the X-Men belonging to Fox. For the last couple of seasons, they've shoe-horned the concept into the Agents of SHIELD show, which is obviously a great idea, as so many people watch Agents of SHIELD.

This in mind, can the new show possibly replicate the success of Fox's X-Franchise?



I have to say that looks very very dull, with nothing at all in it that would make me want to watch it.

An obvious failing is that it presents us with nothing that even vaguely resembles characterisation from its cast. Only one character - who I assume is Maximus the Mad - even gets anything to say, while everyone else just sort of stands around.

This is possibly not a surprise. Admittedly, I don't know what the Inhumans are like in their comic book form these days but, back when I used to read their adventures, they basically had no personalities at all and were just a bunch of super-powers on legs. In fairness, the trailer gives the impression that that policy's been adhered to. I also have to say that, while I'm no expert on acting, the bloke playing Maximus doesn't strike me as being the greatest thespian that money can buy.

I've also seen criticism of the CGI and it doesn't exactly look epic but, let's face it, no one with any sense watches a drama for the CGI, so I don't care about that.

On the plus side, Crystal has the black, bandy, circle thing going on with her hair.

On the negative side, Medusa's hair seems to have no life in it whatsoever.

Come to think of it, do we even get to see any of the Inhumans, apart from Black Bolt and Lockjaw, use their powers?

So, having seen the trailer, I do fear the worst.

But who knows? Perhaps, in a groundbreaking move, they've brilliantly left out the good bits in order to surprise us all when it's finally broadcast. Only time and the Terrigen Mists will tell...

Marvel Comics, is there no stopping you?

Not satisfied with already having a million and one TV shows and movies based on our favourite heroes, this August, Marvel's set to unleash yet another small-screen spectacular on us.

And that's The Defenders.

Naturally, I'm delighted, as I can't wait to see Dr Strange, the Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and the Red Guardian team up to battle the likes of Nebulon, the football-faced woman and that gorilla with the human head.

Wait? What's that you say? It doesn't have any of those in it? Instead, it's just a bunch of characters who aren't interesting enough to be able to support their own movie franchises? Given this effrontery to my expectations, I must take a look at the trailer immediately.



I have to say that that really doesn't do anything for me. Obviously, it doesn't have the characters in it that I'd want it to have but The Defenders was always supposed to be a hotchpotch of whoever was available at the time, so I can forgive that and it makes sense to call it The Defenders, bearing in mind that one of its characters is a defence lawyer but, still, what's in the trailer feels somewhat uninspired, like someone decided to make a Guardians of the Galaxy TV show without the sense of fun, imagination or budget.

On the plus side, it's nice to see Sigourney Weaver still getting gainful employment  after all these years but, to my eyes, the show seems quite run-of-the-mill and made from a template.

But its greatest crime is that its existence suggests we'll never get a movie version of the strip, starring those characters we most strongly associate with it, which seems like a crime against reason.

Still, what do I know? The rest of the internet seems stoked by it and I'm the man who liked the Green Lantern movie, so my judgement should never be listened to.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. If you have any on the matter, you are of course free to express them in the comments section below.

Hooray! It's time for a new regular feature on the UK's three hundred and ninety one millionth best blog. One where I give a quick round-up of whatever genre-related films I've been watching lately.

Obviously, when I say, "Regular," none of us should hold our breaths waiting for the next instalment because, once I've done this post, apathy'll probably seize me and the feature will no doubt never be heard of again.

Anyway, inspired by conversation on Back in the Bronze Age, I've been rewatching the classic 1958 BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit - that dread reminder of why messing about with shovels can only ever lead to horror. By eerie coincidence, the night after I watched the final episode, the Horror Channel then showed the 1967 Hammer movie remake, giving me a chance to make a direct comparison in a way I'd never done before.

It's always been the thing amongst the wise and informed to say the TV version's massively superior to the film version but, as someone who saw the movie first, I've always had strong resistance to such a notion and see both incarnations as equal but different. Being a serial, the TV show has time to explore its characters, ideas and setting in more depth, especially with its backdrop of Notting Hill style race riots, references to which, I think, are totally absent from the movie. But the film gains by being quicker and more sharply focused, cutting out all of the padding that was logistically necessary in the TV show.

