This has always been a House of McMahon: Kiss my axe!

It's often been noted that Mick McMahon's Sláine artwork looks like it has been carved into wood before being printed on paper, full of thick, heavy slashes and chunky figurework. But there is also a looseness there in those deep, dark woods; a kind of goofiness that gives his work life, and set a standard for Sláine artwork that all others would have to follow. 

Steve McQueen is always racing my car

I first saw The Great Escape as a kid, which means that for the past 40 years, whenever I've been driven in a car on a long haul through the countryside, there has been at least one point when I've looked out the window, watched the landscape roll by, and imagine Steve McQueen on that incredible motorbike, racing over the land beside us.

The ghost McQueen in my head always beats us, but he has to make some bitching jumps to get there. And he always makes it this time.

Music that sounds like the future

When it comes to finding new music - new tunes that move the soul as much as the booty - I've always been looking for songs that sound like they comes from the future. It usually doesn't turn out that way, but that's how it can sound at the time. 

I was always chasing the future. Even when I was a little kid in the 1980s, rap music and groups like Run DMC, the Beastie Boys and the Pātea Māori Club sounded like they were pumped in from the 21st century, and I still think they do.

After the initial jangly years, Radiohead have been beaming in future music for the rest of their career, and I do genuinely believe that few bands have picked up what Pulp were putting down in This Is Hardcore.

But most of the time I know I'm deluding myself, and while I do think somebody like Skrillex or The Go Team can sound like the future, they then end up in a cultural cul-de-sac.

 

Maybe I'm just more disappointed that the rest of the world never fell for Cornelius as hard as I did in the early 21st century. Maybe I've always just been living in the future with my happy little slices of electro-pop.

Close Encounters: I'm going with Ronnie

My opinions about the great movies don't really change much from when I first see them, even if it was decades ago. But sometimes the big changes in your life can alter them in some obvious ways.

Take Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's an absolute dead-set classic of a film, from the period of peak Spielberg. And when I watched it recently for the first time since becoming a father, I could not get over how much Roy Neary is a total asshole towards his family.

It's such a goddamn cliché to say parenthood changes your perspective on things, but it really fucking does. I really can't watch anything when a little kid is harmed, and any movie that features the loss of a child fucking tears me up inside.

And while I desperately try not to judge any other parents for the way they do things - all kids are different, and all parents equally so - I do get frustrated by movie characters who are totally awful parents, because they're missing out on the truly great things in life.

Spielberg's own history of familial strife is well-documented, but Roy's family are still little more than collateral damage on the man's journey to the stars. 

It's still a fantastic movie - the unrealness of the first encounters, the lights and sounds of the mothership at the climax, the connection between two vastly different civilizations - but don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Roy.

If I didn't like movies with unsympathetic characters, I wouldn't like very many movies, so it's not like it's a game changer. But the sense of wonder as Roy heads out over the rainbow and into that bloody big spaceship is certainly dimmed by the thought of kids he leaves behind.

Getting all the future DC

Although I've never really felt the need to get every issue of any comics crossover, I have recently been snapping up issues of the DC 1 Million tie-ins when I see them. I got the basic four-issue limited series at the time, because Morrison JLA was the best JLA, but only ever bought a handful of the issues that crossed over to the 853rd century.

I'm getting them now partly because the late 90s is a fascinating time in DC history, the post-Crisis glow definitely fading, and the whole universe trying new directions every six months, looking for a way forward (they would eventually go the road of Geoff Johns, for better or for worse).

Now I can pick up the couple of dozen tie-in issues on the cheap, and they're a lot of fun, with some terrific art and crazy stories. The issues that hold up best are the ones that grab a slice of future living and have little to do with the uber-plot, although it's nice to finally understand what the deal with Lois Lane's DNA at the end was all about.

They're not the greatest comics in the world, and are already incredibly dated for comics from the far, far future, but even the idea that there will still be a far, far future for all of us is deeply heartening.

Kris Kristofferson: Son, you got a talent for stating the obvious

He was a goddamn great poet, a wonderful singer-songwriter and an all-round great dude, but Kris Kristofferson was also one of the great films actors of his time.

He was the best Billy The Kid by a long way, and was the only one grizzled enough to put Wesley Snipes in his place in the Blade films. And he was the absolute personification of a particularly American breed of evil in Lone Star, his Charley Wade such a despicable shit-kicker that his malevolence lingers on for years, long after he is buried out on the range.

We've lost a lot of the greats from his generation, but this one hurts. This one really hurts, man.