this just caught my attention. The wife of my bosom and I watch Rebus on cable every week, as they are currently showing the filmic inventory in total, and I have often wondered if the oddly dismal view of human nature is a carry-over form the books from which the otherwise engaging series sprung (though it must be said that the post-John Hannah version with Ken Stott in the title role has been more uplifting). I see that the author Ian Rankin was interviewed this week at Newsarama, on account of his new gig at Vertigo, writing a so-called 'graphic novel':

"...a lot of people hated the film of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I loved it! I think I went and saw it three times! I liked the characters, and the idea of them as the first superhero fighting team. That’s just a great idea. As a creative writer, that just really appeals to me, genre-hopping and playing games with them.
I loved V for Vendetta as well. I thought it was very true to the source material, very faithful. I thought, “being Hollywood, they’ll make him take off the mask, we’ll get to see his face.” Nope. Loved From Hell also. I think I liked it better than the comic book, which is very hard to follow in parts."

But we need not worry because he is actually really truly quite brainy. In figuring out how to write comic books, this is what he came up with:

"What I did was I got a copy of a book called Understanding Comics and the others by Scott McCloud. And I thought they were really quite cerebral. It was like, “What happens in the space between the panels is almost as important as the panels themselves, because time has passed, and you’ve got to imagine what has happened between these two panels.”

With any luck he'll fall through the space between the panels and we'll be spared. Meanwhile we'll get back to enjoying Rebus on the tv and wondering how much they had to change it to make it work.