The Guardian actually had a positive page about you a few weeks ago. Claiming that it is geek time again and you all a massive influence on all kinds of Hollywood shit. There were also a few pages on the SDCC in that week's edition of The Guide and I'm told even the Daily Mail has mentioned comics fans in a positive manner.
    The excellent reviews for The Dark Knight and Hellboy II have gilded this positivity. It would appear that being a comic book geek is now gauche again. Are you all happy about this? Are you going to whip out your Giant-Sized Man-Things at every Tom, Dick and Barbara, in the street? One of the Dimblebys did a piece in trainspotters back in 1969, around the time of the release of The Railway Children; I suppose the media must have thought trainspotters were going to have a major influence on the reception of such a film, therefore they must now be interesting enough to feature on telly.
    Is it that you've all suddenly become cool, or is it more likely that the way critics are raving about Heath Ledger's last screen performance that have made every aspect of comics cooler again, far more than a Jessica Alba could do for a Fantastic Four?
    The fan industry could certainly do with a shot in the arm. Unfortunately, the Guardian piece focused a lot of its time on the fans who dress up for comic conventions, which immediately categorises you all as the next worse thing than a Star Trek fan. How can you seriously take something seriously when you have some twat covered in blue paint and some poorly executed tinsel?
    You get gig reviews and there is barely ever a mention about the crowd; in comics it's all about the crowd. Journalists appreciate that regardless of how brilliant and artist or writer might be, they are more than likely to be dull and uninteresting individuals (remember the Fast Show's piss take of Aardman Animation?). But Fantasy is back in a big way and the mad fuckers dressing up as Nightcrawler, Worf or Batman are now being categorised as 'eccentric' rather than 'sad bastard'.
    It's a pretty big about face, especially when fanboys were crying in their masks at the ludicrously awful Spider-Man 3 and how camp eventually creeps into to every aspect of superhero film sequels.
    The job now is for the thrust (backed up with pieces on Persepolis and broadsheets continued championing of graphic novels and collections) to continue. The marketing men have to start manipulating the press; to get them to focus on the product rather than the buyers. It's one thing to have the likes of Frank Miller and Alan Moore being discussed on culture programs, but all of the good work that achieved is lost when The Sun wheels out a bunch of semi-intelligent fuckwits dressed as their favourite superheroes.

***

Fat and/or ugly people shouldn't be allowed to live, especially fat ugly self-opinionated people. Unless people can prove their obesity is because of glandular problems, they should be shot and the fat from their bodies used to power homes. Unless someone can prove they've been disfigured (and then that's no guarantee of survival) or made ugly through no fault of their own (genetics don't count), they will be dismembered and sent to primary schools as a message - look after your face or it might kill you! Self-opinionated people are ok, but the faintest whiff of a face like a slapped arse or muffin tops and it's off the knackers’ yard for you.
    Politicians should also be eliminated. People who have no clue that some poor people exist through circumstances rather than their own doing should be stripped of all their wealth and made to live in a council house for a year - it has to be a year at least, to make the cunts suffer.
    Worthless celebrities should be ignored. People who gesticulate wildly while screaming about the antics of some Q-list celebrity should be tortured and then killed. If they are good looking - male or female - they should be sexually tortured first, and then killed.
    People who are cruel to animals, go foxhunting, act like they have the God given right to act like parsimonious twats - fucking shoot the lot of them and use their carcasses to power the National Grid. Fat ugly people who insist on speaking in Klingon should be put on display at the V&A.

Other than that, you're all safe.