When it comes to casting, it's also a draw. André Morell and Andrew Keir are chalk and cheese, Morell all sophisticated charm, and Keir, a ball of kindly irascibility. You could imagine Keir's hero decking someone with a well-placed right hook. Something you could never imagine Morell doing. Despite the differences between them, both are excellent in the part and, despite delivering exactly the same dialogue in totally different ways, both somehow manage to be perfectly cast.

Likewise Cec Linder and James Donald are both excellent as maverick archaeologist Matthew Roney. The movie's Donald does seem more like an intellectual, while TV's showmanlike Linder feels more like an outsider, a status that becomes crucial as the tale reaches its climax. It also has to be said that Linder really does look like he's stepped straight out of a panel drawn by Steve Ditko.

As Barbara, Roney's assistant, Barbara Shelley is more glamorous and self-possessed than Christine Finn but Finn has a somewhat strange quality to her and she's allowed to develop a friendship with the army captain that's totally missing from the film.

For me, where the film definitely scores over the TV version in terms of casting is that of Colonel Breen. Julian Glover's Breen starts out with some degree of charm, wit and even manners before degenerating into a deranged blockhead, whereas Anthony Bushell's Breen is a deranged blockhead from the very start, making you wonder how he ever got into any kind of position of authority.

Having said that, the TV show possibly gives hints that his behaviour is because (having a militaristic mindset?) he's being influenced by the machine before everyone else, whereas the movie doesn't hint at that, making Breen's refusal to recognise the mountain of evidence piling up in front of him somewhat baffling.

When it comes to production values, amazingly, the TV version beats the movie. The creatures are far better constructed in the TV version (although the movie ones are creepier) and the purging of the Martian hives is staged far more impressively. It does seem odd that a 1950s BBC serial should be able to rustle up better effects than a big screen movie from a decade later but I suppose that's just a reminder of how low-budget Hammer films really were and just how much they managed to hide that sin by hiring excellent casts to make them seem classier than they were.

So, in the end, I still declare it to be a draw, with both versions being classics in their own right.

One thing that does strike me as being astonishing about the TV version is that it was broadcast live, with filmed inserts for the trickier scenes. The idea that anyone would broadcast a science fiction show live seems like madness but they pull it off beautifully, with only the odd glitch to remind you that there were no retakes possible.

One last thing that strikes me is that the TV version of the craft looks remarkably like a dalek that's got drunk and fallen over on its way home from the pub. I had assumed it must be because dalek designer Raymond Cusick was involved but it turns out he didn't join the BBC until a couple of years later. Could he have been influenced by the design when he first drew his deadly mutants or was it pure coincidence?
If last night was a chance for me to revisit an old friend in Bernard Quatermass, it was also a chance to visit some new ones in the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Obviously, the Guardians of the Galaxy aren't really new friends. They're not friends at all. I've never met them and they've never met me and they'd probably mug me if they did meet me but I have at least encountered them before.

However, that was in the pages of a comic, and last night's bank holiday scheduling did give me a chance to see their movie for the first time.

Obviously, I was looking forward to it because I'm that kind of a man but did I enjoy it?

I enjoyed it when there was personal interaction going on. The characters were well-defined and sympathetic, somehow managing to come across as plucky underdogs despite having enough power between them to flatten an army.

I didn't enjoy it anything like as much when there was actual action going on. Not being a fan of space battles, especially CGI ones, I must admit the film lost my attention whenever the lasers started firing.

My other complaint would be that Ronan was a totally undeveloped villain. From what I can remember, we found out nothing about him other than that he wanted to destroy a planet for no reason that I could remember. Also, Thanos and Karen Gillan's Nebula were frustratingly underused. So far, all I've seen Thanos do in Marvel films is sit in a chair. I do hope he manages to escape his chair in future films or the series' climax is going to be a bit dull.

Anyway, I give it seven out of ten. It wasn't a film that blew me away but I'd have no objection to watching it again.

Before getting down to the business of the day, I have to announce the results of our vital poll to discover whether you'd rather be drowned or be killed by giant scorpions. Needless to say, it was a hard-fought battle but, at last, the result is in - and that result is this:

Drowning	5 (29%)
Being attacked by giant scorpions	12 (70%)

So, there you have it. The vast majority of people on this planet want to be killed by giant scorpions. We can only hope the governments of the world oblige and immediately set about creating a race of such creatures with which to dispatch us in the way in which we've demanded.

