OUR TV ADVENTURE, so far-part 6

more about the photo-shoot that produced the image I showed in part 4. The original plan was to photograph Campbell walking the dog in a variation of the photo that appears at the end of Fate of the Artist except that they are being harassed by the Snooter. To this end I drew three different versions of the Snooter, which I showed here exactly a year ago (1, 2) ( The project has indeed been going on that long!). After a couple dozen shots we decided that Monty wasn't controllable and we would be wasting a lot of time. Here's a photo of Monty taking directions:


So we switched to the new idea of Campbell with his bags of groceries (linked above). After making the composite image I was sitting waiting for the producer to come and pick up the disc. I sifted through the out-takes. One hundred and fifty photos had been taken but I wondered if we had ditched the Monty version too early. So I started to compose a second image using one of the other Snooter drawings and photos of Campbell and Monty. I think it's still too complicated for our purpose and include it here as an interesting but rejected alternate take. It also has another one of those ridiculous comic book faces you won't be seeing again any time soon.


After raising the development funding we went into an endless series of brainstorming sessions to figure out the plots and details of all the episodes, plus the ages of the characters since the source material covers a decade, with everything being constantly rejected and restarted. The wife of my bosom, who has developed a healthily skeptical attitude to Campbellian schemes over many years, made a quotable comment. I'm not sure whether it was born of sarcasm or if she just wasn't completely paying attention, but it nevertheless demands to be dressed up as a Honeybee cartoon:

An exciting incident in suburbia.

The local dog-walking crowd, a beloved loose society of the friends of man’s best friend, arranged one of our occasional get-togethers in the picnic area of the park on Friday evening.

The wife of my bosom was to join us after she got home from work. Actually, we’d switched our venue and she wouldn't be able to see us in the dark, so I waited on the footpath for her, with the loyal Monty beside me. Also, I wanted to intercept her before she wandered along the bike path, what with that 'groper' character still at large.
It darkened very quickly, as it does in these parts, and at this time of year.

It was quiet too. I waited.

A bike came from the same direction where I’m watching for Anne, went past, with his lights on. The roll of rubber on concrete, a snapping of twig, then silence again.

Then, a scream.

A damsel in distress!

“I’m Coming!” I yell, as run toward the noises in the dark, just the other side of the footbridge, only slightly hampered by Monty, using my legs in a slalom.

AS I gallumph across the blur of moonlight on the bridge, there is the wife of my bosom coming toward me from the gloom of trees on the other side. She must have gone the long way around, through the woods. Blind in her terror, she runs past me.

Monty switches his allegiance to her as she disappears into the gloom in the other direction, interpolating himself into her flight.

And shortly behind her, the guy on the bike who had passed me a few minutes earlier, gingerly trying to explain something.

Apparently he rode past her... something bothered him and he'd stopped to turn, and while extracting his ipod from his ears did not stop to think that he was mirroring exactly the modus operandi of the Ashgrove groper, who cycles past his intended victim about ten yards, quietly turns and…

“I thought I’d hit your dog” he offered by way of excuse
"I didn't have a dog!” countered the wife of my bosom, who had by now returned amid the other folk whom our shouts had brought to the scene. The faulty procedure of needlessly giving information to the suspect was neither improved nor negated by the 35 kilo labrador on its hind legs, attempting to partner her in a waltz.

i'm reading the Zadie Smith edited The Book of Other people. I like the way Daniel Clowes (four pages in colour) and Chris Ware (fifteen pages in colour) are presented as authors among other authors, such as Lethem, Foer and Eggers, with the works arranged alphabetically after the name of their titular person. And in the contributors section at the back 'His books include Ghost World etc..." though Ware spoils it at the last minute: "is the author of Jimmy Corrigan- the Smartest Kid on Earth. He is currently serializing two new graphic novels..."

(also of note to my regular readers, Charles Burns draws 13 people on the covers, and Posy Simmonds draws a handful of people in the Nick Hornby contribution, and relevant to yesterday's post, they are 'author photos')

Reading David Mitchell's contribution, I am arrested by an odd linguistic lump of gristle, coming coincidentally not long after some argument over the use of who/whom in comic book circles. "Who do you trust?" is open to being read as a quote of a quote of a quote...
Mitchell gives us these lines:

'June, where the hell is everyone?'
'Who is this and where the hell is who?'
What sort of actress doesn't know her whos from her whoms?

