To celebrate the January 26th release of Spartacus: Swords and Ashes, Titan Books have provided us with two copies of the book to giveaway!

For your chance to win, simply answer the following question…

“Name the celebrated horror director who executive produces the hit TV show on which this is based?”

…and email it along with your details to [email protected]. Winners will be announced live on the January 29th episode of the Starburst Radio show. Listen live from 9pm – 12 on Manchester Radio Online, or catch up with past shows on podcast, available through iTunes HERE.

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And as an added bonus, Starburst is proud to present a special guest blog from the author of Spartacus: Swords and Ashes J.M. Clements…

The Walking Dead

Novelist J.M. Clements on the real world of slavery

Some historians argue that there have only been three real ‘slave societies’ in human history: ancient Rome, where one in three human beings was held as property; Brazil, where a young Charles Darwin once noted that the sheer number of slaves had caused the ruling class to collapse into complete indolence; and certain southern states in the USA. I’ve always found this to be a little unfair – the definition of a ‘slave society’ seems to be based on very exacting percentages of slave and free, which rather avoids the point that slavery was everywhere. Even in America, arguments over the history of slavery have been largely reconfigured on racial lines, and avoid mentioning, for example, the ‘white cargo’ of English convicts, forced to work as indentured labourers, and little different from their black counterparts.

As Gaius Verres argues in Swords & Ashes, Rome’s slaves are its walking dead. For many of them, particularly prisoners of war, their legal position was a hair’s breadth away from being actually dead, postponed at that brink for as long as their master willed it. The Latin word for slaves, servi, contains within it that sense of having been ‘saved’ from the moment of execution – a doom held in suspension indefinitely thereafter. The concept of a slave rebellion in Rome was tantamount to a zombie uprising.

Newly-minted slaves like Spartacus were always trouble. They were surly, uncooperative, and often did not even speak good Latin. Romans placed a much high premium on vernae, those who had been born and raised in captivity. A verna was much more likely to know his place and appreciate what few advantages his slave status offered him to the alternative, which might be not existing at all.

Vernae were also expensive. A properly trained, skilled slave, young enough to have a good few decades of work in him, would cost the equivalent of high-end car or a small apartment today. It’s not all that surprising when one calculates the value of the labour involved – the cooking and the cleaning and the myriad daily household chores that a slave could perform, all in an age without washing machines or vacuum cleaners. Apologists for ancient Rome have used this fact to suggest that slavery was a relatively benign condition, in which disadvantaged or underprivileged people were given a roof over their head and a job to do, with the hope of eventual freedom, and that only a madman would have maltreated such a valuable investment.

Unfortunately, of course, Rome had its fair share of madmen, some of them even in charge. And arguing that a slave cost a lot of money was not guarantee against ill treatment, as the sight of a crashed Ferrari attests today. Some valued family slaves, like Cicero’s own manservant Tiro, might be fortunate enough to end their lives in relative comfort. Others, particularly the men captured in military campaigns, might find themselves toiling in the deadly conditions of the silver mines, or turned into beasts of burden on the vast, slave-run super-farms called latifundia.

Roman law is a fascinating area – so much of it is like our own, but there are entire areas that are simply alien. What of the status postliminium, introduced to deal with those embarrassing moments when a captured Roman soldier is rescued from the enemy? If a soldier is enslaved during a foreign war, but somehow escapes or is rescued, he is welcomed back as if he has literally been raised from the dead. In Swords & Ashes, Cicero argues that this creates a whole series of other problems. If a Roman soldier can be enslaved and then unslaved, then why not everybody else?

It could be worse. In China only a century before the time of Spartacus, the First Emperor had a slave unit called ‘the hidden offices’, comprising men and women so badly mutilated that they were used as glorified motors, shoved into cubby holes to power fans or open doors all day. I tried to write a Dr Who drama about it once, and got booted out the door for being so ghoulish.

But I don’t think it’s ghoulish to confront the ultimate implications of a society that is prepared to treat people as things. In modern times, we replaced slaves with machines, but began once more to replace machines with people. Has slavery really been eradicated or is it now exported, outsourced, globalised to some far-flung region out of everyday sight? Such questions are what keeps the story of Spartacus so alive for us, even two thousand years after he died.

J.M. Clements is the author of Spartacus: Swords and Ashes, available now in the US in paperback and on Kindle, and in the UK on 27th January.

For more information visit Titan Books by clicking here.

Edgar Rice Burroughs created the character of John Carter in the early twentieth century with a series of eleven novels that has since influenced some of the great science fiction that many hold dear today. Director Andrew Stanton, who up until now has only been involved in creating animation features, takes his first step into live action with his imagining of the origin story. This film was born out of love for the novels that Stanton has been a fan of since he was eight years old.

Disney recently hosted an evening showcasing footage of the film, five clips in total, and allowed some of the people involved to speak about their experiences in making it. Producer Kevin Kurtz, visual effects supervisor Sue Rowe and John Carter himself, Taylor Kitsch all made an appearance at the event.

First up was a clip introducing us to the character of John Carter in his civil war surroundings, as he tries to escape from the law. The footage demonstrated a good sense of fun and the fighting spirit of Carter as he attempts to flee with some well-timed physical comedy. Next we were introduced to some inhabitants of Barsoom with footage of baby Tarks hatching out of eggs and an alien dog who watches over Carter when he is captured, which were both excellently conceived. Everything about the clips suggested an epic film that has been made with a precise and passionate hand. If Andrew Stanton pulls this origin story off, and from what I’ve seen it looks like he can, this could be the start of something special.

Here’s Taylor Kitsch on the role of John Carter…

“It’s truly an origin story of where Carter is from; obviously you can’t relate to being on Mars or being attacked by the Tharks, but the Civil War and the family and honour is what is truly grounding and that is something I definitely held onto throughout the whole thing. The first meeting I had with Andrew (Stanton) and I had not heard of John Carter – it was snowing really bad in London and just me and him made it to the rehearsals – I walked into his office and in 360 across the ceiling is the emotional arc of the character. From the loss of his family, to where he is in Mars and his relationship with his dog and to the Tarks. That was a defining moment; I thought I could trust this guy.

It’s an honour to breathe life into a guy (Stanton) idolised growing up and I think when you can get Stanton thanking you for what you have given in the film that is probably the best part of the whole experience.”

And on the title change…

“It’s an origin story and when you see the film in its entirety you will understand why it was that way. Story wise he earns that title (John Carter of Mars).”

Producer Kevin Kurtz on Andrew Stanton’s vision of John Carter…

“Andrew was going back to the books themselves and trying to be as true as possible to how Burroughs saw Mars back then and how Burroughs looked at an astronomer of that time called Percival Lowell and some of his theories that have since been disproven but that’s how Burroughs thought in that time. That is essentially what Andrew tried to bring to life, the same thing with the civil war story and the interesting arc of the character. It’s an event in John Carter’s life that people can relate to, they can relate to war, loss and trying to find themselves.”

Visual Effects Supervisor Sue Rowe on the setting and production…

“No matter how big the set we built on stage with a cinemascope lens you can see for miles and we needed to get that big scale, this movie needed to have gravitas, so my job was to take these small sets, replicate them and get that real cinematic scale. It was quite a challenge. What does Mars look like? We shot in Utah, which was an amazing place to go, the light, and the environment there. The rocks, the dust, the sand, all that sort of stuff was great. We (also) didn’t go for the red sky which people traditionally think Mars would have. In fact a sunrise on Mars would be purple.

I did a lot of research in to the biggest crater on Mars, and looked at a lot of NASA photographs. In, fact the opening shot of the movie we start in space and we travel all the way through and you can see the canals of Mars, or what Edgar R Burroughs thought were the canals of Mars, and we travel all the way through the clouds right down into the landscape and then integrated the Utah landscape into that.”

John Carter is released in the UK on 9th March 2012.

For an in-depth history of the character’s origins leading up to the aforementioned big-screen adaptation, see our new issue of Starburst magazine released February 14th (get your copy here).

2011 is barely over and already there is much to look forward to in 2012.

Despite a shaky ending, 2011 brought us some fantastic genre cinema including the likes of Captain America, X-Men First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes as well as smaller fare like The Woman, Super and Insidious. Luckily 2012 looks just as packed with interesting smaller fare as well as the big blockbuster contenders. If there was one word that could sum up 2012 then ‘BIG’ seems appropriate with the likes of The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and the first instalment of The Hobbit coming out. Likely amongst this lot we will see a blockbuster that redefines just how much money can be made at the box office and possibly invents a new number we haven’t seen yet, that is if the Mayans were wrong and the world doesn’t come to an end.

The following list is made up of the films that we feel should be looked out for this year and that will likely be the ones remembered for better or worse come new year’s eve 2012. You will notice that some titles are absent from this list like The Amazing Spider-Man (no need!) Battleship (erm…) and Breaking Dawn part two (please…) so if you feel that we are wrong and should have included these in the list then feel free to disagree with us and let us know. Anyway, on with the list!

