The latest version of X-Men is astounding

I have been reading X-Men comics for over fifty years and they have gone through many changes, relaunches and different titles in that time, several of which I have commented on previously. The latest relaunch by Jonathan Hickman is something else again.

Other relaunches have changed the team membership or changed the base location but this relaunch changes everything and it is world building on a phenomenal scale. There are not just new characters or new civilisations, there are new hierarchies of civilisations and categorisations of artificial intelligence. These are explained in all text pages within the precursor limited series that Hickman also wrote.

This breathtaking world building, while of interest in itself, is just there to hold the stories and nine issues into the main title I am gripped by the stories.

X-Men is something of a flagship title for Marvel and one of the best writers of the day is ably supported by one of the best artists, Leinil Francis Yu. The drama in the page below speaks for itself.

It is comics like this that show how superhero comics can do far more than have heroes punching pantomime baddies. I have picked up some of those in ComiXology sales and titles like Uncanny Avengers did absolutely nothing for me and are why I largely stop reading the genre.

I do not know how long Hickman is committed to X-Men for but I will be there for the ride.

A walk on the dark side

The partial lockdown that we are all under to contain coronavirus has, understandably, had quite an impact on my walking.

The main impact is that I am only allowed one exercise walk a day whereas I am used to doing several walks including at least one longish one of at least 90 minutes.

The second impact is on where and when I go and it has taken a few days to find some sort of routine that safely avoids crowds.

The big trick is to walk later at night, starting after 8pm, as there are a lot fewer people around then. Again, no surprise there as most people prefer to walk in daylight when they can see both the pretty things around them and where they are going.

I have also modified my walk to ignore the closest and most convenient bridge, at Teddington Lock, as this is long and narrow which makes it impossible to pass people safely. It is better after 10pm but I do not always want to walk that late!

So the new route takes me over both Kingston Bridge and Richmond Bridge, and through Hampton Wick, Teddington and Twickenham on the Middlesex side. As always there are many options on which roads I walk down, which I choose as the mood takes me, and on this day the route chosen came to almost 17km.

It is good to walk.

The Might Thor by Walter Simonson is one of the best comics series ever

Walter Simonson's run on The Might Thor from 1983 to 1986 is one of the greatest series of comics ever. It is alongside, but not surpassed, by the likes of Frank Miller on Daredevil.

The comics that he both wrote and drew are collected in Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson Volumes 1, 2 and 3, covering 33 issues from #337 to #369, a total of some 760 pages. It was a joy to read every one.

In my mind Simonson is more an artist than a writer and I have got many comics that he drew for other writers. I love his distinctive style and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to see so many pages of it again. It was very hard to pick just these two examples to try and explain why.

The writing surprised me. I remembered the some of the main these and some of the small scenes, such as the Executioner defending the bridge from Hel's realm that made it into one of the recent Marvel films, but I had forgotten just how much was going on at the same time in the stories and how much had been made of Norse mythology. It is a saga full of trolls, frost giants and a large cast of gods from Asgard.

There is also an incarnation of Thor from another planet (Beta Ray Bill below) and Thor as a frog thanks to Loki's mischief.

I was also impressed with the way that Simonson frequently used dialogue balloons to straddle panels. As a reader this helped the directional flow of the story and as a creator it gave Simonson more space to play with, i.e. the white gutters between the panels, which meant that he could use more words or, by moving them, more space for the art. It was a simple idea implemented effectively and I really appreciated it.

The Might Thor by Walter Simonson is a rich, unexpected and exciting story told with immense skill. Did I mention that I loved it?

War of the Worlds

Spending a lot more time at home than usual is allowing me to hit my rather large comics backlog. I started with War of the Worlds.

The simple premise of the story is that the Martians from H. G. Wells' famous story, were not wiped out by bacteria and went on to win the war. A few humans remained free to fight them and Killraven was one of these.

I have several of the original comics in my attic (somewhere) but I had never read the full run before. It was always on my to-do list and I bought Killraven Masterworks Vol. 1 when it hit the ComiXology sales a while ago.