The narrative is in the first person, fictional Judith Castle writing. Since 'who' (as subject of verb 'to be') is correct in the second line (twice), am I to read this as some kind of high irony and an undependable narrator, which would be a dodgy trick in these grammatically confused times, and anyway the rest of the story doesn't support that. Alternatively it may be a typo caused by the unfortunate editorial removal of a letter 'm' from the end of line two. Or am I to ascribe it simply to authorial carelessness?
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The second part of How Art Made the World aired this week here in Australia. Its subject was the first pictures made by humans, in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux, and Dr Nigel Spivey asked the question "How did the first picturemaker make the first picture when he had never seen a picture before?" This is such a true conundrum. I often watch our dog Monty in front of the television. If a dog barks on screen, Monty rushes out of the house to try and find it. In other words, the moving lights on the screen are meaningless to him. He is incapable of seeing pictures there at all. It must have been the same with humans. We had to learn to see a picture and people were around for many many thousands of years before they got around to painting the first one. What made them think of it?

I recall a similar argument I had many years ago on the subject of drawing and painting 'photographically.' I held that an artist logically could not have painted 'photographically' before the invention of the camera. Photographically is to be differentiated from 'realistically'; the seen world registers differently through an eyeball than through a glass lens. I therefore welcomed Hockney's theories claiming that artists were using lenses to project images from life onto their picture surfaces as early as the Renaissance, because it explained a couple of anomalies in my system, like Holbein for instance. The world being a thoroughly stupid place, Hockney's observations were immediately interpreted as a claim that artists had 'cheated,' and the matter was argued vociferously by the flat earth society over at Artrenewal.com.

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Following my repeated statement on Tuesday of my fondness for Vince Colletta's work, his granddaughter dropped this comment way back in my original post where it may be overlooked, so I'll copy it to here. Thanks, Katherine..

I'm not sure if this will even be read by anyone but Vincent Colletta was my grandfather and it greatly disturbs me to see the uneccessary, unkind things people have to say about the most wonderful man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. For the record this man was entirely dedicated to his work and was passionate about it until the very end. I should know I was there- watching him day after day in his basement at his drawing table putting forth everything he had to the point we didn't really have much time to spend together. As long as I was quiet and behaved he would let me sit next to him and I will never forget those memories. I ask to all those with their negative comments to try and exude some class and respect for a man that truly loved his family and worked so incredibly hard to create works of art for millions of people to enjoy. Lets not forget that no one, INCLUDING YOURSELVES, are perfect- we all try as best we can.

The wife of my bosom and I got home Tuesday and I'm taking stock of all the stuff that's come out of our suitcases. We flew into Rome and were met and driven by a charming bloke and fellow artist named Marco Farinelli to Florence, where we slept and stayed most of the next day. Florence, city of countless artistic marvels, which I appear to have recorded in two photos. First, this great shot of our Monty vomiting out of the side of the Cathedral:


Second, a view from the roof garden of the Scuola Intenazionale di Comics, where I gave a stand up talk for about three hours to a roomful of great students who laughed in all the right places thanks to Vanessa, my translator for the day. She came up here for a smoke break, and we comic book artists never miss an opportunity to make a photograph of foreign rooftops. You never know when you might need it.

People

the Wife
hayley campbell
Erin
wee Cal
Monty
my pals
Alan Moore
Neil gaiman
Will Eisner
mr j
Craig Thompson
James Kochalka
British small press scene
characters
caricatures
bookmarks
author photo
Prof. Bean

Finally
get all 128 pages of The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard wrapped up and off to be scanned well before the Sept 1st deadline. The day starts with buckets of rain and continues with them, and with our state still in a drought panic too. Everybody weeps into their breakfast cereal because they don't know what to do and then orders a taxi. Normally I'd cycle there and carry the art in a big back-pack, but that's too risky with watercolours in this weather. So I wait two and a half hours for the one I called at 7.30 a.m., having risen early and showered and shaved with the nervous energy of one who does not normally have to leave the house in the morning. Around ten I wonder if it's safe to nip into the bathroom for two minutes. Sure enough, while I'm wiping my bum I hear the hooting of the horn and run down the front stairs in disarray, doing up my trousers and tucking in my undershirt, past Monty who is leaping up and down trying to get a look at the driver.
Here's a glimpse of the work while it was in progress:

I'm reading a stack of books sent to me a few weeks back by my marvelous Spanish Pals, Santiago Garcia and Manuel Bartual and another package from Pepo Perez. That trip to Spain opened up some wide new vistas for me, I can tell you.

