Sin City: She's sure as hell kept in shape

The comic book medium is all about the sequential art, but then sometimes there is just one panel, one small image, that is so striking that it takes your breath away as soon as you see it, and lodges in your skull for the rest of your life.

The above panel by Frank Miller is one of those for me. His Sin City comics can be problematic as hell, but they also still look so beautiful. The black and white stark style brings all sorts of energy to the action, even as it remains moody and dark. His use of rain and smoke was incredible.

There are dozens of tiny little moments throughout the Sin City comics, but this panel from A Dame To Kill For still stands out. It's part of a cheesecake sequence where the femme fatale is taking a nude swim in the night, and is little more than glorification of the female body. It adds little to the plot, other than showing how this woman uses her whole body to seduce the unwary, but is an essential part of the story. 

Look at the angle of this shot, the way the surface of the water is as invisible as bright colours. How do you even come up with the idea of looking it from this perspective, and then leaving the water as a blank void, only the trail of the body betraying the fact that she is not just floating in empty space.

More renowned comic scholars than me could undoubtedly point out that somebody far less famous in the western world did something like this earlier and better than Miller, but this is where I first saw this kind of ambition, and actual delivery on that ambition. It literally took me breath away when I first saw it, and it still does, not matter how many times I see it.

Because sometimes a single panel can feel like it's opening up whole new worlds for you, even if it's just somebody diving into a pool.

School Fun really was top of the class

Even as a little kid, I was all about the action comics when it came to the British weeklies, and I was up and running with 2000ad from a very young age. But I still had a soft spot for the kids humour publications, even if I was never a regular reader.

While I really didn't dig The Beano or Dandy, which were always just a bit too patronizing, I was most definitely a Whizz-kid and would read the odd Buster or Krazy. But there was only ever one of those comics that I was ever really attached to, and it was the short-lived School Fun.

It came out when I was eight, and I was on board with first issue, because school is everything at this age, and it didn't seem condescending at all to have comics set in the world of blackboards and detentions. All the one-page joke strips got up to all sorts of educational hi-jinks, and the drama came in a short serial based around the lovable Grange Hill TV show.

It was awesome, and the first time I remember getting a the first issue of a brand new comic, and vowing to collect the remainder for the rest of time, and then I never, ever saw #2.

It was the first real hole I felt in collecting comic books, the first absence. I was used to there being dozens and dozens of X-Men or Batman comics published before I was born, and 2000ad was more than 160 issues into it before I went for it.  But this was something I had the chance to get right from the start and that plan lasted a whole week or so. 

I ached for it, I still remember having dreams when I was that age, of finding that issue, and the joy I felt in that dream, only for it to burst upon awakening. 

My mate Kyle somehow got that second issue of School Fun a couple of years back. Bit late now, really.

It would be years later before I ever managed to collect the first 12 issues of something, and when it happened, it was fucking X-Force.

I still have that first issue of School Fun that I bought off the shelves all those years ago, although it is barely holding together after all those childhood re-reads. I went through it again recently, and it is still fun. Great art that I never appreciated as a kid, and cracking gags about bangers and mash. 

And I had another one of those nightmares where I was starting school but didn't have my timetable sorted just the other night, so there is still a part of me that still lives in my school days, and still loves comics about it.

Excalibur: Your pathetic illusions don't work on me, Pop

- Excalibur #46 (1991) 

Art and words by Alan Davis 

Inks by Mark Farmer 

Letters by Michael Heisler 

Colors by Glynis Oliver

Crying into my Candy

I don't think I can watch the new documentary about John Candy, because I can't even watch the trailer for the film without getting embarrassingly emotional about it, and I figure that a couple of hours of that would legitimately kill me.

The part where Candy's voice catches when he says that line in Plane Trains and Automobiles is honestly one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen. 

Showing, not telling

As I've got older, my tastes in comic books has regressed in one very specific way. I used to be all about the writer, and would put up with mediocre art if it had a great script, but now it's the artist that is the main draw. I just like things that look good, and am also craving comics that can tell a good story with a minimum of dialogue.