Chronicle

Starring: Michael B.Jordan, Michael Kelly and Alex Russell. Directed by: Josh Trank

Isn’t it strange how one year ago this film was not on anybody’s radar and now it’s one of the most hotly anticipated films of the winter? Chronicle is another found footage movie and the thought of another one makes us want to vomit at this point. This one though, directed by Josh Trank and written by son of John, Max Landis, follows a group of super powered youngsters and the carnage that follows them. The trailer shows what looks, initially, like a comedy, as the kids use their powers to prank everyday normal folk but then gives way to something that looks far more sinister and epic. Hopefully the son of John Landis has his father’s early talent that brought us An American Werewolf in London and not the kind of talent that lead to films like The Stupids later in his career. Arriving: 1st February

The Innkeepers

Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis. Written and Directed by: Ti West.

Ti West’s last directorial effort was the hugely effective The House of the Devil which despite its slow pace had a lot going for it. Not everybody loved it of course but the hard-core horror fan born in the mid-70s found much to admire. For his follow up West has decided to evoke memories of Kubrick’s The Shining along with some good old comedy with a tale of a couple of slackers spending the last night of a supposedly haunted hotel trying to prove there are supernatural games afoot. The Innkeepers has been impressing festival audiences for a while now but apparently it has a similar pace to House of the Devil which will no doubt divide people again. Most likely a limited release for this one which will find its audience on DVD. Arriving: March TBC

The Devil Inside

Starring: Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quaterman and Evan Helmuth. Written and Directed by: William Brent Bell.

Another found footage horror, this time involving exorcism with Paramount keen to cash in on the success of their Paranormal Activity franchise. The Devil Inside follows a crew of exorcists as they try and save a stricken young woman. The trailers and clips released so far have been really effective and creepy and sell the old ‘Based on a true story’ trope very well. Exorcism found footage horror seems like an easy thing to get right (just check out YouTube) and hopefully we will get a nice little scare fest with this movie or we could have another dreary film like last years The Rite. Arriving: January 27th

The Hunger Games

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth and Woody Harrellson. Written and Directed by: Gary Ross

For many under 20 year olds this is the one to look forward to this spring. For Starburst readers they may well be wondering what all the fuss is about. Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy are some of the best written young adult fiction stories out there and should not be dismissed by the rest of us as just another Twilight knock off. Gary Ross doesn’t seem like the director to pull off this surprisingly brutal cross between Battle Royale and Children of Men but judging by the trailer it looks like he has nailed the tone and subject matter perfectly. The story concerns a group of twelve ‘tributes’ from districts in a totalitarian state who are forced to fight to the death for the masses’ entertainment. Get ready to be surprised… Arriving: 23rd March

The Cabin in the Woods

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford. Directed by: Drew Goddard.

This film has sat on a shelf gathering dust for so long that it seemed like we may never get to see it. Shot back in 2009, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s film supposedly starts like every other cabin in the woods horror flick before becoming something else entirely and flipping the horror genre upside down. The trailer is certainly very intriguing and those who have seen it at Austin’s annual Butt Numb-a-thon festival rave about it as if it’s the second coming. We finally get to see if the wait has been worth it this April. Arriving: 13th April

MS One: Maximum Security (aka Lock-Out)

Starring: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace and Peter Stormare Directed By: James Mather and Stephen St Leger.

Or Escape from New York in space with Guy Pearce in the Snake Plissken role. The latest in a long line of action blockbusters from the Luc Besson/Europa corp factory, this film follows a visit to a space station jail where the president’s daughter has been kidnapped after a prison break. It’s up to mouthy convict Pearce who has been wrongly convicted of espionage against the US, to rescue her from the clutches of the desperate inmates. For many film fans this seems like the kind of role we have wanted Pearce to have for a long time. Expect action and smart quips as bad guys are despatched left and right. The Europa corps’ track record has been spotty at best but they know how to do action. Arriving: 13th April

John Dies at the End

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes. Written and Directed by: Don Coscarelli.

One of the cleverest and funniest novels I have read for years is David Wong’s John Dies at the End. It has horror, it has laughs and it has likeable slacker dudes. Imagine early Kevin Smith crossed with HP Lovecraft and you get the idea. A drug known as ‘soy sauce’ hits the streets and allows users to speak to the dead and access another plain of reality, but there are things from the other side trying to invade our world. The novel is structured in such a way that it doesn’t exactly lend itself easily to the screen but that has not put off Don Coscarelli, the man who brought an elderly Elvis Presley to the masses to fight an Aztec mummy in Bubba Ho-Tep. Though it may be quite low budget, judging by the trailer Coscarelli has brought his wit and inventiveness to the adaptation and kept all of the likeable character work in place. Fingers crossed this gets a wide release and doesn’t just go straight to DVD. The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Arriving: TBC

Knights of Badassdom

Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Steve Zahn, Summer Glau and Peter Dinklage. Directed by: Joe Lynch.

You probably don’t know who Joe Lynch is yet but he is one of the new breed of young horror directors that includes Adam Green, Ti West and Lucky McKee. For so much hype Lynch has only ever really directed one feature, the superior straight to DVD sequel Wrong Turn 2 where he was given the freedom to crank up the crazy gore and made a film better than the original. Lynch gets to put his money where his mouth is this year with the already massively hyped Knights of Badassdom. The plot follows a group of live action role players who accidentally summon an ancient evil which starts laying waste to many a nerd in the forest. Clips and trailers seen so far promise a raucous, gore soaked and funny ride. Cannot wait for this one… Arriving: TBC

The Avengers

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johannson and Samuel L Jackson. Written and Directed by: Joss Whedon.

For many this is the highlight of 2012. It is the film Marvel Studios have been building towards for the past four years and teams up Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and Captain America and is written and directed by no less a geek figurehead than Joss Whedon. What we have seen so far shows us much verbal sparring and battle but not much in the way of an actual story. We know that it will involve Thor’s fiendish brother Loki and an as yet unnamed alien race. Word is that the production aimed to top the epic carnage seen in the last Transformers movie so at least we know we will be seeing maximum bang for our buck. Sadly this one will be in post-converted 3D but amazingly 2D is making a comeback so there should be that option too. Hopefully the rumblings that the script is all talking and witty banter to keep the budget down are false and just viscous scuttlebutt spread by DC… Arriving: 27th April.

Dark Shadows

Starring: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Eva Green. Directed by: Tim Burton.

Another obvious choice for Tim Burton with a remake of 70s gothic soap Dark Shadows. Johnny Depp plays Barnabus Collins, a vampire trying to keep his family of misfits in check. Never thought we’d get to the point where we felt so indifferent about a Tim Burton film but that’s where we’re at now. Once he gets this slump out of the way maybe he can get back to doing personal more heartfelt pieces like Big Fish and Ed Wood because that’s where he really seems to deliver the goods. There is a promising project on the horizon but more on that later. We could be wrong though, maybe we are in for something special, we just don’t have much excitement for it right now… Arriving: May 11th

You’re Next

Starring: Sharni Vinson, AJ Bowen and Rob Moran. Directed by: Adam Wingard.

Another festival hit that the masses get to see this year is Adam Wingard’s follow up to A Horrible Way to Die; You’re Next. The plot follows a group of family and friends who re-unite at a remote cabin. The bickering is interrupted by a group of masked men who lay siege to the cabin and start the slaughter. The film reportedly has gore, comedy and tension in a way that is all too rare these days with a major star turn from actress Sharni Vinson. You’re Next heralds the arrival of a major new talent with Adam Wingard. Again this is a film without any confirmed wide release despite being picked up by Lionsgate for distribution. Hopefully we will see this before the end of the year, my guess is around Halloween. Arriving: October TBC

The Revenant

Starring: David Anders and Chris Wylde. Written and Directed by: Kerry Prior.

Strange situation we find ourselves in as far as distribution goes in these modern times. The rise in popularity of VOD platforms has already changed the business forever. Festival buzz used to be a guarantee of distribution to a wider audience but now this is no longer the case. A good case study for this would be The Revenant, directed by Kerry Prior. In 2009 The Revenant gained some major buzz and awards at film festivals across the states. One reviewer even compared the film to Near Dark in terms of its tone, inventiveness and impact. The story follows an undead Iraq war vet who arrives at his buddy’s door one night not knowing how or why he is alive but craving human blood. This leads to much comedy and horror as the two of them try and adapt to the new situation. The film has then sat in the vault without being released for nearly three years and now debuts direct to DVD in April. It has already appeared on DVD in Australia and judging by opinion there, the wait was well worth it. Arriving: April 2nd (DVD Premiere)

Men in Black 3

Starring: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Jermaine Clement. Directed by: Barry Sonnenfeld.

