The Road to Civil War: Marvel Renaissance - International premiere hosted by Mark Millar.

I don't think I've ever been to a film premiere before. This was the first international screening of an excellent French documentary on one of my favourite topics, Marvel comics. I am something of a comics history buff and this film focuses on a particularly dramatic period in the Marvel comics story.

Philippe Guedj and Philippe Roure, the creative writer/director duo have told an exciting story on the screen. They grew up reading French translations of Marvel comics and as adults they decided to tell the story of the financial crisis that nearly destroyed the entire American comics industry in the late 1990's.

Many people assume that French comics were all Asterix and Moebius but there was a big Marvel comics market in the 1980s. I remember buying French copies of Serval (Wolverine) when I was a kid on holiday. I remember seeing more Marvel titles available in French newsagents than you could ever buy in a normal British newsagent. I'm not too surprised that these guys have made this film. The film was actually shown on Canal+, the French TV station who make Spiral and The Revenants. Canal+ is a top quality outfit.

So, we have a good quality French film and luckily we have a great story. Nowadays, everyone knows Marvel. Spiderman is an intellectual property that we can all easily believe to be worth a billion dollars. Deadpool has just made a lot of money at the box office. The Avengers are world famous. It is easy to believe that this was all predestined but it nearly didn't happen due to some intricate financial manoeuvres. Marvel were really close to the brink 20 years ago and they were saved by a few slightly maverick creative decisions and some suits who actually understood the comics.

The comic creator talking heads are fun and the financial dealing comes across like Wall Street. Greed was good back then. In some ways the Wall Street philosophy was actually present in the direct sales comics market where speculators would buy multiple copies of unexciting comic books believing that they would gain value and make them rich. It was a bubble and it burst. 

This film, about an interesting period in comic book history where everything could have been lost, deserves a wider audience. Comic book fans in America and the wider world deserve a chance to see this documentary and hear this story. I understand that the team are looking into ways to do this. This would make a perfect Kickstarter DVD project. 

Mark Millar is clearly supportive of these guys and with him onside a Kickstarter could do very well indeed. I understand (from the Q+A session after the film) that they have some longer interview footage that would be ideal for DVD extras. I am sure that some friendly comic creators could be called upon to provide extra rewards for enthusiastic Kickstarter backers. Having enjoyed tonights events they could even offer bespoke screenings at venues in other countries as part of the reward scheme. 

A great film and a great evening! Track down the film if you can.

why I like audiobooks

I love books.  I love reading.  I love fiction and comics and biography and economics.  I own thousands of books and I have read thousands of books but sometimes life is very busy and i don't get enough time to read.

I also like listening to the radio but I often can't be bothered with specific shows.  Podcasts are great too although production values vary.  As a child I used to love talking books like Winnie the Pooh or Just William or Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  Modern technology and audible has let me confirm a lot of these things.

Audiobooks are an answer.  More importantly downloading MP3s of audiobooks via audible onto whatever electronic device I have available.  I can listen to audiobooks on my way to work in the train or in the evening in the bath (and sometimes at night when I'm falling asleep as long as my girlfriend does't complain too much).  I can also listen to an audiobook as I do housework or cooking.  It's great.

I've just listened to the most recent Chris Brookmyre book as an audiobook and I loved it.  It's possible to have a fully immersive experience in a convenient way.  I've also listened to books on economics and medicine.

Give it a shot.

RIP David Bowie

I was probably at Uni before I properly got into David Bowie.  I liked Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground more when I was at school and I was more into Iggy Pop.  I had heard most of the big hits on TV and the radio but in the '80s he was doing stuff with Queen and I really hated Queen.  I was missing the point.

I started to get things more when I picked up a tape of Ziggy Stardust.  It was more rocky and urgent. I found myself coming back to it again and again.  Over the past 20 years I've explored most, if not all, of his back catalogue.  I've never really got into Tin Machine.

His early stuff is really fucking good, as I'm sure you know.  Between 1967 and 1980 I don't think he put a foot wrong musically.  Maybe he could have taken a few less drugs and stuff like that but he made great music.  He pushed the boundaries of art and rock.