That 470 page volume included the 65 page Marvel Graphic Novel #7: Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds which I had previously bought a digital copy of to add to my existing paper one.

My driver to read the series was to enjoy the P Craig Russell artwork and this cover shows you why. It surprised me how much of the series had been drawn by other artists but as these included people like Herb Trimpe, Neal Adams and Gene Colan that was a bonus.

The story was constrained, as the helpful foreword explained, by not being allowed to end the War of the Worlds. The result was a series of encounters between Killraven and his small band with Martians and their human helpers. These encounters were fantastical and horrific with the Martians engaged in grotesque activities such as farming human babies for food.

The story telling style was very much of its time, early 70s, with a lot of text in addition to the dialogue. It was nice to revisit that style and I think that there is still a place for it.

What I had completely missed when first reading it was the racial sensitivities of that time and place, particularly the Deep South, and the first interracial kiss in comics was only allowed after much discussion at the highest levels within Marvel.

I liked the story and the way that it was written but, as expected, it was the art of P Craig Russell that I loved the most.

A regular walk through Teddington and Twickenham

One of the features of the Thames locally (and elsewhere in London) is the lack of bridges which, for me, means there are only two crossing places that I can easily walk to; and they are, going north to south, Richmond Bridge, Teddington Lock Footbridge and Kingston Bridge. Several of my regular walks take in two of these, i.e. Teddington Lock and either Richmond Bridge or Kingston Bridge.

That gives me two basic routes and as I can do them in either direction that makes four. Then I can vary each of them as I go to add more variety and interest.

This is an example of using Teddington Look Footbridge and Richmond Bridge travelling clockwise.

There are various ways that I can get to Teddington Lock and the prettiest is to head straight for the river.

On the other side of the bridge there is no path along the river and the main road that parallels it is busy and boring so I usually head into Teddington. Where and how far I do this depends on my mood. This time I went quite a way away from the river before heading past St Mary's University and rejoining the river at Radnor Gardens.

The river disappeared again until I got to Twickenham Riverside, by Eel Pie Island, which is one of the prettiest parts of the route. It is all nice from there until the other side of Marble Hill Park. I could have stayed by the river then but it is a longer route and I was getting late for my afternoon tea (no cafe stops any more)!

Once over Richmond Bridge it is back home along the river and the only question is when to breakaway from the towpath and head home. The quickest route is to do that early, as the river bends at Petersham and the longest is to follow the river all the way back to Teddington Lock. This time I took the medium option and followed the river to Ham House then walked straight up Ham Street and past Ham Common. Ham Street is full of old buildings and is (mostly) quiet.

This variation of the route was 12.5 km and took a leisurely 2 and a half hours.

How to renew your garden waste collection in 12 easy steps

I have had a garden waste collection service from Kingston Council for a few years now and every year the convoluted renewal process annoys me so this year I thought that I would record it step by step.

This is the web page that the renewal letter (not an email) from the Council tells you to go to.

There is a big Subscribe button and no mention of renewal, but this is the right place.

Press Subscribe.

I am an existing customer but the system pretends, for the moment, that it does not know me and starts an address search.

If you are asking for house number and post code then you do not need the full address too. No other website I can think of does this.

Success, it has found me!

Sorry, it has not found me, it has only found my address.

Now it needs to do a second search to find the service at that address, the one that I am here to renew.

We both agree that I have one garden waste bin.

For reasons that escape me, at this point, in the middle of the process, it decides to ask me if I really want to do this.

Basically this is the same screen as the one two back where we both agreed that I have one garden waste bin that I wish to renew.

No, I have not changed my mind since you last asked me two screens ago.

A payment request, now we are getting somewhere!

I minor point but the payment process is embedded in the renewal process and behaves differently. The dark blue square buttons are now rounded and light blue, and Next has been replaced by Continue.

I was about time we had another confirmation screen. This is number three.

All done and the transaction is confirmed.