Like it or not there is a Men in Black 3 on the way and you can either embrace it or ignore it. Will Smith’s star power still burns brightly despite the fact that he has made a whole series of genre films that fell at the last hurdle. The Men in Black franchise is one of the biggest wastes in modern franchises. The first film built up the world and laid down the rules and was damn good summer movie fare. The second film just copied the first movie but lacked the wit and invention of the first. Despite a reportedly troubled production, the third film at least looks like it has an interesting plot and does more of that great revealing the alien in the everyday thing. Plus Josh Brolin has an uncanny likeness to a young Tommy Lee Jones. We hope this is good but we are prepared for the worst. Arriving: 25th May

Prometheus

Starring: Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace. Directed by: Ridley Scott.

Despite Sir Ridley Scott’s protestations that “It’s not an Alien movie, honest!” Prometheus is a look at how and why the Space Jockey got to LV426 and why he was surrounded by dozens of alien eggs. An air of mystery all too rare these days has surrounded this production and we like this strategy. The recently released trailer reveals an epic production with Ridley Scott’s touch with sci-fi not having deserted him despite being absent from the genre for so long. At this point if the dual tongued one does appear in this movie people are going to be pissed. A science fiction film actually shot in 3D by one of the modern masters of the medium? Yes please… Arriving: 1st June

Jack the Giant Killer

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor and Stanley Tucci. Directed by: Bryan Singer.

Our first thought when reading the synopsis for this film with Bryan Singer directing was that it was a complete mis-match of director and material, but we have been wrong before. This huge budget summer blockbuster is the mid-point for a year filled with glossy fairy tale reimagining’s and in this case it’s the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk which concerns an idiot who swaps a prize cow for some magic beans leading to a beanstalk and some gianticide in the clouds. The trailer is very plush and sells the epic aspects of the film; I’m just not convinced by Nicholas Hoult as a credible lead or the actual plot of the film. This one will have to work harder than most this Summer. Arriving: 15th June

The Dark Knight Rises

Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Directed by: Christopher Nolan.

The other big movie for comic book fans this summer is Christopher Nolan’s third and final film in his Batman trilogy. Between this and The Avengers, they will likely make enough money to buy a medium sized country. This film is set eight years after the events in The Dark Knight with Batman/Bruce Wayne facing an apocalyptic showdown with the League of Shadows, led by the hulking brute Bane, who return to finish what they started in the first movie and bring Gotham City to its knees. Oh yeah and Catwoman is involved somewhere in there. Despite the fact that third movies in franchises rarely equal what has gone before, it’s hard to see how this could fail. The only stumbling block we can see is that the film will probably be about three hours long considering how crammed the film is with plotlines and villains. The recent trailer for this film promises something on a huge scale which will go to some surprising places for people who love the comic books and know how the Bane and Batman rivalry ends up. Arriving: 20th July

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Starring: Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell and Dominic Cooper. Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov

The same craze for classic literature infused with the supernatural that gave us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies also gave us the Seth Grahame-Smith novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This summer there will be a movie adaptation of the book directed by Timur Bekmambatov. The plot reimagines Lincoln’s life as if his mother was killed by vampires and he crusades against them on the quiet. Say what you will about the coherence of the Nightwatch movies but Bekmambatov is a unique visual stylist up there with the likes of Zack Snyder and Tarsem Singh. How a Russian auteur will do with an American icon fighting vampires is anyone’s guess but the results will be pretty to look at that’s for certain. A late summer sleeper hit if they get the tone just right and it’s not a camp disaster. Arriving: 2nd August

Ted

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Seth MacFarlane. Written and Directed by: Seth McFarlane.

Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Seth Macfarlane is a funny guy. Family Guy, when it’s on form, is one of the funniest things on TV. Macfarlane makes his live action directorial debut this summer with Ted which concerns a childhood teddy bear which comes to life and makes life hell for its now adult owner. Mark Wahlberg plays the adult and has proved that he can do comedy with The Other Guys but whether MacFarlane’s anarchic brand of comedy will translate to live action is yet to be seen. Hopefully this will not be a watered down effort and will straddle the line of offensive in the way that Family Guy usually does so well. Could Macfarlane become the new Mike Judge? Arriving: 3rd August

Brave

Starring: Kelly Macdonald, Kevin McKidd and Billy Connolly. Directed by: Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman.

This year’s Pixar effort is thankfully a return to original plotting and not a sequel to a previous success. Brave follows a princess who must undo a curse she brings upon the land when being a headstrong young lady; she refuses to follow an ancient custom. The animation seen so far suggests that they are taking the fantasy elements as seriously as they did the comic book elements in The Incredibles. Also this is the first time a Pixar film has had a female protagonist which is surprising to hear. The voice cast reads like a BAFTA awards invite list of British and Scottish talent from the last twenty years. All signs point towards this being another triumph and a return to form after the tedious Cars 2. Arriving: 17th August

Neighborhood Watch

Starring: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughan, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade. Directed by: Akiva Schaffer.

Normally something starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughan on their current career trajectory would be easy to dismiss but look at this one a little closer. Director Akiva Schaffer made the massively underrated Andy Samberg vehicle; Hot Rod in 2007 and brought the silly and surreal to the film in a way that Adam McKay and Will Ferrell have only previously been able to do. The screenplay for this one is credited to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg who have written some of the finest comedy of the last few years. There is no reason for this to be anything less than hilarious. The plot concerns some suburban men who start a neighbourhood watch program as an excuse to get away from their wives and families, they then stumble across an alien invasion plot. Simple yet brilliant. This could be a huge hit this summer or languish in cult moviedom if it fails. Arriving: 22th August

Warm Bodies

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer and John Malkovich. Directed by: Jonathan Levine.

Do you know the name Jonathan Levine? No? Well you should as he is one of the most solid directors working today. After the brilliant 50/50 Levine next turns his attentions to the well-worn and shambling zombie genre. This one is a little different though as it concerns what happens when a zombie falls in love with the girlfriend of one of his victims and is based on the novel by Isaac Marion. This again has Nicolas Hoult in the lead role who it seems Hollywood has decided is the next big thing. Could be great or could be a disaster if they try and make it appeal to the Twilight crowd. The results will at least be interesting and Warm Bodies is certainly a fresh take on an increasingly stale genre. Arriving: 24th August

Paranorman

Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Directed by: Chris Butler

Forget Brave and whatever DreamWorks animation has coming out, for real horror nerds the animated film to look forward to in 2012 is Paranorman. This is the latest film from Coraline producers Laika and looks just as dark and delicious as that film. The story follows a boy who can talk to the dead and how he fights back against an ancient curse that threatens his town. What we have seen so far shows a great sensibility that should thrill kids and adults alike. Arriving: 14th September

Dredd

Starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby and Lena Headey. Directed by: Pete Travis

After a worrying delay in release of almost a year and a firm denial from director Pete Travis that he has been thrown off the production, we finally get to see this new interpretation of the futuristic 2000AD lawman in September. Not one minute of footage has been seen thus far in this smaller more contained film that aims to correct what went wrong with the 1995 film. The costumes and production design seen thus far certainly suggest that they are heading in the right direction and with this many talented people behind the film it surely can’t be that bad. Arriving: 21st September

Looper

Starring: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt. Written and Directed by: Rian Johnson.

Rian Johnson’s third directorial outing after the underrated The Brothers Bloom concerns time travel. Specifically it concerns what happens when targets are sent forward in time to be killed by special assassins. One such assassin is played by Bruce Willis who is suddenly sent his younger self played by Joseph Gordon Levitt as a target. Cue much running around and paradoxes in a future setting. Frustratingly Looper has been seen a year from release by some online geek critics who have nothing but praise for the film. Rian Johnson is a very talented man and the idea of him adapting his style to a science fiction time travel story is very pleasing indeed. After years of disappointment it’s good to hear that Bruce Willis is back in something good again too. Arriving: 28th September

Frankenweenie

Starring: Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short. Directed by: Tim Burton.

Could this be the film that pulls Tim Burton out of his current predictable slump? He is after all going back to his roots with a film version of his animated short Frankenweenie. The plot concerns a grief stricken young mad scientist who tries to reanimate his dead dog but things of course go wrong. The film will also re-unite Burton with Winona Ryder for the first time in twenty years. Pleasingly the film is also black and white, evoking memories of yesteryears B movies the way Burton did with Ed Wood. Please let this be good… Arriving: 5th October

The Lords of Salem

Starring: Sid Haig, Dee Wallace and Clint Howard. Written and Directed by: Rob Zombie.

Rob Zombie has a lot to prove with his fifth directorial effort. The Devils Rejects may have impressed us all seven years ago but since then there has been the ill-advised Halloween remake and its sequel and he seems to have lost some of his grimy hard edge that made us like him in the first place. The cast reads like a who’s who of genre cinema from the last twenty years which apart from the above also includes Udo Kier, Billy Drago, Michael Berryman and Meg Foster. The plot is about a coven of witches who return to terrorise a town 300 years after they were vanquished. I like the cast, I like that fact that Zombie is writing original material again and I hope that this gets a big Halloween release and isn’t treated as poorly as House of 1000 Corpses. Released: October TBC

Gravity

Starring: George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Written and Directed by: Alfonso Cuaron.

