benmccool

11:41 pm: Justice League Unlimited #40... Out on Wednesday!
Yep, finally, Justice League Unlimited 40, scripted by my humble self, ships on Wednesday. (Or Thursday in good ol' Blighty.) Check out its nifty cover by the stupendously talented Zach Howard here:

http://www.dccomics.com/comics/?cm=8558

The story's drawn by Dario Brizuela, who's quite masterfully brought Zatana and co. to life. A really fine job. Bravo, sir.

This is my very first book to be published by DC Comics, so naturally, I'm very pleased. However, I do have a number of *other* projects festering away at the moment, which I'll be able to tell you a little more about soon. They're kooky, spooky and thoroughly outlandish.

A little like their Brummie author, then...

More soon, and thanks for reading!

11:32 pm: Yep, I'm off to the USA for 3 months. I'm sorry, America...
Tomorrow morning I'll be jetting off to my new base of operations, New York City, although I'll also over the coming period of time be making my merry way out to San Diego, Los Angeles and Maine, plus maybe even Baltimore, Georgia and Chicago, too.

So if any of you poor bastards happen to live anywhere near any of these places there's a bloody chance that I'll be seeing you. I'm difficult to miss: chubby bloke with a rather sensational Brummie accent.

And if you're gonna be at San Diego Comic-Con next week? Remember: mine's a Stella. Or a 12-issue maxi-series that lets me use the word cuntybollocks.

'Cos, y'know, I appreciate the more refined avenues of literary entertainment.

Cheers!

-Ben

02:24 pm: The ravages of old age...
Okay, as of this morning, I now *officially*have more grey hairs than Sir Paul McCartney's ex-missus has legs.

Yes, that's right. Two of the beauties, sitting right next to each other. Suffice to say, this sucks.

But how on Earth did a second streak of silver lining materialise overnight? Did my existing one get lonely and decide to yank another out of my scalp to keep it company?

Still, I guess it could be worse. I could also have two on the OTHER side, which are still awaiting their grim discovery.

The fact that I'm now even more terrified of looking in the mirror than I was before is depressing beyond belief...

12:26 am: Wanna hear me talk comics LIVE on BBC radio?
No, I wouldn't fancy it much, either. But just in case you're extremely bored on Saturday night, I'll be interviewed on BBC Five Live, talking all about comics, Free Comic Book Day, and of course, promoting myself like the sorry little harlot that I am.

It should be kicking off sometime just before 9pm-ish.

The question on everybody's lips, of course, is how severely my Brummie accent will tarnish the Beeb's reputation as a vehicle for intellectual debate and innovative social stimulus.

Sigh. If only I could borrow my good pal Si Spurrier's vocal eloquence for a day...

03:06 pm: Barcelona Mullet Convention. Yee-bloody-haaw.
Got back from the Barcelona comics show a couple of days ago, absolutely knackered and in dire need of catching up on some sleep. Aside from a few rather gargantuan inconveniences ('thieving gypsy bastards,' springs to mind) I had a top-notch time and met some rather cool people.

I also noticed that Spanish comics nerds enjoy donning an array of MULLETS. For real. At least five out of every ten Spanish geeks looked like they were in a Whitesnake tribute band, with the most 'business at the front, party at the back' hairstyles this side of the Jerry Springer show prominently on display.

A mullet-o-rama in Spain...

Priceless.

11:28 pm: Oddball working practices, Benny Boy stylee
Today, according to my disgruntled boss, was my 8th consecutive late arrival into the demoniacal, intellect-starved cauldron of sorry destitution that is my day job.

Naturally, I tendered an utterly justified and wholly accurate reason for my lack of dignified punctuality: I was polishing off page nine, issue one of my latest yarn, CHOKE, during which the hapless protagonist is subjected to an outlandish sex act also involving the as-of-yet unidentified (and quite possibly other-worldly) creature dwelling beneath his bathtub.

Suffice to say, it didn't work out quite as well as Saturday's 'the bus was late' effort.

Why oh why do my most significant bursts of creative output always materialise around 15 minutes before I'm scheduled to leave the bloody house?

