Bat-Manga!

To tie in with the 1966 launch of the Batman TV show, Manga prodigy Jiro Kuwata was commissioned to produce a Japanese version of Bob Kane's Batman comics.

Believing that Kane's scripts would be lost on a Japanese audience, Kuwata redesigned the Dark Knight for the expectations of a mid-sixties, Manga-familiarised audience. And so, what we're left with is a bonkers blend of superb suspense and gonzo weirdness, as villains turn into dinosaurs, commit strange crimes, rise from the dead, and rampage through a Mangafied Gotham that has the streamlined wonderfulness of space-age Japanese pop culture.

Buy it from Amazon

Vote Obama sez The Wire

I'm pretty much going to support whoever Chris, Cutty and Marlo tell me to.

The real debate

The Spinto Band review up at PopMatters

PopMatters have published my review of Moonwink, the latest album by The Spinto Band.

"First single “Summer Grof” (in the band’s words “a vague tribute to the great comedienne Janeane Garofalo") captures this exuberance perfectly. Jaunty hand-claps give birth to saccharine keyboards and jangly guitars. Add an addictive chorus of “I won’t lie, I won’t lie, I won’t lie, I won’t lie, I won’t lie” and you’ve got a superb indie anthem. It’s a shame that it arrived in October and not July, because “Summer Grof” could truly have ruled the summer."

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Get Comedy

If you're in London and looking for some laughs on Monday night, you could do a lot, lot worse than pop along to Get Comedy at The Comedy Store.

Scruffy comedy hero Richard Herring is compering the night, and will be joined on stage by Jo Caulfield, Paul Sinha, Terry Saunders and Pappy’s Fun Club.

All the acts are donating their time and their humour in support of Get Connected - the free and confidential helpline for young people.

Tickets are fifteen quid from Get Connected or £18.50 from ticketmaster. Best, then, that you pop over to Get Connected's website and buy your ticket direct from the charity.

The best of The Wire

To mourn the conclusion of the greatest television programme ever, posters on the Guardian blog are ranking their top five moments from the show.

If there was ever a thread that made you realise how unbelievably fucking brilliant this show was, this is it.

The bloggers have pretty much listed every scene from the show's five-year run, but these are my personal stand-outs...

Season one - Kima gets shot. I was genuinely numbed by this scene. The aftermath with McNulty throwing up and Rawls at last showing some compassion towards the Homicide Department's biggest asshole was incredibly touching.

Season one - Wallace gets assassinated. That Bodie, by season four, had become one of the show's most sympathetic characters says everything about the standard of the writing.

Season two - Prop Joe says to Nick Sobotka, "Fool, if it wasn't for Sergei, you would and your cousin would be cadaverous motherfuckers."

Season three - Brother Mouzone and Omar square off in the alley. "At this distance? With this calibre? Even if I miss, I can't miss."

Season three - Rawls in the gay bar.

I could easily write a hundred more. One moment the Guardian bloggers have missed is a subtle one from the first season where Freamon says to Prez, "You, detective Pryzbylewski, have a natural flair for the paper trail." The look of pride on Prezbo's face...

I miss The Wire so much.

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Tattoo gays sez stupid priest

Rev Peter Mullen thinks that homosexuals should be tattooed.

"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan sodomy can seriously damage your health and their chins with fellatio kills."

I'm sure somebody somewhere is making a gag about him muddling up his fags, but hopefully in a quid pro quo somebody will tattoo 'bigoted cunt' on Mullen's forehead.

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