Gravity has been on the starting blocks for a long time and Alfonso Cuaron has not directed a movie since the stunning Children of Men seven years ago. Gravity follows a stranded astronaut played by Sandra Bullock after a mission in space ends in tragedy. George Clooney plays the mission controller on the ground trying to get her back to Earth. If this is done right then this will no doubt generate much Oscar buzz as well as being technically dazzling. Early reports indicate that the film contains an ambitious 30 minute continuous take in zero gravity in 3D! Wrap your mind around that one… Arriving: 19th October

Skyfall

Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes and Naomie Harris. Directed by: Sam Mendes.

After years of delays a new James Bond adventure is now in production and due out late 2012. Daniel Craig is again in the main role that he made his own in 2006 with the awesome reboot. Like it or not Quantum of Solace made money but we are alarmed by the suggestion that they are abandoning that mythology in favour of a return to the gadgets and campery of the earlier films. We’re staggered that there has been a backlash against the grittiness of Casino Royale so soon after the film reinvigorated the franchise. Oscar winner Sam Mendes is the director of the film so if anyone can take the material seriously then it’s Mendes. Hopefully they will strike just the right balance between serious and fun and Javier Bardem should essay a classic villain right up there with the best of them. Arriving: 26th October

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan and Luke Evans. Directed by: Peter Jackson.

The year ends with the welcoming of an old friend back to cinemas. Peter Jackson returns to Tolkien with part one of a two part interpretation of The Hobbit. Early fears that this would be too camp or less serious than the Lord of the Rings trilogy seem to have been assuaged with the release of the first trailer which shows they have the tone nailed down perfectly and it will blend seamlessly with the existing trilogy. December 2012 seems like such a long way away and yet the level of anticipation is already unbelievably high. Only drag? It’s in 3 bleedin D! Arriving: 14th December

With the 2011 ’Doctor Who’ Christmas special, ’The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’ just around the corner , Starburst takes an affectionate look back at the Doctor’s most recent Santa-friendly shenanigans…

When ‘Doctor Who’ emerged in 2005 from its near-as-dammit sixteen year sabbatical, blinking and nervous in the harsh light of prime time Saturday night TV, its patient and long-suffering fans crossed their fingers (and very probably their legs) and hoped for the best. They wanted it to be good, they wanted it to be faithful to their memories of the so-called ‘classic’ series and they also hoped this much-anticipated resurrection wouldn’t just be a flash in the pan and that the show might stick around this time after the false start and false hopes of the Paul McGann TV movie in 1996. Not even the most optimistic of fans could have predicted just how successful new ‘Doctor Who’ would be, almost instantly, the phenomenon it became, its popularity and ubiquity even outstripping the glory days of 1960s Dalekmania and the giddy heights of trendy fashionability it scaled during Tom Baker’s early years in the 1970s. Certainly no-one could have foreseen that, within a few years, the show would be the centrepiece of BBC1’s Christmas Day schedule with specially-commissioned, high profile festive episodes which could command lunatic audiences of around 12 million. No-one saw that coming. Now, in 2011, the ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special is firmly embedded in the nation’s consciousness and has become as recognisable and reassuring a piece of Christmas TV entertainment as ‘Morecombe and Wise’ in the 1970s and ‘Only Fools and Horses’ in the 1980s and 1990s.

In passing, it’s worth noting that 2005 wasn’t the first time the TARDIS had landed on TV on Christmas Day. Way back in 1965, when the world was less than half its present size, the first Doctor (William Hartnell, in case it had slipped your mind) was locked in mortal combat with the Daleks in an insanely long serial entitled ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’, a convoluted and occasionally random Universe-trotting romp whose seventh episode – ‘The Feast of Steven’ – ended up on Christmas day purely by virtue of the fact that the day itself was a Saturday that year. Rather than bump ‘Doctor Who’ from the schedule the production team decide to shunt aside the continuing storyline for a week and offer up a frothy and disposable lightweight comedy episode which saw the Doctor and co, on the run from the Daleks, pitching up in 1920s Hollywood and later indulging in some Police Station hi-jinks. ‘The Feast of Steven’ is one of the hundred-odd episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ which didn’t survive the infamous purge of the original series’ black-and-white tapes in the 1960s and 1970s and whilst other lost episodes have resurfaced in all parts of the globe since, ‘The Feast of Steven’, by its very nature and because of its seasonal disconnection from the ongoing Dalek narrative, never made its way to any of the show’s foreign broadcasters so, of all the episodes still missing from the BBC archive, it’s the one most likely to stay that way.

So it falls to ‘The Christmas Invasion’, David Tennant’s debut episode, to claim the title of ‘first’ proper ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas Special. The week after the broadcast of ‘Rose’, the first episode of the reborn series, all Hell broke loose when it had to be announced that ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston was quitting the role after filming just one series (and, a bit embarrassingly, after just one episode had been shown). In a neat bit of damage limitation then-BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey, who had been instrumental in getting the show back on screen in the first place, revealed that the series would be back for two more seasons and – joy – a Christmas special. Showrunner Russell T Davies was later to remark that this was the first time he’d ever heard of the idea of a Christmas special but even if this is true (and Davies would be the first to admit than many of his declarations about the show during his time in charge were gleeful distortions of the truth or, from time to time, downright lies just to protect the sometimes-paranoid veil of secrecy which surrounded the series) Davies rose to the not-inconsiderable challenge of introducing a brand new Doctor to an audience which had only just familiarised itself with the whole idea of the show and had quickly established a deep affection for Christopher Eccleston’s tough interpretation of the Doctor as the fractured, emotionally-damaged survivor of a great Time War which had wiped out his own people, the Time Lords.

In hindsight – and with the benefit of no proper precedent established the audience’s expectations of a ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas episode, ‘The Christmas Invasion’ is a bold and daring piece of Christmas TV, an episode which has a lot to do and goes about doing it in ways we might not necessarily expect. Davies just carried on telling the story of the Doctor and Rose as he had left it at the end of the previous series, with the newly-regenerated Doctor crash-landing on Earth, plunging straight into a regeneration crisis just as the skull-faced red-robed Sycorax arrive in their hollowed-out asteroid spaceship and take control of the human condition via blood control. Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler has become so established in the role already and the actress so popular with the public that Davies finds it easy to allow her to pretty much carry the dramatic weight of the first half of the episode as she battles to understand what’s happened to the Doctor and finding herself drawn into the centre of the Sycorax invasion. It doesn’t seem to occur to ‘The Christmas Invasion’ to go down the ‘guest star’ route; this is business as usual with no front-of-house star names pulled in to rope in extra viewers. Davies just builds confidently on the new continuity he’s developed for the show by reintroducing Penelope Wilton’s MP-cum-Prime-Minister Harriet Jones from year one’s Slitheen two-parter; we know who she is and she’s another familiar face to draw us into the adventure alongside Rose’s hapless boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke) and her Mum Jackie (Camille Coduri). With the Doctor laid out in Rose Tyler’s flat wearing a pair of pyjamas belonging to one of Jackie’s gentlemen friends, Davies skilfully keeps the audience agog for more of the new Doctor, so far glimpsed only briefly, but entertains us with killer spinning Christmas trees, hypnotised humanity literally teetering on the brink and vicious aliens who kill with electric whips. When the new Doctor finally makes his proper entrance, symbolically stepping out of the TARDIS after emerging from his crisis, he’s the new man in every way, bantering with Rose, not taking the Sycorax too seriously and finally defining himself as a man of action instead of the moody brooder of his previous incarnation as he engages the Sycorax leader in a bout of slightly clumsily-edited swordfighting. Davies even subtly lays further groundwork for the second series to come when PM Harriet Jones uses the weapons technology of the top-secret ‘Torchwood’ organisation to destroy the retreating Sycorax ship, much to the Doctor’s disgust. The episode wraps up to the strains of Murray Gold’s pounding, joyous’ Song For Ten’, with the regenerated Doctor carefully selecting his new clothes from the TARDIS wardrobe and finally laying the ghost of his predecessor to rest by doing the one thing the ninth Doctor could never bring himself to do – he “does domestic” by enjoying Christmas lunch with Rose and co before promising Rose (and us) further adventures out amongst the stars.

‘The Christmas Invasion’ remains one of the very best ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas Day episodes because it has no artifice, no sense of itself as being ‘special’ despite some Christmas trappings. It’s just the show picking up where it left off, busily introducing the new star and telling a rattling good classic ‘invasion Earth’ story without beating us around the head with its stunt casting.