It's much easier to do this in a live action medium, but I'm still impressed how talented filmmakers can tell stories without the huge crutch of dialogue. 

There are silent sequences in many, many movies, but ones that have no spoken parts whatsoever tend to be animated, like the wonderful Robot Dreams, or the quiet brilliance of Shaun The Sheep, or the frenetic eternity of Roadrunner cartoons, 

They can say so much without uttering a word, and all telling very, very different kinds of stories.

There is less of this in live action films, and those that do go for it, like the recent Silent Night from John Woo, feel more like a gimmick than genuinely innovating. 

Some great movies tell their stories in action and movement, with the most obvious being the Mad Max films, which barely stopped accelerating. They didn't have to be told how much of a respected badass Furiosa was, because it's there in her movements, and actions, (although this didn't stop them making a full-length backstory for her).

They gave John Wick a whole background in book binding when he briefly retired from Baba Yaga duties, but never needed to really get into it, because everything you need to know about his precision and care is in the way he shoots some scum in the face

Great dialogue can make a film - best of decade film lists were usually talkfests (with odd exceptions like the aforementioned Angry Maxwell) - but I'm still baffled by the argument that you could prove Game of Thrones was scientifically worse in later seasons because there was less dialogue in his last episodes.

But film is such a visual medium, and the way the people move across the screen can tell you anything, without saying a word. 

In space, nobody can hear you bang on about class warfare

Who does genre belong to, anyway?
 
There's a particular writer I generally respect, but has this irritating habit of making proclamations that sound impressive, even though they are, on closer examination, completely full of shit. (And no, there will be no naming of that writer here, because this is not about naming and shaming in any way.)

Usually it's easy enough to dismiss these proclamations and move onto the other meaty analysis that I went there for, but there was one that came out a few years ago that I've never been able to let go, and it was their flat, bland statement that science fiction was a "thoroughly middle class genre".

Which I can't get with at all. The realms of hardcore collectors might be largely middle class, because they have the kind of disposable income to buy high-end prop reproductions, slabbed pieces of fried comic gold, or nice statues to go on their shelves. And maybe it's true that something like Doctor Who has been almost exclusively produced by just the right sort of people, and maybe a lot of the creators are able to get their start through public school connections and the funds to finance it, but I truly believe genre belongs to everybody, and science fiction in particular.

After a lifetime of toil, I'm still working class to the core. Solidarity forever and all that. And I've been immersed in fabulist fiction my entire life, and so have many, many people I've shared smoko rooms with.

The dream of a better world, and the consequences of the failure to achieve it, that belongs to everybody. We can all look up at the stars and dream of something bigger and better out there, or go deep inside how heads to imagine the far future. It doesn't matter what level society thinks you belong, we can all go there.

If anything, it's the people in the gutter who long for the stars the most.

It's still a class of people thunderously under-represented in modern science fiction - movie critics are still banging on about how the crew of the Nostromo are so representative, and that movie is nearly 50 years old - but the audience is all of us, for all time and space.

All the computers are still wrong

The tech giants have been spying on me for fucking decades now, but all the algorithms are still wrong, because I only just found out there was a movie on a streamer I've had for more than a year where Frank Grillo gets involved in a big underground fight club, and ends up calling in his mate Scott Adkins to help him out with some arse kicking, and it's like they don't even know me, man.

...28 Years Later: A sort of insanity rarely seen

It really looked like Ralph Fiennes was going full Colonel Kurtz in ...28 Years Later. The bright dye covering his naked torso, the intense gaze seen in glimpses in that remarkable trailer, it seemed obvious that he was going to be a new kind of monster among the infected.

And then he wasn't that. He wasn't that at all.

The more I think about it, the more things I love about.that this belated sequel that was already predictably my favourite film of the year. There's a lot to like, especially in the way it does not go in any direction anybody was expecting, but the character of Doctor Ian Kelson, as played by the indominable Fiennes, really is something special.