Note that in this dialogue it uses the word "Confirmation" to mean both "your confirmation is required" and "our confirmation is given".

Saying Thank You is so important that it gets a screen of its own when saying that on the confirmation screen would have done the job.

Weekly walks: Local parks

A lot has happened in the two weeks since my last long walk, all of it related to coronavirus.

Ten days ago I got flu-like symptoms (it was probably flu!) and I started following the then guidance of having seven days self isolation. I was a bad boy and, with some care, went to the theatre on the fourth day and while I felt well enough at the time I had something of a relapse and another four days in bed.

During that time the coronavirus reaction ignited in the UK and we went from just wash your hands to never see anyone else ever again, or something like that. I was not sure about whether to resume our long walks as the Social Distancing guidance said nothing on this but as we would be outside all the time and could avoid busy places we decided to go ahead as usual.

The first concession that we made was to avoid public transport and to walk locally instead and we agreed to start at Teddington Lock.

From there we took the vary familiar path along the river to Kingston Bridge before crossing it to take the less familiar but still well known route along the river on the Middlesex bank to Hampton Court.

We walked through the gardens there before crossing the road into Bushy Park where we headed for The Pheasantry cafe. Like everyone else we took a table outside some distance from anyone else. We were helped in this by the cafe which had put more seats outside and had spread them out too.

We then took the pretty route through the Woodland Gardens, this is the sharp turn west on the map.

From there it felt like we were home though we still had some way to go. I used to work in Teddington so was able to lead us on a quiet route through some back streets before we hit Twickenham.

There we were able to find the river again and head back to Richmond where Colin left me, on the reasonable grounds that we were walking by his house. That was also fair as he had walked further to the start of the joint walk than I had.

We skipped the usual congratulatory beers at the end because of our Social Distancing.

I carried on to Richmond Bridge  and crossed back to the Surrey side and the much walked route home. Time pressure persuaded me to catch a bus the final leg.

The statistics of the walk were just oner 19km walked in something shy of four hours. Our pace was slightly slower at almost 12 minutes a kilometer probably because I enforced a few pauses to play Pokemon Go! I do not usually play while on our walks but we were close to home this time and there were some gyms that needed taking out.

If the coronavirus remains much the same this week then we plan to do the same next week, i.e. stay local and only go to a cafe and/or pub if we can sit outside in space. But a week is a long time at the moment. 

The Kite Runner at Richmond Theatre was magical

I had heard of, but never read the book, and that basic awareness was enough to convince me to go and see the touring stage show when it hit Richmond. These shows usually have a high standard of production and know what they have to do to entertain. My ATG Theatre Card again proved useful and I got £5 off my usual seat Dress Circle A25 making it only £28.25, well within my don't-even-think-about-it range.

In the days before I spent most of my time in bed with seasonal flu listening to endless radio reports about corona virus and I was glad to be able to finally get out of the house. Fully aware of both my condition and potential risk from others I did some cautions social distancing by, for example, going into the theatre late to avoid the crush in the lobby and not taking my seat (almost on the aisle) until the last moment.

Almost all I knew about The Kite Runner was that it was set in Kabul and thanks to several significant events, and Rambo III, I at least knew something of the geo-political context. That helped.

The story that unfolded was not that distant from, say, The Far Pavilions, in that it was the story of one man growing up in an exotic country (from our perspective) that is facing conflict, it spanned several countries and had lots of violent and a few tender events along the way. For some reason it also reminded me of Thomas Hardy!

Like The Far Pavilions and Thomas Hardy the story gripped me from start to finish, even though it was impossible to sympathise with the main character who was also the story's narrator. He did some pretty bad things early on and while they drove the story into some unexpected directions they also made the hero a villain.

While we are on the subject of minor gripes, it also annoyed me slightly that the actor playing the Kabul boy/man was not very ethnic looking when a lot of the supporting cast were. As usual the Richmond Theatre website does not give the actor's name which is a shame because, his colour apart, he did a great job and fully deserved the ovation he got at the end.