But, until that happens, there are other things to contemplate.

And one of them is Timeslip.

During the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s, it seemed like ITV's children's drama department was obsessed with creating its own version of Dr Who.

Needless to say, despite numerous brave attempts, they never quite managed it, although The Tomorrow People was probably as close as they got.

But there were other attempts.

And one of those attempts was Timeslip in which two children find a time portal between the fence posts of an abandoned military base and thus go on to have a string of inadvertent adventures in both the past and future. Did any TV show ever have a more doom-laden or oppressive theme tune than Timeslip? It was like Beethoven himself had been brought in to do the job.

Like the fearless adventurer in Nostalgia that I am, I've recently and repeatedly plunged into the Time Stream to re-watch the show's first serial which is set in World War Two and features Germans capturing the then active military base in an attempt to gain its scientific secrets. Can our youthful heroes thwart them and save the war for Blighty?

The main thought that strikes me upon re-watching it is that the boy Simon is clearly a Reed Richards in the making, having a level of knowledge of cutting-edge science that I suspect few real children have.

Sadly, if he's Reed Richards, his companion Liz is clearly Sue Storm, being completely and totally useless at all times. There's not an escape attempt she can't scupper with her stupidity, cowardice, dithering, panicking, crying and incompetence.

I did remember the show as being tense, dark and dramatic. In fact, watching it now, it all seems rather light and innocent. Even the leader of the Nazis in the first serial is a mostly amiable pacifist who repeatedly refuses to commit acts of violence. In the meantime, it's also made clear to us that Liz and Simon can't be hurt while they're on their adventures. Even being shot in the stomach from a few feet away does Liz no harm at all, other than to set her off crying and panicking again. Knowing that no harm can befall the stars does somewhat rob the show of its promised dramatic tension.

Liz and Simon may be the central characters but the show's dominating presence is that of Denis Quilley's Traynor, a government scientist who clearly couldn't care less about the welfare of the people around him just as long as he gains scientific knowledge from the children's adventures. He's not evil as such, just completely emotionally disconnected from the fate of those around him. Thrown into this mix are Liz's mum and dad, the former of which has a psychic link to Liz that enables her to see the children's adventures and relate them to her husband and to Traynor. Call me a cynic but I get the feeling this element was added in order to help pad out the episodes and guarantee they came in at the right running time.

Speaking of which, it did depress me that numerous comments under the episodes are by people complaining about them being too slow-moving but, personally, I like it in TV shows and movies when nothing's happening and I tend to lose interest when things get exciting, so I disagree with those comments completely and sentence the people making them to sit through the extra extended director's cut of my favourite movie Let the Right One In. That'll show them what, "Slow-moving," means.

I'm currently two episodes into the second serial The Time of the Ice Box which is a very strange affair, featuring a female scientist straight out of the Hyacinth Bucket school of acting and John Barron basically acting exactly the same way he did when he played CJ in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Such sitcom related acting is very strange in a dramatic sci-fi show but also oddly endearing and engaging.

A lucky break the show's had is that, although it was filmed in colour, it seems that 1970s ITV was as bad at preserving its heritage as the BBC and, nowadays, only black and white versions exist of most episodes. This might sound like a bad thing but monochrome does tend to add a certain gravitas to proceedings that colour inherently lacks.

The final quirk of the show worth mentioning is that each serial's introduced by famed TV science reporter Peter Fairley, there to explain the science behind it all and assure us that boffins are even now proving the depicted adventures are possible. To be honest, I'm not convinced he's right but it is quite amusing to see him make the attempt.

All in all, it's not a masterpiece but it is diverting and, with its twists, turns, revelations and developments, it is engagingly intriguing.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. If you have thoughts on it, you're free to share them in the comments box below. In the meantime, if you want a reminder of the show or have never seen it before, Episode One is posted above for your entertainment.

"What is a Time Bubble? You can't see it, of course, but it might help you visualise it to think of a balloon. Supposing some little patch of information – some little patch of history – gets slowed down, and instead of flashing backwards and forwards it floats, gently, as if in a bubble. Supposing you could get into that bubble – that bubble of history – and travel with it. Then you could move forwards and backwards in time at will." —  Peter Fairley.