Because he is obviously insane, but of a kind that is rarely seen in cinema, While he's clearly lost his mind, he still doesn't want to hurt anybody. He still wants to help. He is dealing with such unimaginable trauma in a way that he truly believes is honouring the dead that surround him.

He gets shunned by a 'normal' society that hides behind ancient masks, doesn't have a single doctor and sends out 12-year-old boys to fight insane rage monsters, because they do not understand what he is doing.

He will go about his task on his own if he has to, but the relief when he gets to explain what is going on, and the compassion he shows when he finally has a new patient shows that there is still vast oceans of humanity beneath that iodine-stained surface.

Fiennes is always good in everything, and sometimes he gets a transcendent role in films as diverse as In Bruges, Schindler's List and The Grand Budapest Hotel, with his Kelson clearly ranking with those, for the subtlety he uses to portray a fierce will at the end of the world. 

Obviously conflict breeds drama, and the vast majority of mental illness seen in movies and TV are used as an excuse for terrible, hurtful behaviour. But there are more people in real life like the good doctor, broken into a million pieces inside, but still going around and trying their best. 

He might get smashed apart again in the imminent sequel - the latest trailer does make him look more fierce - but I do weep for his quiet humanity on this isle of the dead

Uncle Scrooge kept me in comics

I tried to give up on reading comics half a dozen time when I was a kid, because everybody told me they were bad for me, and they were prohibitively expensive for a working-class household, and there were lots of other things to get obsessed with, like BMX bikes, and video games, and running around with sticks down the river, pretending I had a lightsaber.

There were also other times I tried to kick the habit because I believed the fools who told me I was getting too old for comics, and some other times - especially in recent years - where the cost to reward ratio was just not worth it.

But I kept getting dragged back because I just fucking love the medium, and sometimes I get pulled back by a single issue. The first issue of the New Warriors was one, an issue of an Ambush Bug comic was another. A couple of times it was random issues of 2000ad, and one time the very first Punisher comic that Ennis and Dillon did was enough to relight the fire.

The first time I tried to give up, I was six or seven years old, and I think it was because I got sick of my poor Mum complaining about the mess I was making with the huge collection of 20 or so comics I had. It just didn't seem like it was worth the hassle, even to my young brain.

And it was an issue of an Uncle Scrooge comic that kept me going. 

I can't remember any of the details around it, or even the cover. I feel it was yellow and had something to do with ice fishing, and that's all I've got. I'm still halfway sure that I would recognise it if I ever saw it again, but only halfway sure.

But I can remember how it made me feel. It was funny and clever, and looked so pretty, and I read it a dozen times that week. The issue itself is long gone - at that time I used to trade a big grocery bag full of comics at the second hand bookstore my Nan worked at every Tuesday, so I never really kept any of them - but it still represents everything that is great about comics to me. 

I've barely read any Uncle Scrooge comics since those days, but that pivotal issue is always more powerful as a metaphor than an actual object.

All attempts to give up on reading comics have been as half-hearted as this, and there has always been something to keep me hooked. It's unlikely to be another Duck comic in the future, but there's always something.

Ambush Big Nothing Special: I could so too die!

- Ambush Bug Nothing Special #1 (1992) 

Inks by Al Gordon 

Colors by Anthony Tollin 

Letters by John Costanza 

Words by Robert Loren Fleming 

Everything else by Keith Giffen

Scared by the wobbly bridge

While I don't have a huge problem with heights, I'm always a little bit wary of all bridges everywhere because I saw the video of the Tacoma Narrows Birdge pulsating like a motherfucker in the winds before its collapse in 1940 when I was at a very impressionable age, and I kinda assumed that this happened to all bridges at some point, and I did not want to be anywhere near them. 

I still sometimes have nightmares about being on that bridge when it's doing that. The dreams are always in black and white.

The Nirvana paradox

Nirvana didn't sound like anyone else to our 16-year-old ears when it came out. It was so angry and so snarling, but still somehow so full of the joy of life. 