Answers in an email to the usual address, please...

07:13 pm: So why Peter Parker?
How come when Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider he gained super powers, yet when Soviet spy Alexander Litvinyenko ate some sushi laced with polonium in a London restaurant he lost his hair and died? Once again it's one rule for comic book superheroes and another for KGB turncoats.

06:09 pm: Bollocks. Best female comeback ever...
Blimey, ladies are smart.

Yesterday, whilst hanging out with my younger, prettier and smarter female cousins, I managed to engage myself in a 'men are *so* much more mentally balanced than women'-type discussion.

Bad move, I know.

I was doing pretty bloody well, and even managed to generate a few giggles with my alcohol-laced (and utterly ironic) views, until I was brought crashing down to earth with a splendid comeback, leaving me with little/no choice but to escape from their wicked clutches and concede the arguement.

So what did my cuz say, then?

Well...it sorta went like this:

Ben: C'mon, I mean seriously, girls are prone to 'issues' like men are prone to sitting around in pubs, farting at the most awkward of moments and discussing the weekend's footie. They have a inane ability to make an absolute mountain out of a mole hill, and seemingly relish conflicts of opinion and day-to-day confrontation! Girls are COMPLEX creatures!

Laura: Yeah? Women are complex? WELL AT LEAST WE'RE NOT THE ONES WITH OUR G-SPOTS UP OUR ARSES!!

Laura 1, Ben 0.

The morale of the story? Don't mess with the ladies. Especially if they're related to me.

08:01 pm: New Year. Oddball karaoke. Birmingham stylee.
Happy New Year, ye all! Go drink and be merry, just like your Brummie pal Ben, who, at the age of twenty-six, still thinks it's amusing to pop around to a mate's house after the pub for some HELIUM KARAOKE!!

It's a good job I'll be wearing my corset, 'cos otherwise I think my sides will split.*

* Gag shamelessly stolen from Blackadder II, circa 1986.

But seriously, you have to try it. Fully-grown men with high-pitches voices, giggling like freaks, talking about boobies and soccer. Funnily enough, it's the exact same scenario I celebrated New Year's Eve in when I was 12.

Well, except for the fully-grown men. And the helium.

10:27 am: My New Year's Resolution. Be afraid.

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Wear spandex every other day. Get your resolution here.

11:31 pm: Spam email = SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION!!
Dunno 'bout you guys, but I'm fed-up with having my email inbox choc-a-block full of adverts for penis-enlarging pills. In the interests of sexual equality, shouldn't they start bombarding women's computers with adverts for punani-tightening tablets?

02:22 pm: Yikes! Basketball suddenly got INTERESTING!!
Check this out from Saturday's Knicks vs. Nuggets game: a ten-man free-for-all, which, astonishingly, didn't spark any kind of serious reaction from the spectators. How American sports fans differ from their Limey pals across the pond; if something like this had've occurred at an English soccer game there'd have been a full-scale on-pitch RIOT!!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d640bffcff

The incident's left 10 players ejected from their respective teams, including the NBA's scoring leader, Carmelo Anthony. He may want to reconsider his career -- he delivered the most accomplished bitch slap seen since I tried stealing Simon Bisley's beer at last year's Bristol Comic Con.

Bad move, Benny Boy, bad move...

07:14 pm: Here's my 'gay Star Trek' character...but who are YOU?

11:13 pm: Beer vs. Vagina!
I remember passing this on some time ago, but lo and behold, it's come full circle back to your trusty pal Ben's Myspace bulletin board. And seeing as it *does* feature a debate involving both beer AND vagina, I'm provoked beyond my hapless mortal inhibitions to again unveil mankind's most prominent dilemma: BEER or VAGINA?

Take it away, oh author of The Best Post Ever..


Beer vs. Vagina

1.Beer is always wet. Vagina needs a little work.
One point to BEER

2.Warm beer tastes awful.
One point to VAGINA

3.A really cold beer is satisfying.
One point to BEER

4.If after taking a swig of your favourite beer you find a hair
between your teeth, you may vomit.
One point to VAGINA

5. If you get home reeking of beer your wife may get mad, make a scene, kick you out, etc. If you get home reeking of vagina your wife may get mad, kick you out, even leave you. There's definitely a point to be had here, depending on your point of view and personal circumstances. I'll just call it a DRAW for the time being.