***

I haven't seen The Dark Knight yet, I shall wait until I can illegally download it from bit torrents and watch in the comfort of my own home with popcorn costing about 25p rather than £25. I can just about tell you what happens all the way through it now and varying opinions of whether a scene was good, bad or amazing. The Internet is a fantastic place to go if you want any enjoyment spoiled. I went through a period of time where the last thing I wanted to be was a nethead and therefore avoided virtually anywhere like the plague. I was still happy to watch my regular TV shows when they arrived in the UK. I didn't want to know, whether purposefully or accidentally, that so-and-so gets killed or whatserface gets it up the Gary from the defrocked priest.
    Now, as my television receiver becomes more and more redundant and I get to see my favourite programs within 24 hours of them debuting. The problem is, what if I wasn't blessed with a good and unlimited internet connection? Or what if I couldn't make it to the cinema because of other commitments? Short of becoming a hermit in an igloo in deepest Northern Siberia, you have little chance of avoiding anything - spoilers aren't even spoilers any more.
    A good friend of mine, the guy who came up with the name Borderline, Rad, isn't going to see TDK until September and has avoided spoiler sites and pages devoted to this new Christopher Nolan film. However, thanks to this wanky entity called social networking, Spoilers can have a whale of a time completely legitimately - by posting their comments in that little box in the top right of the screen. My one on Facebook currently says: Phil thinks most of you are a bunch of cunts, which fits nicely with the above rant.
    If nothing else, spoiling someone elses enjoyment is both rude and an existential theft, yet there are sites dedicated to spoilers, because there is a percentage of perverse fans out there who actually derive more enjoyment by knowing what is going to happen rather than having to guess or wait for it to unfold. Are these people the saddest cunts ever to have existed? [Which reminds me of a thing that happened in my shop many years ago. I'd just got more copies of The Death of Captain Marvel in because it was selling well as a collectible GN. One customer on buying it, immediately turned to the inside back page and said, "Oh he does actually die then?" I still can't make up my mind if he was trying to potentially spoil it for others in the shop or if he was being ironic.]
    When I say 'existential theft' I mean it wholeheartedly. What can someone get from revealing a revelation other than a feeling of superiority? I know that the Internet didn't create obnoxious little shits, but they certainly have proliferated since the explosion. The thing is, I've done it. I've tried to rack my brains as to the reason I did it (it happened once about 8 years ago when I said the immortal words, "My God they killed off Joyce" at the end of a post, unaware that many people on the group I'd posted to hadn't seen the particular episode of the TV program I was alluding to) and I can only come up with a sense of wanting to fuck people off. It must have something to do with gleefully mischevious evil superiority. It's power. You hold something over others, ecstatic in the knowledge that you have what they don't and the urge is surely to show how you're fucking more brilliant than they are by spoiling their own enjoyment. Spoiler warnings are fine, when they work. Plus there's this worrying trend that if you haven't got all the latest episodes or comics yet, then you are lower than the rest of the people.
    I was round my mate's on Friday, sorting out his new laptop and showing him how to get around his new computer - because he has never, in 43 years, had a computer before. Another mate, also a Luddite, was watching me sorting things out. "Why do computer people always smile at computer screens?" He asked, genuinely interested.
"I don't know what you mean?"
"Everybody I know who's into computers will look at the screen and at some point they'll nod, smile, grin or sneer at it, like it's talking to you."
"Well... it is talking to me. I smile because it's doing something I ask it to. I grimace and call it a fucking spawny cunt because it isn't doing what I want it to."
"Yeah, but you all act like you belong in some kind of exclusive club."
"We do. Except there's degrees to that club. There's people who understand computers, people who know their way around them and people who sleep with them. I understand software which is all that [our friend] needs."
    The thing is, I have a superiority over these people and it almost looks like I'm flaunting it. Showing my mate how to find his way around the net using Firefox (instead of the fucking awful Vista version of IE); I was going so fast he was left so far behind. "Stop!" He shouted at me. "Show me how to do that slowly please!"
    All knowledge, especially if greater than those you are with becomes a weapon, even unintentionally.

***

The last month has been hell... Back in December I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the lower spine, which, frankly, poleaxed me - literally and metaphorically. Throughout 2008 I have been plagued by an aching back, a dodgy right leg, and shoulders so fucked up I wondered if I was going to be able to pick up a full pint glass after all while. Yet, despite it not being a brilliant summer in Blighty, the warmer weather has returned me to a degree of normalcy I rarely anticipated having again. I can move. I can bend. I can even shag and if I get any pain it's either dull or easily coped with. As a consequence, I've been jolly, energetic and been in a completely disarmingly good mood. My real life version of me has been the complete antithesis of my on-line persona.
    Subsequently, I've been approaching work with gusto and have taken on more responsibility. The kids I work with are, on the whole, not criminals; they are bored teenagers who are being criminalised because this country is becoming zero tolerant of young people who aren't showing superior academic leanings. The problem is; the last month has been plagued by parents. I'm beginning to hate parents with a passion. The main reason for their kids getting into trouble in the first place is their inability to be parents; or their selfish desire to remain their own people and to hell with what my children get up to. I work with three kinds of parents - those that care, those that don't and those that are so fucked up themselves they need far more help than their kids. Parents have been the bane of my existence for the last month and if I was asked by the YJB how I'd tackle youth crime, I'd say target the parents; penalise the parents; punish them and assess them rather than the kids.
    I have said for years that I hate kids. I don't hate them, I just don't want any (and I can't now, thank the gods!). Yesterday, I was at a family wedding and my great nieces and nephews all think I'm the best thing since Ronald MacDonald and I spent best part of the day with between 1 and 4 of them hanging off my neck, arms or legs. I never once got grumpy, even when my back gave me a timely reminder of my condition. My wife kept reminding me of how I was likely to feel in the morning (this morning), but I decided that playing with my nieces' kids was FAR better than talking to their dysfunctional parents. I love the rest of my family to bits, but I also see with crystal clarity how younger generations are so inherently selfish all they are doing is moulding their children into caricatures of themselves.

...Can anyone tell me why I hate you all so much?

Phil Hall