My mate Anthony heard them first, late at night on the rock station beaming in from Christchurch, and none of us knew what he was talking about with his raves about the 'entertain us!' song, and then we all heard it, and we were all on board. 

Not everybody was a Radiohead fan, and Pearl Jam wasn't for everyone, but if you didn't like Nirvana in the early 90s, there was definitely something wrong with you. 

Even now, decades after Kurt Cobain died by his own hand, the music is still as raucous and relevant as ever. One of those rock stations just did a survey of the greatest songs of the 90s and Smells Like Teen spirit came in at number one, and who is going to argue about that? 

It's a testament to its power that I still don't know all the lyrics to their biggest song, even though I've heard it a million times. I've never felt the urge to look them up - it would literally take 10 seconds to google it - and even though it does contain incredible lines like the one about feeling 'stupid and contagious', which I've often had running through my head when I've felt particularly embarrassed by my own foolishness. But I know the lyrics to the Weird Al piss-take better than the original.

And even though Nirvana even did a song about how people know all the words to their songs and sing along, (but they don't know what they mean), I'm happy to stay in some ignorance, and warble out whatever sounds right. 

So I can still sing along with all these marbles in my mouth, and don't need to now exactly what it is saying to know what it is really saying, about that rush of andolesdent need and that yearning for something bigger and better, and all that straight-up anger that still burns, all these years later.

Where did Batman go?

They keep making endless jokes about Batman disappearing when peoples' backs are turned, and have the characters making snide comments about it, or turning it back on Batman himself, or something equally clever. 

It's just a little amazing that anybody actually thinks there is anything new to wring out of this cliché, because I always thought the matter was settled decades ago, with this little gem of a sequence:

That's from 1999's Legends of the Dark Knight #125, in a story written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Rick Burchett. It's followed by a slightly cringe moment where Bats cries about how it's because he finds it hard to say goodbye, but it was refreshing just to see him confronted for how goddamn rude he's been. Look at how Gordon slowly towers over the superhero, with his moral righteousness giving him the extra height.

 

And it's all you have to say about the subject. Batman wants loyal friends and allies, and you don't get them by being fucking rude. Bruce Wayne is meant to be the smartest person in the world, he should be able to figure that out. (I really liked how the Brainiac 5 from the recent Bendis Legion wasn't a jerk, because he had figured out you got better results with a kind word and a compliment, which cost nothing and gained him so much.)

Even though his adventures are currently being published by a bunch of craven cowards, I love Batman comics, because even the worst of them have moments of style or beauty or truth. And this came out during a particularly dire period for the Dark Knight Detective, and says something about the character that still resonates, even if it's been roundly ignored by every writer who wanted to do their own version of this bullshit all over again.

The look of Dredd

Carlos Ezquerra's design for Judge Dredd's uniform really shouldn't work, with the giant pads, an incredibly distinctive helmet and the huge badge and chain. And yet it has remained essentially unchanged in nearly 50 years, with just the tiniest variations giving individual artists extreme leeway.

Partly it's survived because it's so specific - there is always the eagle on the shoulder, and there are very strong opinions on how many bars the helmet respirator should have -  but also open to constant interpretation. Even in the golden age of 2000ad, McMahon, Bolland, Smith, McCarthy, Kennedy, Higgins and Carlos himself had very different looks for the main character, while always been quintessentially Dredd. Maybe it's the chin.

Ezquerra knew what he was doing with the mad hybrid of fascist leather street cop and pirate regalia, and it's a design that can not be improved upon, because nobody would be crazy enough to try.

Besides, everybody knows that the real design freedom comes in doing the city itself, and the massive apartment blocks and sprawling crowds of block maniacs in Mega City-One come in a bewildering amount of styles, and that's where the great artists really get their freak on.

Marvel v DC: Don't make me choose

We all like to get a bit tribal sometimes, and stand with our clan, but I never really got the point of blindly siding with one comic company over another. They all go through good periods and bad, but I'm not going to ignore great comics just because of the publisher.