The collected Los Garriris by Javier Mariscal (ediciones sins entido 2011) is a wonder. What's it about? who cares! the point is that you're off to the beach. It's like eating a fresh oyster. The delight of a fresh oyster, and it must be the freshest, is that it delivers you on the beach and reminds you suddenly and deliciously of the sensation of being smacked in the face by a salty wave. Fermin and Piker, the Garriris of the title, are always off to the beach, where they go fishing, or swim, drive around on vespas or open topped cars and introduce themselves to beautiful chicas. And I'm going with them.

Julian the dog turns up about half way through. here he is barking at lobsters. That's a day out by itself. I once spent an hour watching my dog Monty barking at ants.


At the bottom of this page he tries a new approach and plays music for them


Sometimes Mariscal goes all cubist without the slightest hint of pretension.


One of the sad things about these days of the 'graphic novel' is that too many of us want to know the story and have forgotten how to enjoy cartooning purely for its own sake.

For my earlier post about Mariscal go here.

For an interview with the artist, go to Paul Gravett.

For first rate oysters, get an invite to one of my pal Daren White's parties.

Speaking of whom, his swimming pool broke down the other day because this little chap got caught up in the filter.

An owl.

Looking at the Bacchus Color Special cover a couple of days back, I was trying to remember how I'd been introduced to Teddy Kristiansen. And it's just come back to me. He painted this gorgeous Christmas card for me at the end of 1992 and sent it via Diana Schutz, with whom he was doing some work at the time, perhaps on Grendel. Teddy has his own blog here, but I think i visit it more than he does.
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In other News:
Scotty safe! No need to Worry!
James 'Scotty' Doohan's Ashes Found in New Mexico Mountains- Friday, May 18, 2007
The payload container carrying experiments and the cremated ashes of some 200 dearly departed people — a cargo that includes remains of the beloved "Scotty" of "Star Trek" fame — has been recovered in the New Mexico mountains...
(thanks to Hemlockman)
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In comments, Bat Masterson linked us to this.Hijacked Disney Characters Explain Copyright--FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2007
"Disney lawyers' heads must be spinning over this one. A movie posted on Stanford University's site called "A Fair(y) Use Tale" mashes up all your Disney favorites to humorously and effectively explain copyright law. The ten minute movie, directed by Eric Faden, came out of Stanford University's Fair Use Project Documentary Film Program. Stanford's Fair Use Project--to which Stanford Law professor, Copyright guru, Creative Commons advocate and Wired writer Lawrence Lessig contributes--was founded last year to "support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom." And, well, the movie is damn sure creative, and certainly seems to take the boundaries of fair use about as far as they can go."
It’s very funny. Do watch it.
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And drjon noted this for anyone following our occasional references to The Codex Seraphinianus: This fellow cracked the page numbering system a couple of years ago.
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Blogger still won't let me have a preview so I'm just guessing what this post will look like and can't test whether the links work in advance of posting. At least now it's letting me save stuff.
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The wife of my bosom is away for a couple of days and when I went to go to bed last night I found there were no sheets on it. I remembered they'd just been washed and went out to fetch them off the line in the dark. Sitting in the middle of the 'lawn' (we're in a drought so there's no grass on it) was Monty the dog, out of his bed, and he was looking at something sitting on top of the hoist at my eye level. It was a huge big Tawny Frogmouth owl. I stood in a state of wonder and looked into its eyes for about five minutes. I've never been this close to an owl before. It sat still and looked back at me. I left it undisturbed and went in and put something else on the bed

Fate 3

H ere is the entirety of the anecdote from The Fate of The Artist in which Campbell goes to the airport without his passport, (the first time around). As before, the monochrome scans are in colour so you can see the warm and cool greys. A great deal of the lettering is redone in the finished version. I fuss over lettering more than you would be inclined to assume. When the word came down that First second's books were all going to be printed at that very small size, I decided to counteract it by opening up the letter shapes a bit more. I had left enough airy space in the drawings to make that workable. In fact I quite like all the white page that's showing (make a mental note to do that on the secret thing I must start today). "Be brave, Monty" has since become a catch-phrase in our house, applied to all kinds of situations, but usually to campbellian schemes that are likely to not go right.