As hoped, the production was excellent with several nice touches including a musician on stage throughout and a pair of cloth sheets, shaped like a kite, that were used to project images on to. The movement was excellent too with the cast gently rearranging things to make different scenes from a simple set.

The Kite Runner was everything that I had hoped for and more. It was a magical evening.

Love, Love, Love at Lyric Hammersmith was nicely done

Lyric Hammersmith is one of my home theatres, that is it is one of the easiest to get to/from, and so it is one that I go to quite regularly. Of course the theatre's location is not enough of itself but the prospect of a Mike Bartlett play (yes, another one) was enough to get me there and getting Circle Seat A23 for £21 seemed like a great deal.

Pre-theatre for Lyric Hammersmith has long meant eating in the Cafe and Bar beforehand and more recently it has also meant having a coffee and some cake in the ground-floor cafe too. Between the two I went for something of a walk/explore through Brackenbury Village which was good for both exercise and curiosity. The walk kept me away from the theatre for more than originally planned and I had to forego the main meal I had planned and go for a couple of small plates instead, and that turned out to be a great plan.

The central devise of Love, Love, Love was unusual and clever with the play consisting of three scenes in the same family each scene separated by twenty years.

The story started in 1967 and so we also had the "Love, Love, Love' lyrics from The Beatles' song All You Need Is Love.

Scene 1 felt something like The Young Ones with two students and one of their brothers together in a scruffy flat for a date that does not go to plan. This was more chaotic than romantic and there were plenty of laughs too.

In Scene 2 they are a couple juggling teenage children and their own professional and social lives. It was almost My Family. Somewhere along the lines a few wheels fall off a bus.

In Scene 3, and an ice cream later, the parents are living the Baby Boomers' dream with financial security while the two children, for different reasons, are struggling. This was a dark scene and no sitcom comes to mind. Love here became an excuse for not doing more, "I love you but ...". The main point made here was one that I had already accepted and I could watch this scene in smugness rather then shame.

My enjoyment was enhanced by the presence of Nicholas Burns who played the hapless Martin in Benidorm. It is always a treat to discover a Benidorm actor on stage. Surprisingly, his biography on the Lyric Theatre website does not mention this major role, especially when it helps to confirm his comedy pedigree which was very much on show here.

Love, Love, Love did not push any boundaries or stretch any mental muscles but it was funny and clever and nicely done.

Weekly Walk: South London parks

Last week's walk around some parks in North London last week worked well so we thought that we would do much the same thing in South London.

The big difference from me was I knew this area a lot less well and I was looking forward to visiting some new places.

The starting point was somewhat dictated by not being able to use mainline trains before 9:30am so we took the District Line from Richmond to South Kensington and headed south for Albert Bridge.

I had walked through Battersea Park several times, usually when going to Theatre503, so I led the way here and we went to the pagoda, the Festival of Britain Pleasure Gardens (my favourite part), the Bandstand (as seen in Good Omens) and then around the lake.

The worst section of the walk, as I knew it would be, was the section from there to Clapham Common as the profusion of railway lines restricted our choice of routes and we had to spend some time on busy roads. We also walked up Lavender Hill.

Clapham Common was flat, featureless and boring.

The route to Brockwell Park was not bad as we managed to use side streets all the way. Brockwell Park had a lot in it, including a hill which we climbed to get our first view of the day of the City. I knew the park reasonably well from my time at LB Lambeth in Brixton but had not walked along the top of the hill before.

There was another pleasant hop to the cafe at Dulwich Picture Gallery where we had a late coffee break, it was midday by then. Dulwich Park was just across the road and this was the first of my first-time parks. It was nicely ornamental if a little small, even though we tried to find a long route through it.

The biggest hill came next as we climbed Overhill Road (the clue is in the name) and at the top we found the striking Dawson Heights.

Peckham Park was small but had some interesting parts, notably the Japanese Garden in the centre.