One year on and ‘Doctor Who’s landscape is a little different. The Doctor and Rose have been tragically torn apart in the final minutes of the second season finale ‘Doomsday’ and the Doctor is bereft, alone again on the TARDIS. But at the very end of ‘Doomsday’ the Doctor is confronted by a strange woman in a wedding dress who’s just appeared from nowhere and is standing there in the TARDIS looking suitably baffled and not especially happy. This is comedy actress Catherine Tate and the entire ‘Doctor Who’ audience at home has fallen off its chairs…

‘The Runaway Bride’ arrives on Christmas Day and Davies has started to get the hang of this Christmas episode lark by now. Realising that the heart-broken Doctor needs a bit of fun after losing Rose he crafts a slick, fast and furious romp of a story clearly inspired by goofball Hollywood comedies like ‘What’s Up Doc’. Although Catherine Tate’s misplaced bride Donna Noble at this point was only intended as a one-shot character the chemistry between her and Tennant is already evident. Where Rose spent much of her time mooning over the Doctor, Donna is a bit older and worldly-wiser. She’s not impressed by this “spaceman” who, it seems to her, has kidnapped her from her Big Day and the sparks fly between the pair in an entirely different way to the relationship between the Doctor and Rose. The problem with ‘The Runaway Bride’ is that there’s not really all that much to it. A couple of months before broadcast, the BBC held a special ‘Children in Need’ charity concert at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff with composer Murray Gold and the Welsh National Orchestra, hosted by Tennant and featuring Davies on stage amongst others, showcasing the often-stunning music Gold had already provided for the series. A clip from ‘The Runaway Bride’ was exclusively previewed to a breathless audience – the awesome FX sequence where the TARDIS bounces along a motorway and the Doctor battles to rescue the terrified-yet-furious Donna who has been abducted in a taxi by a robot Santa Claus (you had to be there). On stage shortly afterwards Davies promised that this sequence, still one of the most ridiculously thrilling in the new series’ history, was “only the beginning” but the reality was that it was pretty much downhill after this tour de force and certainly there was nothing of any comparable visual scale anywhere else in the episode, despite the appearance of a giant spider-alien hidden below the Thames. It’s a clever, pacey script but it lacks much of the spectacle of the previous year’s episode; there are some good set pieces – the Christmas bauble attack at the wedding party is the natural successor to Jackie Tyler’s confrontation with a killer Christmas tree the year before – but there’s maybe a bit too much talking and rushing about and, impressive as Sarah Parrish’s Empress of the Racnoss costume is, it’s not exactly mobile and it just sort of stands there making threats and not being hugely menacing.

With ratings still well above 9 million ‘The Runaway Bride’ proved to be another runaway hit and it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas with the Doctor was going to become something of a tradition. The guest casting of Catherine Tate had generated a lot of additional publicity for the episode so it was hardly surprising when the show’s casting director Andy Pryor cast his net a little wider for the 2007 festive special. Eyebrows were raised and they stayed raised when it was announced that Australian pop superstar Kylie Minogue would be joining the ‘Doctor Who’ crew for the filming of ‘Voyage of the Damned.’ Taking his lead from the classic 1970s disaster movies like ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ and ‘The Towering Inferno’ the Christmas TV screenings of which had informed many of his own seasonal memories, Daveis created a big, loud, bombastic adventure in which the Doctor, travelling alone again after his latest companion, medical student Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), had opted to bail out on him when she realised that her feelings for him were never going to be reciprocated, finds himself on board a massive alien spaceship replica of the Titanic which is paying a flying visit to Earth at Christmas. But perfidy is afoot and the vessel is scuppered in an elaborate insurance scam; hundreds die (well, it is Christmas Day…) and the Doctor must try to help a bunch of survivors, including waitress Astrid Peth (Kylie!), navigate their way through the flaming debris before the ship can plunge into the Earth’s atmosphere and cause catastrophe down below. The ship’s angelic ‘host’ service robots have been reprogrammed to kill, too…

Running to a near-feature length seventy-five minutes, ‘Voyage of the Damned’ is a big, bloated unsubtle beast of an episode, difficult to love but easy to sit back and enjoy, clearly designed for an audience fuzzy from too much festive fare. Packed with peril, stunts, great special effects and a typically commanding performance from Tennant (whose near-Godlike portrayal of the Doctor is becoming a concern for some jittery fans) the episode threatens to come off the rails towards the end when Astrid (a decent enough performance from Kylie) sacrifices herself to save the Doctor and becomes, literally, ‘stardust’ and the Titanic, hurtling out of control towards the Earth, swoops above Buckingham Palace as it comes out of its death-dive and the Queen stands outside in her night-dress, waving up towards the Titanic, shouting “Thank you, Doctor.” Not sure what Davies was on when he came up with that one but it probably ranks alongside burping wheelie bins as ‘things that looked good on paper’…

Lightweight, disposable, eminently forgettable and a cause of some irritation to the hardcore fan community, the episode proved hugely attractive to the broader audience and  was an enormous success on the night, pulling in over 13 million viewers. ‘Doctor Who’ was going to have to go some to top that…

In many ways, the following year’s episode was a bit more restrained. Without the star power of Kylie to pull in the punters, Russell T Davies needed a new ‘hook’ to lure in the unsuspecting and, with David Tennant having announced that he was stepping down from the role during a live broadcast from the ‘National TV Awards’ earlier in the year, the title of the 2008 Christmas special – ‘The Next Doctor’ – was guaranteed to get tabloid tongues wagging and increase the steadily-growing speculation as to the identity of Tennant’s successor. The titular ‘next Doctor’ was in fact David Morrissey, togged up in the archetypal costume of a ‘classic’ Doctor – frock coat, cravat, waistcoat – as if to play up to the audience’s subliminal preconceptions as to what ‘the Doctor’ traditionally wears. Morrissey’s character was, obviously, not the ‘next’ Doctor (although he had his very own companion, Rosita – Rose/Rosita, geddit? – and his own TARDIS – Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style – an air ballooon!) but rather an innocent caught up in the machinations of the Cybermen in Victorian London whose own memory has been wiped and replaced with the Doctor’s memories. The central is he/isn’t he mystery dominates the first half of the episode but it doesn’t really have anywhere much to go when we realise that Morrissey’s character Jackson lake isn’t the Doctor and we’re left with a fairly routine runaround with the Cybermen and their human colluder the devilish Mercy Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan) and a climax which involves a Transformer-like Cyberman dreadnaught robot stomping all over Victorian London.

Despite the unlikely spectacle rounding off the episode, ‘The Next Doctor’ is generally a more thoughtful piece than ‘Voyage of the Damned’, less concerned with playing to the gallery and very clearly sowing the first seeds of melancholia in the Doctor as he approaches the end of his tenth incarnation. The Cybermen are pretty generic but the scene where they emerge from the snow and electrocute the funeral procession is not only shocking in itself for prime time Christmas Day but will have surely reminded ancient fans of the first appearance of rather more primitive-looking Cybermen back in 1966 in ‘The Tenth Planet.’ With over 13 million viewers turning in yet again for ‘The Next Doctor’ ‘Doctor Who’ had by now clearly established itself as an essential element of the BBC’s Christmas night output.

2009’s offering was to be a very different proposition altogether. The year had been something of a TV famine for ‘Doctor Who’ fans with the show on reduced duties to allow David Tennant to pursue his Shakespearean commitments on stage so only two new episodes – ‘Planet of the Dead’ and ‘Waters of Mars’ – aired in 2009 prior to the Christmas special. This was ‘The End of Time Part One’ and this Christmas the usual trappings of the festive season were pretty much crowbarred into a narrative which was designed to steer the tenth Doctor to his regeneration in its sequel episode, screened on New Year’s Day. Sadly Davies is clearly running out of steam here as there’s really not much plot beyond the Master (John Simm) being resurrected, battling briefly with the Doctor before being captured by evil businessman Joshua Naismith (David Harewood) who is determined to exploit the power of some sort of ‘stargate’ mcguffin. But there’s still much to enjoy with the return of Donna (Catherine Tate) who’d been forced to leave the TARDIS at the end of season four after the Doctor’s latest battle with Davros and the Daleks as well as her feisty Granddad Wilf (Bernard Cribbins) whose appearances had been such a joy in season four and who now found himself promoted to companion role for the duration of the episode and its sequel. Wilf’s participation and his presence in the Doctor’s life was to turn out to have devastating consequences, of course… Christmas was a side-issue throughout the episode though, represented in a few scenes at the Noble’s house and by the presence of a few Christmas decorations in Naismith’s stately home. Fortunately the episode fizzed with Davies’ trademark strong characterisation and dialogue, especially in one memorable exchange between the Doctor and Wilf, two old men emotionally talking about their lives in an entirely naturalistic fashion.

David Tennant’s farewell to ‘Doctor Who’ was widely tipped to score stratospheric ratings but ultimately ‘End of Time Part 1’ interested 11.57 million – impressive enough but significantly down from the 13 million plus who had enjoyed the previous two rather more routine Christmas romps. It’s arguable that, with David Tennant all over the BBC schedules like a rash during Christmas 2009 – there were even special ‘Doctor Who’ BBC1 idents for the season – viewer fatigue had set in and people felt they’d seen so much of Tennant that they really didn’t need to see him again on Christmas Day itself.