(the overlay in the third monochrome has slipped a little.)
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Campbell interviewed by his old buddy john Anderson, who once nearly missed his flight out of SPX due to squeezing in one more beer with him.
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And in other news:
Thai cops punished by Hello Kitty.
Police chiefs in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have come up with a new way of punishing officers who break the rules - an eye-catching Hello Kitty armband. From today, officers who are late, park in the wrong place or commit other minor transgressions will have to wear it for several days. The armband is designed to shame the wearer, police officials said.

New Steve Moore book coming up. Glycon has the gen.

The cover , which you can see at left, is by the amazing John Coulthart, who has long been a friend of this blog. I wrote about him specifically here.

John has just been celebrated in the latest issue of Eye magazine by design scholar Rick Poynor (mentioned in this blog on at least four previous occasions).

‘His blog is kind of like finding a first edition of the Necronomicon three to four times a week.’ I know how this writer at the Dangerous Minds website feels. He is talking about John Coulthart’s Feuilleton, an extraordinarily committed undertaking even by the standards of the most compulsive and sleep-deprived bloggers. Coulthart set out, in February 2006, to post an item every day and so far as I can tell from random searches in his archive, and incredible as it might seem, he has stuck to this arduous programme, though he does down tools at Christmas for a brief respite. more...

This week on his blog, John has discussed 15th century woodcut initials, the German feature film Die Farbe and a vandalized collection of books at the Islington library:

I was going to title this post “Fucked by Monty” but thought that might give the wrong impression. The phrase was one of several titles added to the cover of The Collected Plays of Emelyn Williams by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell when they were happily defacing the books of Islington Library, London, in the early 1960s. Despite the outrage of the librarians at the vandalism most of the defaced books were put aside and are now prized items in Islington’s collection. This week the library announced an exhibition of the books, Malicious Damage: The crimes of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. The Guardian has a gallery of the covers here (and there’s more at Joe Orton central), rare examples of what might be called “guerilla collage”. links and more

Halleluia!

B

ut otherwise, I have always thought Easter Sunday the dullest day of the year. It's the day everybody has gone home (to see the 'rents, as Callum would say), and the shops are closed and all you have are the movies you rented yesterday. In the profile of Alan Moore I linked to on Friday, it says: "He believes most modern films are not only artistic failures but "probably detrimental to modern culture." And I agree.
So what did we have to watch?
Firstly Elizabeth; the Golden Age. 'Comic book' is the default genre for the modern movie. I was able to persevere with the historical inaccuracies of this one up to the moment when Queen Elizabeth turned into Galadriel and the Sir Walter Raleigh into the Sub-Mariner. I can guess how it ended but I don't care.
There is an implicit understanding with regard to the pop singer biopic, and that is that the viewer will accept that the subject had more talent than you and me, and was the idol of the multitude, but only if it can be shown that he/she lived a life of unremitting misery, half caused by circumstance and the rest by his/her self. thus Walk the Line and the present subject, La vie en Rose, about Edith Piaf. I didn't make it to the end and I don't care.
We did take Monty for a walk on the beach. Drove for an hour then discovered we forgot to bring his leash. I went into a gas station (as the Americans would say) and had a choice between ten meters of string and one of those elastic jobs with the hooks at the ends for fastening your luggage to the roofrack. Inexplicably I bought the string and missed out on the comic possibilities of the other. Damn. Even my timing is off on Easter Sunday.

My local paper had an article about the long running Uncanny X-MEN being put to rest. It was very salutational. The press pays so little interest to comic books that it doesn't realize how these things work. They're just closing down the one X-men comic so they can start up again with two. It will be a pincer tactic. One goes downwind of the readers with the bucket of shit, while the other creeps up behind and holds their mouths open for the first one to drop it all in. They could just have handed out knives and forks.