So I was never a Marvel Zombie or a Johnny DC, I was always a bit of both, because it always felt so limiting to confine myself to one. There were times when I was reading one company more than the other, but that was just because that publisher happened to be putting out more things I was interested in, and it's never been lop-sided in any way since I was a little kid.

Sure, Batman rules, but Spider-Man is cool too. When the big Marvel v DC crossover happened in the 90s, it was all about who could win in a fight, and led to some really dumb storytelling (don't ask the fans what they want, for crying out loud), instead of celebrating the differences between the universes. 

Like a lot of the worst nerd culture that we struggle with in 2025, this has spread from the comics to infect other media, and fans of superhero movies can be so desperate to be true to their school that they refuse to acknowledge that any Marvel film can be any good, or that one of the DC universe(s) films could possibly have any merit.

You can like one thing without shitting over everybody else's vibe. It's really easy. 

Besides, when the management at both companies can act like complete shits - and make no mistake, I think the head honchos at DC have never been more cowardly than they have been in the past week - it's the talent involved in making the film that matters, and the story they are trying to tell, not the ultimate owner of the intellectual property. There's no automatic path to greatness, and swinging both ways is always more fun.

Waiting for the movie to start

I always liked the idea of pure meditation, of closing down my mind from the noise of the world and becoming one with everything. That sounds lovely, but I've never been able to pull it off, and the closest I ever get to it is in the quiet of the cinema before the movie starts. 

I'm not a total freak, and recognise the importance of going to the pictures with your mates, but I do still see a significant amount of movies on my own, especially now that I can go see that mid-range actioner at 10am on a Tuesday morning. And I'm never, ever late to a screening - and will bail altogether if I'm going to miss the first few minutes, so I end up spending a lot of time sitting in the cinema, waiting for things to start, and I never feel more calm and restful than that moment.

I can switch off before the trailers start, and easily ignore the advertisements. The sense of anticipation, that something is about to happen, is enough for me to power down and go into standby mode. 

Sometimes I can't get into that headspace, and I end up playing weird word games with the ads that show up, but I'm still hanging out for the movie to start. It might be the best thing ever, and probably won't be, but I've made the effort, have no other distractions, and am seated for the next couple of hours.

Like all good cine-hypocrites, I sneer at the performative nature of film festival audiences, but my own rituals around going to the cinema are logical and rational. I never, ever fuck about on my phone in the cinema, but do think it's right and proper to read 30-year-old paperbacks in the half-light of the theatre.

(I have, to my shame, stopped turning my phone off when I'm at the cathedral of light, because I have greater responsibilities now, but it is on the lowest dim setting, with all the sound turned off, from the moment I walk into the theatre.)

I even started a novel with the main character having this moment of zen, and having it rudely interrupted, because that's what it means to me.

This world is so noisy, and so full of sound and fury, and we should take any opportunity to have a break from it all. Maybe you're better at this meditation thing than I am, but if your head won't shut up long enough to get there, you could do worse than get to the movies five minutes earlier, and find some peace in the theatre.

Grendel: Behold the Devil: I always know where he stands

- Grendel: Behold The Devil #2 (2007)
Drawn and written by Matt Wagner

Letters by Tom Orzechowski

My skin is theirs

One of the great things about an individual human brain is that it is making connections that no other brain does, just because of the context in which those connections are made. And I know that nobody else in the world probably thinks that Filter's 'Take A Picture' single from 1999 is all about the vampires in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series, but I do.

All I know is that I was re-reading Newman's series at the time that song came out, probably because the thoroughly excellent Dracula Cha Cha Cha had just been released, and then I hear Filter on the radio in the loading dock at Farmers, and they're singing about taking a picture because they won't remember what they look like is obviously about how they will feel after they've turned vamp and gone cold to the camera; and they're talking about feeling like a newborn, which is how Newman often describes the newly-turned vampires; and what do you think of your son now that he's a bloodsucking monster?