2010 was ‘all change’ for the series. Davies moved on, to be replaced by Steven Moffat and Tennant’s replacement – Matt Smith – moved effortlessly into the role, winning over critics and audiences alike with his wild, eccentric portrayal of the Doctor, far more redolent of ‘classic’ Doctors than the more modern interpretations of his two predecessors. Moffat’s vision for the series was to be markedly different too; where Davies’ run had largely been tough and muscular, Moffat saw the show as more of a ‘cosmic fairy tale’, the Doctor now readily identified as “a mad man in a box” and with stories which relied on quirky time travel paradoxes and clever plot twists rather than the loud spectacle Davies had often favoured. This was never better demonstrated than in last year’s Christmas night episode, ‘A Christmas Carol’, a very literal fantasy retelling of the Dickens classic. Despite some superb FX sequences this was a much more intimate tale, a love story across Time as the Doctor arrives at Sardicktown on Christmas Eve and finds the miserly Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon) causing misery across the festive season. With his companions Amy and Rory trapped aboard a space cruiser spiraling out of control in the choking fog which cloaks the city, the Doctor determines to teach Sardick the error of his ways by taking his younger self back in Time on a voyage of personal discovery where he’ll live out a doomed relationship with the beautiful cryogenically-frozen Abigail Pettigrew (Katherine Jenkins). An encounter with a flying shark aside, there’s no real danger in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and we’re already worlds away from the sort of brash, daring stories Russell T Davies preferred to tell. ‘A Christmas Carol’ is a bit sickly sweet but its heart is in the right place and Murray Gold’s new composition for Jenkins, ‘Abigail’s Song’, is a thing of musical beauty and a genuine tear-jerker…so I’m told. ‘A Christmas Carol’ was another ratings winner, with over 12 million tuning in to the Christmas Day broadcast, the highest figure yet for a Smith episode.

Which brings us neatly to ‘The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’, Moffat’s Christmas offering for 2011. Advance publicity suggests another sweet, heart-rending story laced with the peculiar new themes of magic and fantasy Moffat has injected into the show and, with a captive audience sitting there bloated by turkey and mince pies, the episode looks set to command a substantial audience yet again as ‘Doctor Who’, seven years on, has now clearly firmly cemented its position as one of the BBC’s ratings bankers over the festive period and as a result the show looks set to delight viewers with new Christmas thrills for years to come.

Get out your decoder rings boys and girls, because the legendary team of David Hine and Shaky Kane are reuniting to bring you The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred, the sequel to their mind-blowing metatextual series The Bulletproof Coffin.  Whether you’ve had Coffin Fly’s face tattooed over your own or you’ve never heard of this brand of insanity then you’ve come to the right place, because Starburst Magazine has compiled everything that you need to know about The Bulletproof Coffins new and old in one place, including an exclusive interview between David Hine and Shaky Kane that will leave you wondering where reality ends and their fiction begins. Climb into the Bulletproof Coffin for a preview of the greatest comic that you’re likely to read in 2012.

Anybody that read the first series as it was serialised between June and December 2010 will be anxious to get to David Hine’s brutal interrogation of Shaky Kane and I’m loathe to delay them, but it seems inevitable that at least one Starburst reader forgot to read this genre-defying classic. A linear synopsis of the plot would explain that the hero of Bulletproof Coffin discovers a collection of comics that shouldn’t exist and plunges into their pages in an attempt to determine his true identity. Bulletproof Coffin, however, is a comic that needs to be experienced, otherwise we fall back on empty hyperbole like ‘psychedelic’ and ‘deranged’. With that in mind we’ve collated testimonials from survivors of the first series to tell you why you need to rush out and read the first graphic novel before Disinterred begins on January 25th 2012.

Case Study 1 – Professor Dan Lockwood from the Miskatonic University, currently residing at the Arkham Sanitarium.

Ok, I’m going to be honest with you: when it comes to writing about The Bulletproof Coffin, I don’t even know where to start. I’ve just spent half an hour staring vacantly into space after reading it again, but where to begin? With the zombie soldiers, the dinosaurs or the blank-faced children? Do I just wade straight into the wonderful self-referential quagmire which David Hine and Shaky Kane have created here? It’s a comic about comics – about the industry, about readers, about creators. Starting from the discovery of a stack of impossible comics, we follow a protagonist as his reality begins to blur into fiction. Or was Steven Newman’s previous life the fiction? If even his name can’t be trusted not to change from issue to issue, what does that tell us about the story as a whole?

Through the Golden Nuggets brand, we are introduced to a series of characters, including The Unforgiving Eye, Red Wraith and Shield of Justice – all of whom are pastiches of various genre conventions and tropes. If these excellent fictional comics actually existed, I would devour them, but instead they are rationed out issue by issue, before being bound into the wider story and the ‘real’ world, where age and neglect make them tragic oddballs. Or not. It’s hard to explain. There are so many great ideas on display here, from the fake ads, products and letters which run in the back of each issue, to the unhinged versions of the creators themselves. The art is eye-popping and garish, and the writing is top quality meta-fiction. I really can’t recommend The Bulletproof Coffin enough. It’s like nothing else out there – you just have to read it for yourself.

Case Study 2 – Corporal Cy Dethan. Bug Hunter, Prize Fighter and Blasphemer.

The Bulletproof Coffin is, and let there be no misunderstanding between us about this, a ****ing masterpiece of comics literature.

It’s a powerful, painful paradox – instantly familiar and endlessly alien. It’s a book with the balls to look you straight in the eye and swear that “Everything that follows is true…” before punching you repeatedly in the brain for 200 pages until you wake up, grow up, shut up and quit pretending that you know anything about anything. It’s William Gaines meets William Burroughs in some diamond-hard, scalpel-edged experiment in storytelling. It will mess you up and you will love it for that.

NB – Corporal Dethan expounded on these theories for several pages but the rest was completely illegible.

By now you should understand that if you’re looking for answers about The Bulletproof Coffin then you’re approaching the subject from the wrong angle. If, however, you love comics and consider yourself to have an open mind, then you’ve came to the right place. The following interview took place in November 2012 between David Hine and Shaky Kane. Or maybe it didn’t. The two profess to be old friends and Hine claims to have written for comics as diverse as Daredevil: Redemption, Spawn, Detective Comics and X-Men: Civil War, but type his name into any search engine and all that you’ll get is a message saying that The Big 2 are watching you. Weird.

HINE: Let’s start with a brief introduction to the first series of The Bulletproof Coffin. This was a 6-part series from Image Comics, set in a universe where Kane and Hine are superstars of the comic book industry.

KANE: We must impress that this is a parallel universe we’re talking about here.

HINE: Though of course we’re hoping that with the success of The Bulletproof Coffin we’ll be propelled to similar heights of fame and fortune.

KANE: It was about, as I saw it, a certain dislocation from reality. It was about the longing to escape into the fantasy world created by Hine and Kane.

HINE: The plot follows a comic collector who stumbles across a stash of comic books that shouldn’t exist. These were published after Big 2 Publishing had bought up their comic company, cancelled all their characters and then sacked the creators. But they continued to work on their line-up of characters, turning out new stories of The Unforgiving Eye, Ramona Queen of the Stone Age, Coffin Fly, The Shield of Justice and Red Wraith.

KANE: This was against the wishes of the Big 2.

HINE: Yeah, when our hero, Steve Newman takes on the identity of the Coffin Fly he soon finds that the evil Big 2 have sent their corporate lawyers after him.

KANE: Things turn sinister pretty quickly. Of course this is fantasy. You haven’t had any visits from the Shadow Men have you David?

HINE: I think they’re knocking at my door right now!

HINE: What we did with the first series was to insert actual comic books by our alter egos – the kind of comics we might have produced if we had been working in the 1950’s and 60’s.

KANE: Unfortunately I drew them last year! To me they were bang up to date!

HINE: Those faux comics proved very popular with the readers, but of course we don’t really want to rest on our laurels, so in the new series we’ll be doing something very different.

KANE: Yeah, the obvious thing to do would have been straight stories featuring the Golden Nugget characters. A set of retro books. That probably would have done the job. But having your own creator-owned series gives you a lot of scope to do what you want. We felt we had to rise to the challenge. What was cool about the first series was that it has given us our own legacy of heroes to play around with. It suggests unending spin offs. It could go in any direction.

HINE: Let’s backtrack a little and talk about how The Bulletproof Coffin came about. I guess we need to go back in time to the late seventies when we first met.

KANE: This was when you were at Exeter Art School. You published my very first comic strip. As far as I can remember there weren’t many people who shared our enthusiasm for American comic books. It certainly wasn’t seen as a cool thing to be into.

HINE: No. The head of the art college thought I was insane, but to his credit he let me use the printing facilities to print Joe Public Comics. After Exeter our careers followed a similar rocky path. We had our moments in the British publishing world. I always thought of you as the more successful one, with your creations like the A-men, work in Deadline and 2000AD and Escape. I was working some of the same publications but I was also doing a lot of work-for-hire for publishers like Marvel UK, while you were carving out your own niche.

