Spiderman, Lennon, Christmas

The pic comes from 'Spiderman Comics Weekly' from February 15th, 1975: when I was obsessed with Marvel Comics and in the UK they were reprinting all the great strips that Johns Romita and Buscema drew.

Christmassy stuff is starting to happen here in Manchester. Last night was my reading at Central Library - thanks to Libby and Maura for organising! It was a full house, which was great. We had wine and I read them some of the early chapters of Hell's Belles. I love giving readings and meeting readers. It completely makes it all worthwhile.

Our tree's up - but with no decorations yet. But it's all ready to go. We're going to be dashing about madly from now on - in-laws are arriving today. This morning was the first breakfast with a Christmas cd playing in the kitchen. Each year it's roundabout the time that Lennon comes on singing 'War is Over' with Yoko - that's when it feels like things are really starting. Lennon's solo stuff always reminds me of December. Because of his shooting, I guess. And there's something so pure and hopeful in that Christmas record.

Here's a review from the Gallifreybase forum. I hope the writer, Dewi Evans doesn't mind me quoting it in (almost) full. But I was so delighted by his just *getting* right some of the stuff we were doing with Doctor Who - Hornets' Nest. Just as I do, he sees it as a kind of gallimaufry of symbols and tokens from classic English mystery stories...


"It's quite unlike almost any other incarnation of the programme I've come across, yet it's not that difficult to imagine it as part of the same franchise. You only have to look at how the Doctor acts when travelling alone at the start of The Face of Evil and The Ribos Operation to see that this particular version of the Fourth Doctor isn't really as out of character as we might imagine.

"As for the tale itself, I loved what I can only call the 'English kitsch' element of it - the heaping on of traditional elements of Victoriana and Edwardiana (and in part four, Medievalana, to coin a phrase). The iconography of popular British legend and fiction: the bleak midwinter countryside, glorious seaside piers frequented by tipsy vicars, a grotesque cricuses, country cottages, ancient religious buildings, christmas dinner, sweetshops stacked to the rafters with gobstoppers and anaseed balls, forests full of ravenous wolves. All of which was augmented by a healthy dose of eccentricity that was always just this side of bonkers: giant hornets that can control people's size, a house beseiged by stuffed animals, a chase through a doll's house, shoes that compel the wearer to dance, a troupe of circus freaks, a headquarters inside the skull of stuffed zebra. A lot of this might not be quite as original as the execution sometimes implied, but to be honest I think this was rather the point - Magrs's style revels in traditional iconography, which is then turned on its head, with the camp turned up to eleven. And what could be more Doctor Who than that?"