Obviously it's not about that, and 10 seconds of research shows that it's about the frontman getitng drunk on a plane, but it's all about the fangs in my mind.

Bourne Royale!

I love the Bourne movies, mainly because they're about the virus of empathy taking down a cabal of stone-cold killers, and even the worst of them have moments of beauty, or at least a fucking awesome piece of stuntwork.

They've repeatedly tried to recapture the brilliance of the first few films and have always fallen short, but there is always talk of a new film somewhere in development, if they can just crack the right story.

Here's my idea for free, because it's blindingly obvious - make it all Bourne, all the way.

There have now been five films in the series (and a television show which seems to have been watched by absolutely nobody), and while they all have fairly substantial body counts, there have also been a lot of wounded people walking away grimly, and putting them all together in one film is a total no-brainer.

You've got Matt Damon, of course, who can do properly grizzled these days, and Jeremy Renner, who is very much not dead. Throw in Édgar Ramírez from the final film in the original trilogy and you've a decent battle royale going on. Karl Urban was left alive despite his villainous deeds in Supremacy, and is surely up for a bit of revenge.  

Chuck them all into the mix and see where the dust settles, I say. I'm not saying they should all join together in a superteam, but I would love to see them all beating the snot out of each other. 

No redemption for you, sucker

There's a part in the latest Superman film where one of Lex's henchmen finally starts to show some remorse for what he is doing. Most of the villain's smooth-brained lackies just do horrible things with all the certainty of the truly sociopathic, but there's one dude who notably starts to doubt the plan and whines that they need to stop ripping the planet in half. 

And just when things have really gone to hell, and he gets the chance to step up and help, Mr Terrific tells him to fuck off, and just fixes it himself because he's goddamn Mr Terrific. There's no redemption arc for you here, brother. 

It goes against many of the things I personally believe in real life - that people do often deserve second chances - but also somewhat refreshing to see it in a film. That you don't get forgiven for doing terrible shit just because it finally reached the limit of your own moral code. That you have to actually face some motherfucking consequences for your actions, and any late squeamishness is not enough.

I also found this hard-nosed lack of any kind of forgiveness in the Andor television series, a show that was way more blunt and brutal in its messaging. One tiny aspect of the series was a small focus on Mon Mothma's driver, who was spying on her for the Imperials, but occasionally seems a bit conflicted and shows some remorse, and he may be having second thoughts about his skullduggery when he overhears what his alleged boss is trying to do, and when he's at the moment of laying all his cards out, we never get to see any of it because Andor shoots him in the fucking face and walks on without a second thought. Too late. No more chances for you, pal.

(It also brings to mind the great James Baldwin quote about how nobody has time for that foolishness: 'A cop is a cop. And he may be a very nice man, but I don't have time to figure that out. All I know is he's got a uniform and a gun. And I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him at all. Because one of us may have to die.') 

It's a conceit of fiction that the bad guys always get punished and the good guys live happily ever after, and that's why you can get away with that kind of forgiveness. On the other had, it would be nice if somebody faced some consequences for their bullshit every now and then, because fuck those dickheads.

Riker makes me feel good

Whenever I get blue, and need to turn a frown upside down, I always like to read or watch things about how William Riker from Star Trek is the ultimate male role model. It just cheers my heart, and I was absolutely stoked to find another video about the subject recently.

If I'm feeling really bad, I go to this Letterboxd review of Star Wars, by the wonderful film director Peter Strickland, which makes so many good points about the original film - something that I would have thought was impossible after five decades of discourse - and also just makes me feel incredibly seen.

Just start anywhere

The few social media feeds I still follow periodically get clogged up with the same old banal arguments, and a hoary old chestnut came up again recently - is Watchmen a good place to start reading comics?

There were all sorts of good points made for and against it, but my answer is, was and always will be: fuck knows? You never know what comics is going to grab somebody's attention. Everybody is different

There is basically nobody left alive who remembers starting Superman and Batman when they first began - and there are fewer and fewer who can remember the first Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, so if you want to read any of their adventures, you just gotta jump in there somewhere. Sink or swim. 