His output over the past few years has been great too.  Unexpected single 'where are we now?' and the LCD Soundsystem remix of 'love is lost' were very strong.  The song 'i'm afraid of Americans' that came out in 1997 featured Trent Reznor on the v1 version and is better than many Nine Inch Nails tracks.

David Bowie left us hidden gems.  I hope to discover more of them over the next few years and I hope you guys do too.

RIP

Is medicine in the UK fucked?

Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor?

I didn't work hard at school.  I wasn't interested.  I was more interested in music and comic books and having fun.  Eventually I grew up, decided I wanted to do something worthwhile for society and my community and decided I wanted to be a doctor.  I wanted to help people.  So, at the age of 23, more than 15 years ago, I went to medical school.

Unfortunately I never had rich parents.  Both my parents had jobs.  Jobs working for the state where they worked hard but they were never paid very much.  Now I probably earn more than my parents did when their salaries were combined.  However at medical school I had no money.  My parents didn't have much spare to give me although they gave me what they could.  I got bank loans, overdrafts, hardship loans and hardship fund awards.  I managed to pay my rent and eat and get through medical school and become a doctor.  When I graduated at the age of 26 I was about £40,000 in debt.  It took me seven years to pay that back.

Being a doctor isn't cheap.  You give the GMC money, you give the BMA money (if you want), you pay to sit expensive exams (sometimes more than £1000), you pay your Royal College money (to train and to be a member), you pay your medical insurance and finally you pay a big chunk of money to be on the GP register or the consultant register.  Also, you get a small study leave budget so you pay a fuck load of cash to attend course, buy textbooks, buy equipment and make yourself good enough to do the job.

Also, you damage your personal life.  You travel about.  I've lived and worked in lots of cities and towns.  I've spent 3 and a half years as a doctor mainly living in hospital rooms.  I've slept on the floor at work when I'm meant to be oncall for emergency work (from home) but I don't have a car and I don't trust a taxi to get me into hospital quickly enough for a patient who needs me.  You miss time with family and friends.  You don't spend enough time on relationships.  You blink and you're nearly fucking 40.

So why do you do it?  You do it to help someone.  You might stop them dying.  You might get them out of ITU.  You might stop them becoming disabled.  You might help control their pain or their inconvenient chronic disease.  You might help.  Because you want to help people.  Because you are a doctor.

You are a doctor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of your fucking life until you get to stop being a doctor.  You realise that life is precious and wafer thin.  You know that sometimes you can help and sometimes you can't.  You always hope that you won't be the only doctor on a plane (and that the other doctor is an anaesthetist and not a public health consultant).

So being a doctor is tough but you do it because it's a part of you.  The NHS is a useless monolith sometimes but it helps everyone without asking questions.  It is a privilege to be able to treat every patient without worrying about costs so I guess the monolith is worthwhile.

All this is fine and good but it's becoming more and more unpleasant being a doctor in the UK.  The current rich kid clown show of neoliberal Tory twats that is molesting this country has decided to fuck with the medical profession.  They have picked notorious fud-nugget Jeremy Hunt as their frontman for this project and he is trolling the doctors in England in a massive way.  He is aiming at a reduction in take home, spendable pay for junior doctors of approximately a third.  He is claiming that this is a pay rise and that doctors need to work seven days a week.  He's like a Bizzaro version of a health secretary from a Superman comic. Backwards and fucked up.

Nowadays medical students often have debts of about £70,000 when they graduate.  If they get paid less they won't break even till they are in their 40s.  Hard work and no money makes you miserable.  Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor in the UK?

We won't have the best and the brightest as doctors if there is no obvious reward.  The job is horrible. It will only be worse if you don't get a comfortable wage.  Smart kids will do something easier that pays more.  They'll work in finance.  Talent will be lost.

Medicine in the UK is probably fucked.  The NHS will probably be dragged down with the medical profession.  Jeremy Hunt will laugh all the way to the bank.

Happy happy, joy joy.

Glasgow Central Station tour

I had been wanting to go on the Glasgow Central Station tour, led by Paul Lyons, for some time.  I managed to get a space on it today and I was not disappointed.  As someone who was born in Glasgow but grew up in one of the satellite suburbs to the south of the city Central Station has always been an important hub in my life, a gateway to adventure and culture.