KANE: I suppose I was always more of an underground name, while you tended to work as part of a production team. Probably steadier work, though there was a time when all kinds of radical comics suddenly started appearing here in Britain. I don’t know if the publishers overestimated the market but they didn’t seem to last very long.

HINE: Revolver, Heartbreak Hotel, Escape – actually Escape lasted quite a while. Deadline did very well. Steve Dillon and Brett Ewins really deserve a lot of kudos for introducing talent like Jamie Hewlett and Philip Bond – and Shaky Kane!

HINE: We both had our wilderness years when we weren’t working in comics at all, then I came back and started writing for Marvel. Quite by chance we met up a few years back at the Bristol Comic Convention. What went through your head when that lift door opened? I remember a strangely disorientating moment because we hadn’t seen one another for at least a decade and here we were, ageing family men with kids. Did you think at the time that we would end up collaborating on something like this?

KANE: You know what? It had been such a long time since I seriously tried to do anything in comics. I was actually a big fan of yours by that time. I had an idea to put a project to you but at that stage I had no idea how we could actually see it in print. You were known as a writer. A name writer, you’d worked on Daredevil, X-Men titles, a whole series of Spawn books. These were very commercial books. But what I liked about it was the way you always took the titles to new places.

HINE: It’s strange because I never really pursued that mainstream work and I’ve never been entirely comfortable with it, though of course I was grateful for the exposure. I was always trying to push the boundaries as much as possible, but there are a lot of constraints when you’re working on corporately owned characters like Batman or X-Men. I think the frustration was getting to me to the point where I really needed to let off steam with something like The Bulletproof Coffin.

HINE: When you finally sent me your sketches and notes there was a wealth of material there that really set me off. I had a great time fashioning a narrative based on the characters you had come up with. And when I pitched the first issue to Image publisher Eric Stephenson, it turned out he was a huge Shaky Kane fan. It was the easiest sell I ever made. I think within an hour of meeting him he had already announced the book and it was being reported online. That was very exciting. It’s great being published by Marvel and DC but there’s nothing to match creator-owned comics. I guess that’s what The Bulletproof Coffin is all about – being free of editorial control and following whatever creative direction you feel like going in, no matter how offbeat it may seem.

KANE: I was amazed by the reaction. I rarely meet anyone in my everyday life who is into comics. I remember you emailing me from San Diego. The book had been given the green light. Incredible. Regardless of what Eric Stephenson thought of my work, I can’t imagine what Bulletproof Coffin would have wound up like if I’d been left to my own devices. I tend to go into things without much planning. It’s usually a case of the first idea I get being the one I use. That can work in a magazine like Deadline where you get short bursts of creativity, but it doesn’t necessarily make a six issue series!

HINE: The first series had an amazing response and I know a lot of people are expecting a similar set-up for The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred, the referencing of old comics, with the same faux adverts and letters pages. But the second series is going to be very different.

KANE: We’re halfway through drawing and writing The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred now and what’s unique about this series is that you can read the six issues in any order.

HINE: I really did want to have a series where each issue worked as a standalone story, so that people would be comfortable picking up single issues. There is also a plotline that runs as a subtext through the series, but as you say they can be read in any order.

KANE: There are new characters, and some old characters from the first issue are expanded on. The Shield of Justice has an origin issue that reads as a noir thriller. The Coffin Fly returns, but it’s an earlier version of the character before Steve Newman found the costume. The Unforgiving Eye is back, but this time he’s more of a costume hero in the mold of The Thing from the sixties version of The Fantastic Four. A real retro Kirby character. We’ve got an issue called Tales from the Haunted Jazz Club, where Hep Cats take turns to relate tales of botched home surgery and the grotesque! One issue is devoted to a set of bubblegum cards that tells the story of our Zombie Vietnam Vets – The Hateful Dead.

HINE: It’s a real mixed bag, a lot of different genres – horror, noir, supernatural thrillers and science fiction. This time though we’re not including our alter egos. There will be no more onstage appearances of Kane and Hine. Over the past year I’ve found it a bit of a struggle to keep the different personas separate but I guess that’s the point of metafiction. There are the crusty curmudgeons that are the Kane and Hine of the fictional world of The Bulletproof Coffin. I’ve estimated that they are well into their eighties by now. Then there are the real world Kane and Hine and now a strange twilight world Kane and Hine that exist between the two. Since photographer, designer and film maker Steve Cook shot his Shaky Kane Unravelled documentary things have gotten very strange.

KANE: Shaky Kane Unravelled is going to haunt me to the grave. It was completely improvised. Steve Cook was holding a camera, I was sort of playing up to it.

HINE: I should point out that the documentary is following the other-world Shaky Kane, but it crosses the boundaries because you refer to all kinds of real-world incidents, like the time artist Simon Bisley accompanied you to the toilet in a hardcore punk club. I can vouch for the truth of that one. My weirdest moment was at the 3D comic convention in Derry when I showed the documentary to an audience that was mostly non-comic fans. Derry is a free publicly funded event, so it’s mostly people coming in off the street who may never read comics the rest of the year. The documentary depicts a rather sad figure – Shaky Kane as a recluse who has spent 10 years in a mental institution and is railing against the world and clearly suffering from some kind of dementia. Apart from two or three comic fans in the audience who thought it was hilarious, there was an embarrassed silence. When I told them you couldn’t make it to the convention because you’d suffered a relapse there was genuine sympathy.

KANE: I should have appeared for a brief time at Derry with my zimmer-frame before retiring to my room for a lie down.

HINE: It looks like, wherever you may have spent those ten years, you’re well and truly back in the public eye. Image have also just released your illustrated book Monster Truck which is a comic strip that follows the passage of the eponymous Truck across a seemingly endless landscape of Pop Ephemera. The conceit of the book is that all the pages connect into one long image that also joins from back to front, so the journey continues without end, trapping the reader forever in the messed-up mind of Shaky Kane.

There you have it Dear Reader, confirmation that Kane and Hine want nothing more than to trap you forever in their mutilated mindscapes.  Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #1 will be published January 2012 by Image Comics and the trade paperback of Volume 1 is currently available to buy.  Unless this is all just a hoax.

Finally, from the Starburst vaults we’ve unearthed this question from a previously unpublished David Hine interview by a gentleman calling himself Anthony Corbeau.

CORBEAU: Do you have an affection for any long forgotten, also-ran characters from the depths of comic history?

HINE: Loads! I loved all those non-superhero Showcase characters like Nightmaster, Firehair, Anthro, Enemy Ace. I’m not sure that anything remains obscure these days though. Even books that ran a few issues then got cancelled have all been resurrected. Hawk and Dove, The Creeper, The Question, even Rima the Jungle Girl. I think Mister E was great, particularly the origin that he was given in The Trenchcoat Brigade, where his father scoops out his eyes for looking at a wicked woman, who also happens to be his mother. Christian fundamantalism, incest, ocular mutilation. It really was right up my street. Or what about Basil Wolverton’s Spacehawk?!? That strip had so many phallic symbols! The way Wolverton drew, everything was a penis, or sperm or some kind of pulsating orifice. And Spacehawk himself was just this big bruiser with absolutely no personality. It was transcendently awful and I love it.

Born of the Spielberg stable that also gave us Joe Dante, Joe Johnston has emerged along with those two filmmakers as one of cinema’s top purveyors of fantastical Americana. Like Spielberg and Dante, Johnston has a fondness for a good ol’ fashioned ripping yarn, an undiminished love of period settings and an admiration for a noble and idealistic hero. Yet, Johnston isn‘t a household name like Spielberg; he‘s not beloved by cult cineastes like Dante. Lacking both Spielberg’s unerring ability to tap into public feeling and Dante’s appealingly excessive anarchy, Johnston has become somewhat lost, ignored even, his films obscured by the achievements of his more well-known ‘brothers’. As 2011 draws to a close though, things are starting to change and Johnston is beginning to win the respect he deserves.

December sees two key Johnston films released onto DVD and Blu-Ray. The first is this year’s Captain America: The First Avenger, a winning adaptation of Marvel’s trickiest hero and one of the biggest films of the summer; the second is The Rocketeer (out on Blu-Ray in the States), a similarly retro comic book film that disappointed upon release in 1991 but has come to enjoy a second coming in this, its twentieth year. As sincere and naïve as the protagonists they depict, these films are low on irony but high on heart – more Caped Crusaders than Dark Knights. That’s not to say Johnston’s films are packed with Adam West-style POW, BIFFS and BAMS though. Captain America’s delightful running fondue gag gives a nice impression of the gentle blend you get with a Johnston picture. These are smart, sophisticated and dramatic genre movies laced with a wicked edge.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Johnston would become the director he is considering his pedigree. As a concept designer and effects technician on Star Wars, he was influential in building the indelible look of George Lucas’s seminal sci-fi, contributing to the art for iconic characters like Boba Fett and Yoda and vehicles such as the AT-ATs and the Imperial Star Destroyer. Such was his success in that galaxy far, far away, Johnston was hired to perform a similar duty on the Indiana Jones franchise, work that first introduced him to Spielberg. He’d finish the 80s having played a significant role on five of the six Star Wars/Indy films, missing out only on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. By that time, he’d gained directorial experience too, shooting second unit on the Spielberg production *batteries not included and designing the aerial scenes on Spielberg’s own Always. But greater things beckoned and while working on those films, he was creating his own – Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. 



