Tube Surfing: 20 July 2008

• Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett has been interviewed by The Guardian. "His is the pen behind Eighties comic-strip heroine Tank Girl, virtual band Gorillaz and the opera Monkey," the article opens, "and soon you'll be seeing his animated title sequence for the Olympics on TV. He tells Mark Kermode how a shy boy turned into a great graphic art rebel...

• Over on Bear Alley, Steve Holland has posted a galley of book covers that have graced the work of the brilliant SF author Eric Frank Russell. Like Steve, I have devoured much of his work, thanks to being introduced to him by peter pinto of Lancaster's Interstellar Master Traders (no offence to perte by the way, but the shop, contrary to the bigger-on-the-inside appearance given by photos on its web site is actually much smaller-on-the-inside!). Older British comics fans may remember peter as one of the people behind Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, one of the first comic shops in the UK back in the 1970s. The founder of that fondly-remembered shop, Derek 'Bram' Stokes, also lives in Lancaster and can be found working behind the till of one of its charity book stores.
He chose some odd titles, did Eric - the Space Willies surely one of the strangest...

• Empire magazine has an online listing for its pick of the 50 greatest comic book characters, starting with Todd MacFarlane's Spawn at Number 50 and Superman at Number One. Good to see British and European characters included such as Tin Tin's Captain Haddock (No. 49), , the Mekon (No. 39), Johnny Alpha (No. 27), Obelix (No. 23), Halo Jones (No. 18) and Judge Dredd (No. 7). Not forgetting, of course, characters created by British writers such as Warren Ellis' Jenny Sparks (No. 44) and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Rorsharch from Watchmen.

• Talking of Watchmen, Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Alan Moore online and Empire has posted a trailer for the movie, set to debut in 2009. Moore continues to remain scathing of film adaptations of comics. "I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping," he says. "There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless." Moore also talks about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. III): Century and his upcoming novel, Jerusalem, and also reveals what he currently rates as one of the best TV shows ever: US TV cop series The Wire. (Older readers will recall how Alan Moore and Jamie Delano used to race off from Westminster Comic Mart drinking sessions to watch the latest episode of Hill Street Blues back in the 1980s...).

Round up gathered with thanks to Matthew Badham and the team at Forbidden Planet International