As I rampage around the streets of Sheffield, throwing cars at people and bending street lamps, I often tell them, "I told you you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!" and they reply, "So what? We never liked you when you weren't angry."

And that raises the subject of the Hulk.

And that raises the subject of his TV show.

And that raises the subject of other live-action super-hero TV shows.

Despite the oft-impracticality of such a venture, many of our comic book favourites have transitioned to the small screen. But whose show was best?

The first super-hero show I ever saw was Adam West's Batman which, at the age of four, I totally failed to realise was a comedy and was therefore gripped by.

In the 1970s, I was never a huge admirer of the Hulk show, as he wasn't anything like as dramatic as the comic book version and he never spoke.

I remember vaguely enjoying the Mark Hammond Spider-Man show, mostly because of its sheer hopelessness but I haven't seen it since it was first broadcast and so cannot say if I'd still find it as endearing as I did back then.

Having recently re-watched several of the old Lynda Carter Wonder Woman episodes, I can only describe it as amiable and harmless.

Maybe there's something wrong with my memory but I can't recall any 1980s super-hero shows at all.

In the 1990s, there was the Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher Superman show which, for some reason, when I first blundered across it, whilst zapping through the channels, I thought was Mexican. I was intrigued by the idea of a Mexican Superman show and thus kept watching. I seem to remember finding it charming but couldn't understand why Superman always used to stand there smirking like a wally whenever confronted by bad guys, thus giving them the chance to use their latest deadly weapon on him.

Smallville never grabbed me at all and I can remember barely anything about it.

I remember Channel 5 showing the Justice League TV movie from time-to-time. From my bargings around on the internet, I gather that everyone else hated it but, possibly because I had no emotional investment in the original comic, I enjoyed it greatly.

I also enjoyed the David Hasselhoff Nick Fury TV movie. I don't know if there's something wrong with me but I thought he was well-cast in the part and it seemed like good fun at the time.

I have some vague idea that there was once a Flash TV show but know nothing of it.

I haven't seen Gotham. I keep seeing it in the listings but I get the feeling it doesn't feature Batman, so I've not been tempted.

I managed to make myself watch the first two series of Agents of SHIELD but finally gave in to apathy after the first episode of the third season and haven't seen it since. Clearly, it needs a good injection of the Hoff to get it going.

I've seen bits of the Supergirl show and it seems pleasant enough but I haven't quite managed to make an effort to see more than bits of it.

I've seen no sign at all of the Daredevil show, nor the Green Arrow one.

So there you have it, my thoughts on TV super-hero shows. It should be blatantly obvious that, when it comes to anything made after the mid 1990s, ignorance is my watchword. But what about you? Do have any favourites and do you have any that you can't bear to be exposed to? If so, here's where you can make your voice heard.

Speaking of making your voice heard, don't forget to vote in the Barbarism poll to the right of this post. Remember; the lives of Nemedian Slime-Dwellers could depend on it.

Skagman - Avebury. By John Nuttall from Hampshire, United Kingdom (AveburyUploaded by ComputerHotline) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

A wise man once said, "Life without variety is like cow heel without tripe," and who could argue with a claim like that?

I certainly couldn't. Nor could Crikey the evil ventriloquist's dummy who guides my every action.

Therefore I thought I'd make a rare drift away from the long-gone world of comics and look at the long-gone world of TV.

This post is, of course, not for mere common-or-garden TV - but for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Horror series that thrilled us in our younger days.

Many and splendiferous were the treats that TV gave us during our childhoods. If it wasn't Dr Who or Star Trek, it was the Tomorrow People and UFO.

British TV of course held up its end magnificently during that era, with a whole slew of children's shows that seemed designed to send us screaming to a padded cell. Escape into Night gave us a house surrounded by boulders with eyeballs. While Children of the Stones gave us the Avebury sarsens turned evil.

And there was more.

The Changes gave us a world without technology. Sky gave us a boy from the future, attacked by trees, while Timeslip gave us yet-to-come dystopias of heat and cold.

Then again, there was the nightmarish The Singing Ringing Tree - that East German fairy tale that did more than anything to convince us it was a good idea to keep an iron curtain between us and the Warsaw Pact, if that was what they thought was suitable entertainment for children.

They were classic series all. And there were plenty more where they came from. So, what were your fantastical favourites from your childhood days?