It's not for everyone, and most rational people bounce right out of that kind of commitment, but a certain person just wants to know more. They want to know what the backstory comes from and what this all means, and they will never stop looking for those answers.

Just start wherever the fuck you want. Jumping on points get a certain audience, but there is also an audience that comes to Uncanny X-Men after sixty years and just fucking goes for it. Maybe people respond to the art, maybe they get hooked by the soap operatics, it's different for everybody.

(And it's not limited to comics, by a long shot. Where do you start with Dr Who? Wherever you like. Here's good.)

It's still a huge appeal of the medium for me, I still buy random comics of various long-running sagas and have been intrigued enough to go back and see where it all starts. Filling in the gaps is just as much fun as seeing where it goes next.

It took me years to understand the complex families and friendships in Love and Rockets. I came in years into the run, and it took me so long to track down the earlier issues, I had no idea who was related to who in Palomar, or who Speedy was. I'm still making weird connections, decades into a full Hernandez obsession.

Watchmen is a very well written and drawn comic book, it's smart and complex and very human, even if you don't know that Night Owl should be Blue Beetle. If you like it, there's lots more like that. If you don't, there's even more that are nothing like that. There are many self-contained comics, in and out and gone again, but also ones that just go for it forever. See what you like. 

Failure of a film festival fanatic

For a long, long time, one of my absolute favourite days of the year was the day the programme for the NZ International Film festival would come out. I would obsessively go through it, finding all the cinematic treasures, and making my own time-table of treats.

The first time I ever saw one of these programmes was when the festival went out to the sticks in the 1980s, and I saw one that had a write-up of the first Evil Dead film - along with a glorious black and white picture of a blood-soaked Bruce Campbell with an axe. I wouldn't see Evil Dead for years, but that one listing had a profound effect on me, in many different ways.

By the time I was a grown-up and living in the big city, film festival attendance was mandatory every year. At my height I would go a dozen or two every year, especially when they had the Incredibly Strange Film Festival running as part of the larger festival, and would bring out the weird cult films.

They were the only place to see some movies by genius directors, the festivals are where I saw my first Wong Kar-wai, or a Paul Thomas Anderson film months before it appeared in regular cinemas. The festivals are always in the dark depths of winter down here, but a screening in the cathedral of light that is great cinema lit up my world. 

The best screenings were always in the grand theatres of Auckland and Dunedin, which were usually used for big live performances, where you could get that glorious echo of a soundtrack from the vast walls. Carter Burwell's eternally roving score for Fargo all round you, or Hendrix and The Who carving it up in the Message To Love doco.

For a while, the wife and I would get a 10-ticket for it, which would force us to get out into the world and see at least five films. This was always pretty easy, because there were always two I was desperate to see because they were obviously brilliant, two that sounded pretty good and one completely random choice, like a Nigerian crime epic or something.

And then this year's festival rolled around, and after carefully going through the motions on Programme Day, I only went to one film - Hard Boiled, John Woo's 90s action classic which I'd seen a thousand times before.

The lack of film festival action was partly because I work late shifts and have other familial commitments, but also so many of the films seemed so self-consciously film festival, full of dully heartbreaking tales of real life from around the world. Even the weird section was a bit tame, and always has the lame local horror with an eye-rolling premise.

I also get skeeved out by the smugness of other festival goers, and not just the 'I have a comment more than a question' monsters. It's just the aura of sniffy culture that feels performative, with screenings full of people you never see at all the cool films.

So I'm happy enough with the classic Woo. Besides, now I can go see the new PTA at the local multiplex at a time that suits. That's more than the festival can offer anymore.

Sebastian O: Life is such a tedium

- Sebastian O #3 (1993)

Art by Steve Yeowell
Colors by Tatjana Wood
Words by Grant Morrison

Letters by John Workman