The building itself is massive, truly much bigger than I ever really realise.  To get a true picture of its extent you need to see it from above.  It is a giant footprint on Glasgow, extending north from the Clyde.  It was build on top of an old village and even now hundreds of people work in the station and thousands more commute through it every day.

This tour gives you a chance to see behind the scenes at this important building.  You get into some of the nooks and crannies of the station and you learn about it’s construction and evolution as well as its central role in the social history of both Glasgow and Scotland itself.  Paul Lyons is a great speaker and he tells us of the massive crowds drawn here is yesteryear by the famous names of the past.  He also reminds us of those who were sadly unnamed as they passed though the station during the tragic final years of the first world war.

I could go on and on about the things I learned from Paul today but that is not really my role.  These stories should be told by Paul on the tour and at some point they will hopefully be written down and further recorded by him.

For everyone else, until that point, go on this tour.  You will not be disappointed.

The Glasgow Central Station Tour website

This blog is ten years old

I've just sort of remembered that I first started writing this blog ten years ago this month.  When I started up I was living in Coventry planning a move to Glasgow.  I am now fully based in Glasgow although I'm currently spending a bit of time in London for work.

The world has changed in a few ways and stayed the same in other ways.  Ten years ago I had an iPod but iPads and iPhones did not exist.  The idea that I would one day see an excellent Ant-man film in a big cinema would have made me laugh out loud.  I have managed to do a lot of things that I only dreamed of 10 years ago.  I have been lucky and I am almost exactly where I want to be.  Life is good.

I should take more time to write and to update this site.  I know I am lazy but I will perhaps do more on here over the next couple of months,

Anyway, I've had ten great years and I hope the next ten are just as good.

Phnuky

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everybody!

When medical science fails

As a doctor one of the most frustrating things you can experience is failure, the realisation that medical science is not good enough to fix a person.  It's worse if that person is a friend (or the spouse of a friend) and they have a health problem that is part of your specialist interest.  It is also important to note that as a doctor you should really not be involved in the medical care of your friends.

I wish medical science was better.  I wish that the drugs we have now were available 20 years ago.  I wish we were better. I wish we could stop young people becoming disabled.  I wish everyone could live full, pain free lives with no fucking problems at all.

My wishes are unrealistic.

As a doctor I want to make things good for my patients.  I know this is not always possible.  I can accept that. It's just fucking difficult to accept if it's someone you know, with a disease you work with, but sadly the boat has been missed and the great drugs came along too fucking late. It's a shitty fucking deal.  Sometimes you wish you could turn back the clock but life is not going to let that happen.

You also want to give all of your patients all of your effort all of the time but that is not possible either. As a doctor you are still human and your resources are limited.  It is impossible to fire on full cylinders all the time.

Anyway, I'm on holiday.  Rant over.

A gentle nudge

After a gentle nudge I've got back to writing the blog again.   Service, as always, will be intermittent.

Life is currently full and generally great.  I'm pretty happy.

The return of the Forbidden Planet Glasgow Book group - Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehimann and Kerascoet

The Forbidden Planet book group has been resurrected, much like this blog.  I'm glad the book group is back as it's great to have a chance to discuss comic books with other people.

Beautiful Darkness was an interesting choice. It's a French book, a sort of twisted fairytale.  The art looks great but I didn't really enjoy it.  The story revolves around some fairytale characters who come to live in and around the dead body of a young girl, lost in the woods.  We don't know how she died or if anyone is looking for her.  She is the elephant in the room.  The fairytale characters gradually turn feral, meeting horrible fates or dispatching each other in senseless and cruel ways.  It has a "lord of the flies' feel to it.

This comic book is like a cipher.  The reader can project his or her own ideas onto the story with no real confirmation of anything from the creators.  I guess it would qualify as art and many of the others in the group really liked it.  I felt it was needlessly unpleasant at times even though it looked great.  I don't think I'll rush to re-read it.

Interestingly, the writer Fabien Vehimann has also written some Spirou books.  They are much more wholesome and enjoyable to my mind.  I would like to see other work by these talented creators but Beautiful Darkness just didn't float my boat.

Check it out if you want a really twisted fairy tale but this is not a book for children.