A family-friendly comedy, a sci-fi spectacular, a meta-film referencing genre history, this entertaining adventure about an eccentric inventor who accidentally miniaturizes his own children was the perfect transitional film for Johnston, playing to his design strengths while allowing enough narrative scope to prove himself as an effective storyteller. Admittedly, that story is a neutered Incredible Shrinking Man that largely lacks Richard Matheson’s dark edge and character complexity, but Johnston’s tale isn’t entirely devoid of smarts. Possessing a skewed view of suburbia akin to Tim Burton’s best, Johnston’s world is one where your own backgarden is a dystopian nightmare populated by gigantic bugs and under constant threat from carnivorous lawnmowers. In one of the film’s most famous sequences, the children find themselves swimming in their oblivious father’s cereal bowl, only an eleventh hour reprieve saving them from a nasty fate. Fathers eating their children? Dante isn’t the only one who can do satire.

It’s a little sweeping to suggest that this image defines Johnston’s career, but it is true that the scene acts as a nice key to sum up the overarching motif of all his films – the small story set against the epic backdrop. With their respective World War II and Golden Age of Hollywood settings, Captain America and The Rocketeer are obvious examples, but 1995’s Jumanji remains the director’s boldest use of this theme. The film stars Robin Williams as a man who escapes from a jungle board game with the help of two young children. All three have lost parents and during the course of the film become surrogates for each other. Johnston delights in playing these emotional crises out visually, meshing the gigantic unreality of the game’s jungle creatures with the unassuming realism of the world they’re invading. This is a film about the chaos inflicted by death and the smallness of human beings in the wider scheme of things. Like so many Johnston films, its visuals are its substance.

Made for $65million, the film far exceeded that in total gross and remains one of Johnston’s most profitable films. Success hasn’t always been so easily come by, though. The Noughties were a particularly bleak period, yielding only three films, none of which set the critics or the box office alight. Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo and The Wolfman are classic genre pictures, featuring outsider lead characters and told on epic canvases. Johnston was the obvious choice for all three – and perhaps that’s the problem. With Honey, The Rocketeer and Jumanji under his belt, Johnston has become pigeonholed as the go-to guy for family friendly genre entertainment, and the familiarity seems to have bred contempt. Hidalgo, which tells the story of long-distance horse racer Frank Hopkins and could have been Johnston‘s masterpiece, proves a particularly underwhelming experience. His talent has always been in designing worlds, but with the Arabian backdrop already in place and no setting to design as such, Johnston seems at a loss and his direction is sadly flaccid. Jurassic Park III and The Wolfman are similarly tired.

After such a poor period, Johnston was an unexpected choice for Captain America, but an ultimately inspired one. Johnston’s adaptation is a delightful and faithful creation and along with the nostalgia surrounding The Rocketeer, it’s helped put the director back on the map. So where next? It’s difficult to predict. A Captain America sequel and Winter Soldier spin-off have been mooted, but both rely heavily on the direction The Avengers takes. Even if Johnston does get the chance to return to the adventures of Steve Rogers, he may not want to. An often unpredictable director, Johnston is just as likely to use his newfound bankability to take on a small-scale drama as he is a big budget blockbuster. He did as much with Jumanji’s follow-up October Sky. A melancholic biopic of a young man who tries to build a rocket during the space race, it’s an under-rated film – perhaps his most personal and certainly his best. It reminds you that genre films aren’t all about whiz-bang special effects and outlandish set-pieces. Most are about dreamers, outsiders, little guys. Most are about people like Joe Johnston.

It’s 109 years old and only 14 minutes long, but it may be the most important science-fiction film in history. Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) is a rudimentary effort by today‘s standards; crude in its cutting, narrative and shooting style. It stands though, over a century on from its creation, as a film that opened the possibilities of science-fiction and expanded the cinematic form. It’s currently in the limelight thanks to Martin Scorsese’s new film Hugo, in which Méliès’ movie plays a major role, but Scorsese is by no means the first to pay homage to this masterful piece of cinema. Everyone from the Smashing Pumpkins to The Simpsons have been inspired by the magical imagery and intoxicating atmosphere of the Frenchman’s Lunar voyage. So what is it about A Trip to the Moon that has helped it endure so strongly for so long?



Without wishing to state the obvious, first and foremost, the film is good. Not just good, in fact, exceptional. A stirring fantasy that creates an immersive new world from limited creative tools, A Trip to the Moon focuses on a group of French scientists as they set their sights on the stars. Building a rocket and shooting off into space (literally; the capsule is blasted out of a cannon), they crash land onto the surface of the Moon, meet a hostile alien race called the Selenites and eventually escape, returning to Earth as heroes. The film was inspired by the rash of sci-fi novels released during the latter half of the 19th Century (HG Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, from which the Selenites take their name, is an obvious touchstone), and it effortlessly captures those stories’ boundless sense of imagination, curiosity and wonder. Not everything makes it to the screen quite so successfully though.



Unlike the books that inspired it, A Trip to the Moon is a simplistic story. There are subtextual undertones (the film can be read as a satire on the conservative scientific community in France at the time), but really it‘s just a succession of scenes that progress a thin narrative. Most films were. When Méliès was working, planet Earth was a very different place indeed. The Wright Brothers were still a few months away from launching themselves into the skies and cinema was just six years on from the debut of the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the self-explanatory narrative of which proved so shocking to audiences that they ducked for cover from the ‘onrushing’ locomotive. Any kind of flight, never mind flight outside the confines of the Earth, was a fantasy fraught with danger, and films were rudimentary creations capable only of capturing factual happenings. A fictional story about a flight to the moon was a huge risk then. How would an audience so naive react to space travel and little green men?



Méliès knew the answer lay at the heart of his film. A magician by trade, he was attracted to cinema not for its narrative qualities, but for its spectacle (years later, he would say he was “appealing to the spectator‘s eyes alone”). He wanted to take the magic of an illusion and apply it to something new, different and big. Cinema was that thing, and Méliès only cared for the finer points of film technique if they could aid the visuals and strengthen the illusion. So most of the things we consider vital parts of film craft today – complex staging, expressive lighting, elaborate camera angles – are mere footnotes in A Trip to the Moon. They would come as the art form (and Méliès himself) evolved, but here, we see events through a static camera, placed centrally in the action. The cuts are functional, the style simplistic. The trick comes from what is seen, not how it’s seen.



Awash with astonishing visual moments, A Trip to the Moon really is cinema’s first great special effects piece, even if the effects do look quaint by today’s standards. Take the famous launch sequence, in which the astronauts are loaded into their cannon, move in on the moon, and then finally crash into its surface. The cannon is clearly a set, made of cardboard, wood and paint, but it’s so bold, so big – becoming smaller and smaller as it recedes into the distance – and so palpably there, that its unreality hardly matters. In fact, it’s what gives the film its charm. Méliès’ knew this too, piling one fantastical, handmade sight upon the next. Once the explorers have landed on the lunar surface, they see stars with human heads at their centres, women gracefully resting in celestial bodies and underground caverns filled with overgrown mushrooms. Professor Brian Cox would have a heart attack, but audiences were thrilled. How could they not be? This is pure movie magic.

The film ends with the expedition returning to Earth to a heroes’ welcome, but Méliès himself would have to wait for his ticker-tape parade. The films kept coming (1904’s The Impossible Voyage and 1907’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea being the standout sci-fi offerings) and he’d end his career with over 500 to his name, but he struggled to keep up with the times. As film became a more refined art, and complex storytelling techniques were explored further by other directors, Méliès found himself on the fringes of the medium and eventually went bankrupt in 1913 with the emerging American and French studios proving more successful. To make ends meet, he began making and selling toys at Montparnasse station and eventually died in Paris in 1938 at the age of 76.



Towards the end of his life though, Méliès had begun to win the critical kudos he deserved. In 1932, he was given a new home in Château d’Orly by the Cinema Society and was later awarded France’s top prize, the Legion d’honneur. Though many of his films are lost today – melted down for use in the boots of soldiers during World War One or sold into recycling – that critical kudos hasn’t diminished. Méliès is now widely accepted as one of the fathers of sci-fi and cinema, and as a marker of his importance a restored colour print of A Trip to the Moon was shown to critical acclaim at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It stands as a tribute to his craft and dedication. With colour film stock unavailable at the time, Méliès and his crew painstakingly coloured each and every one of the film’s frames. If the stills are anything to go by, the results are bright, bold and beautiful – a real fantastic voyage and a fitting legacy for one of cinema’s first and greatest masters.