At the same time DC is restarting all their comics. They called a board meeting. "It's no good," they said, "We've made such a mess of it, the only thing to do is start over and see if we can make it come out right this time."

Hollywood has also realized that in the comic book genre everything gets less interesting the further it gets from the origin story. So Batman gets rebooted after the next one. The X-men is back to the prequel, etc etc. There was a spark of creativity a long time ago and the car was still coasting except now they're at the bottom of the hill and they all have to get out and push.

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Hayley Campbell explains why The Lord of the Rings is like anal sex.

Is that a bit like the famous scene from Monty Python?:

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
Your Majesty is like a stream of bat's piss.
(gasps)
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
What?
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
It was one of Wilde's.
OSCAR WILDE:
It sodding was not! It was Shaw!
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, Mr. Shaw?

monty the dog, of 'Monty and me'. Picture of him losing his winter coat.


Every night, in his hungry impatience, he leaves his drinking water with a fragment of dog biscuit floating in it. The wife of my bosom, who has been watching far too much Gordon Ramsay, fondly refers to it as his 'signature dish.'

The first to claim the sketch in comments can have him signed and sent to them in the mail.

meanwhile
This blog was launched two years ago today here!

it has been mentioned to me that there is a video interview of me at the San Diego con, giving out my usual pretentious baloney and as I blather on the camera is momentarily distracted by a costumed person somewhere behind me. I am reminded that my favourite costumed character of the 2008 con was this four legged chap done up as Spiderman. He reminds me of our Monty.

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Joe McCulloch reviews 500 Essential Graphic Novels: The Ultimate Guide. :

"And, on a more subjective level, I am hesitant around any book of this type that fills its Nonfiction section with the likes of Cancer Vixen and Drawing Comics is Easy (Except When It's Hard) while ignoring the works of Eddie Campbell, and insists that Batman: Hush is among the most vital-for-some-reason works of the superhero genre as available in a bookshelf-ready format. But hey - this is truly, completely not a book aimed at me anyway."

For the record, they did ask my permission to include images from my very first book and I said NO. Why they should choose that and ignore all that followed tended to raise my ire but I would have told them anyway, and I did, that anyone who thinks there are more than a few dozen so-called 'graphic novels' worth reading is an idiot.

that'll be me off home then.

Funny how you get tired of eating out. I just want to sit at home with a cup of my own coffee, with Monty drooling on my shoe as he eyes off my slice of toast.
Normal service will be resumed upon my return.
Must rush. toodle pip.
Good bye, San Diego, Good bye America, good bye Mickey mouse, goodbye Buffalo bill, goodbye dollar bill.

idle daydream: I took Monty out for his walk and remembered this time to take a plastic bag to pick up his poo. You'd have thought humans would have organized this better by now. It should be the other way around. In a perfect world WE would have animals to perform that service for US. Imagine having your own little army of dung beetles that would muster every time you go out to take the air.

in the meantime, I just found this promo video for Graham Rawle's recent book: "Graham Rawle's pictures capture perfectly the innocence, the magic and the dream-like surrealism of this truly wonderful story."-Raymond Briggs

(I previously wrote about Rawle here)

I don't believe it, I've gone and done it again

I arrived at the check-in without my passport. Again. the problem this time is that I have two passports. I recently renewed it , but my resident's permit is still in the old one. I need to carry two, one to get out of Australia and another to get back in. And I only brought one. So the once again it cost me seventy bucks to tear home at high speed in a taxi and get it. The way I look at it is that It's that time of year when I have to pay the stupidity tax. The hard part was explaining to Monty that this wasn't actually me arriving home from my travels. Not to forget Wee Cal left sitting at the airport with a growing sense of dismay, and a little of that mortal terror I feel every time I travel.
It gives me the excuse to show the incident the way it played out the first time, as recorded in The Fate of the Artist.

Except that it doesn't.

Sitting here in the hotel lobby I have just accidentally erased two of the three images I placed in 'drafts folder' earlier (curse that damn 'autosave' that blogger introduced recently). So I'll show the one that's left. The idea was to show how the original black and white presentation looked before I colorized it at the invitation of the publisher, First Second. I sent him scans made through the tracing paper overlay. And the color was added delicately in gouache.

I'll show the rest at a later date.
Chris Staros just appeared in the lobby. I'm off for a beer.