We ran out of parks then for a while but Peckham Rye made up for that. It was one of those neighbourhoods dominated by relatively poor and/or recent immigrant families. This makes for a vibrant high street with lots of small shops and lots of people carrying bags of shopping.

Burgess Park was the big hit of the walk. It is something like a kilometre long and, we learned, was created from the Grand Surrey Canal, which I had never heard of.

The last green spaces were Kennington Common and Kennington Park but it started raining fairly hard by then so we did not pay much attention to either of them. This did not concern me as I knew something of Kennington Park from my visits to White Bear Theatre.

A beer was deserved by then and I was taken to Molly's close to Vauxhall Station, our end point. There I paid £4.5 for a third of a pint of decent beer and £5 for a remarkably good toasted cheese sandwich.

The arrival of rain curtailed our walking a little and we ended up doing 23.6km in something under four and a half hours.

South West London Humanists: Discussion on Far Right Terror

I love intelligent discussions on interesting subjects and that is why I try to get to the South West London Humanists (SWLH) monthly meetings.

This month we were really luck to get Simon Murdoch, from Hope Not Hate, talking about 'Hate in Britain: anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the Far Right threat' and were doubly lucky in that it coincided with their just published report State of Hate 2020.

I found the presentation before the talk fascinating. I had come across some of this before the breadth and depth of the information was exceptional. It is always good when a talker is fully on top of their subject like that.

My main takes from this part of the evening were:

Far Right organisations (BNP, NF, etc.) are in decline but the Far Right is still very able to get people out for demonstrations and protests. Some of this is built around "personalities" like Tommy Robinson and fuelled by social media.

The rhetoric and arguments of the Far Right have been mainstreamed by the Centre Right including major figures like Nigel Farage, Theres May ("Go home or face arrest") and Boris Johnson ("piccaninnies").

Conspiracy theories are a good way in for recruits; the report gives examples like a gunman who attacked a restaurant because he thought that it was being used by a child sex-trafficking ring led by Hillary Clinton. Conspiracy theorists tend to believe lots of strange things and from there it is a short step to blaming immigrants (or women) for all sorts of things.

There was far more to the talk than that (writing notes while listening is still a skill that I have not mastered) and the report is worth a read to get more details.

The following discussion was less good. There were a couple of people there who wanted to talk about Islamic terrorism despite that not being the subject of the meeting and a couple more who asked questions beyond the expertise of a researcher who contributed to a report - as he tried to explain more than one, the report outlines the current situation and it is up to other people to decide how to respond.

There were some good questions too, and I hope that mine was one of them! I was interested in the mechanisms of the mainstreaming of Far Right memes and mentioned the many appearances of Nigel Farage on BBC Question Time and the way that the programme had highlighted strongly racists comments by a NF Parliamentary Candidate on a recent show. I was pleased that the speaker agreed with me.

The disappointing discussion did not diminish from the presentation and I was glad to learn more about the subject and even gladder that organisations like Hope Not Hate are peering analytically into these dark places.

The Cat and the Canary at Richmond Theatre thrilled entertainingly

This week's touring show at Richmond Theatre was The Cat and the Canary. Apparently the story is strong enough to have been made as a film three times but I have no recollection of ever seeing any of them. However that was sufficient recommendation to go and see it and I booked my usual seat Dress Circle A25 for just £17.25 thanks to an ATG Opening Night Offer.

Just in case you have not seen any of the films either, the premise was, "Twenty years after the death of Mr. West, his descendants gather at a remote mansion to learn who will inherit his vast wealth and the hidden family jewels."

Obviously there were tensions between the distant family members and plans to thwart Mr West's intentions. The questions was who was doing this? This was a whosdoingit rather than a whodunit.

Watching it being done was exciting as the tension was built with devices like thunder storms, and escaped madman and ghostly hands emerging from secret panels. These are all familiar thriller tropes because they work and they worked very well here.

I was not that surprised when we found out whosdoingit but I was just falling into a trap and there were several surprising revelations after that.

The Cat and the Canary set out to thrill and it did that entertainingly.