"For some people to love it, other people must loathe it."

T his will be the first time I've ever written about Harry Potter. I watched The Prisoner of Azkaban on saturday as our local tv channel makes its build-up to the big release of the fifth movie here in a few days and I really must say how grand it all is. Most of the books have passed through our house and have been loved on and off, but bloody hell, where did those ten years go?

I went to Wikipedia to review the score. There were to be seven books and there turned out to be seven, the last to be released at the end of this week. Five movies so far, the fifth released last week, with two in the pipeline. All with the same principal actors, allowing for losing a couple of old people, and since they all hide behind beards anyway, who's to know? What could the chances have been of everything working out so perfectly? And don't you just love the lady herself!

J K Rowling is "the first person to become a US-dollar billionaire by writing books." and "In 2006, Forbes named her the second richest female entertainer in the world, behind talk show host Oprah Winfrey."
Success of any sort wasn't obvious at the start: "the book was handed to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it."
I like the way Rowling has stuck to her guns on many issues:
Rowling has not allowed the first six Potter stories to be released as e-books and has no plans to change that for the seventh and final work. I applaud! (I stuck to that too in a contractual discussion, but it was only when I pointed out to Random House Australia that neither they nor I could ever be bothered to scan all of From Hell that they realised there was nothing to argue about.)
And regrets the one she let go:
Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.
I have oft wondered if the editors at Scholastic thought it didn't matter what it was called, or worse, that they didn't know what the philosopher's stone actually is, and never thought of looking it up. Worst of all, maybe they never read The Fabulous Philosopher's Stone, the full-length 1955 comic book Uncle Scrooge story by Carl Barks.

But she got her way with Warner's:
In contrast to the treatment of most authors by Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts in their attempt to bring her books to the screen. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has so far been adhered to strictly. In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie-in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.
Warner's won a few points too:
Rowling's first choice for the director of the first Harry Potter film had been Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam, being a fan of Gilliam's work. Warner Bros. studios wanted a more family friendly film, however, and eventually they settled for Chris Columbus.

If I recall correctly, Potter was Robbie Coltrane's next gig after From Hell, and regarding the all-British cast thing, and no disrespect to the acting abilities meant here, Robbie would have been my choice for Abberline instead of Depp (and any of the British actresses on the set instead of Heather Graham). But those American studios will insist on US actors. Once again, huge applause to Rowling and her support team for winning that one. Me, I just took the money and ran. I'm left with the conviction that Rowling's deserved success can be attributed before anything else to her love for the books she has written, and a suspicion that if the rest of us loved ours more we could go farther. A sharp and honest wit does no harm either: "Anyone who thinks I could (or would) have 'veto-ed' [Spielberg] needs their Quick-Quotes Quill serviced."

The new movie is packing them in:
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Warner Bros. fantasy sequel "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" conjured up a $77.4 million debut to lead the weekend box office,according to studio estimates Sunday. That raised the movie's total domestic gross to $140 million since opening Wednesday. "Order of the Phoenix" also has taken in an additional $190.3 million in 44 other countries where it began rolling out Wednesday.

The Times of India speculates on the contents of the final book:When an off-camera filmmaker congratulates her, Rowling admits that there will be some Potter fans who will 'loathe' the book. "Some people will loathe it, they will absolutely loathe it. For some people to love it, other people must loathe it. That's just in the nature of the plot," the Scotsman quoted her, as saying. And though Rowling insists in the documentary that she's "actually really, really happy with it", a moment later she bows her head on the keyboard and says: "Oh my God!"
Rowling, who confessed that she "sobbed her heart out" and drank a half bottle of champagne shortly after ending the book, has already warned fans that two main characters will die in the final book in the series.
Isn't it great how it's making kids actually sit down and READ!:
Meanwhile, nearly a fifth of Potter fans say they will skip straight to the last page of the final book to find out what happens to the boy wizard, a survey showed on Saturday.
And then it will all be over:
Nine out of 10 think it will be sadder saying goodbye to Harry than Prime Minister Tony Blair, the survey said.
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The Tintin furore: brilliant piece by India Knight in the Sunday Times. (link thanks to mr j):
Books stand as testament to the errors and horrors of history. They are vitally important.