6. Ten beers in one night and you can't drive home. Ten vaginas in one night and you don't want to drive anywhere. One point to VAGINA

7. If you have a lot of beer in a public place, your reputation may
suffer. If you eat any vagina in public, you become a legend.
One point to VAGINA

8. If a cop stops you and you smell of beer you may get arrested. If you smell of vagina he may buy you a beer. One point to VAGINA

9. You normally don't find old beer.
One point to BEER

10. Too much beer and you'll think you see flying saucers. Too much vagina and you'll think you've seen God. One point to VAGINA

11. Ripping off a beer bottle label is boring. Ripping off panties is
fun. One point to VAGINA

12. In most countries there's a tax on beer.
One point to VAGINA

13. If you have another beer the first one never gets pissed off. One point to BEER

14. You can always be sure if you're the first one to open a bottle
or a can. One point to BEER

15. If you shake beer it'll get all agitated but eventually it
settles down. One point to BEER

16. With beer you always have choice: clear, dark,
pilsner,ale,lager,etc One point to BEER

17. You always know how much beer is going to cost. One point to BEER

18. Beer doesn't have a mother
One point to BEER

19. Beer never expects to be hugged for half an hour after you
drink it One point to BEER

FINAL SCORE: BEER: 10 VAGINA: 8
That's it! The matter is settled, the clear winner is: BEER

PS: If you are a woman and at this point feel angry, degraded or
discriminated against, just remember that Beer would experience none of those feelings, let alone express them; an extra point for BEER

07:58 pm: Thank fuck for THAT!! (Huh? Oh, sorry, England 2 - 0 Trinidad & Tobago, baby!
What a bleedin' day...not only have I had to contend with a script-writing-o-rama, I've also had to endure quite possibly the most frustrating game of football (soccer, some of you guys call it?) EVER.

IN case you missed it, here's the half time analysis I posted up on Myspace:


"Boy oh boy, it's half time between England and Trinidad & Tobago, it's 0-0, and I can safely say that it's been about as much fun as having my scrotum liquidised and fed back to me in the form of a full-fat gargantuan calorific smoothie...

Minus the fruity goodness, of course.

But in all seriousness (me? SERIOUS? Shit the bed, what a turn-up for the books) YOU GOTTA SORT IT OUT, GUYS! THE REST OF THE WORLD PROBABLY THINK WE SUCK BY NOW!

So get out there, spank their lowly arses, and give me something to smile about.

If I'm not too uber-depressed I'll re-post after it's all over.

With more dick jokes."


England, 2nd favourites going into the tournament, were today pitched against a dedicated Trinidad & Tobago side who, in all seriousness, should have offered about as much opportunity to beat us as I do in partaking in a three-in-a-bed romp with Angelina Jolie & Salma Hayek, whilst accompanied by a video camera, a six-pack of Stella Artois and an exclusive $1million dollar interview with The National Enquirer. Whilst having the action called by Roy Firestone, Ian Eagle, Jerry Lawler and John Motson, no less.

But they didn't. Oh no. Thanks to some muted team composition, wayward tactics and half-arsed performances we ALMOST gave them suitable prospect for a massive, massive upset.

Thankfully, we scored a couple of crackerjack goals in the last 10 minutes, which eased my blood pressure down to somewhere approaching that of an 80-year-old 300lb salad dodger.

The World Cup? The Greatest Show on Earth?

Not if you're bloody well English, mate...

Now, where did I put my box stress-relieving 'happy placeness'. Y'know, that one packed to the rafters with crack cocaine, smack, moroccan woodbine and bolivian marching powder. Yes, that's it, hiding behind my mum's perfume collection...

*snort*, *sniff*, *ack ack* etc.

03:09 am: What makes Ben's blood boil? RACISM
Uh-oh. It's ranting time. And it's all due to the BNP (aka British National Party, aka the senseless extreme Right Wing motherfuckers who masquerade as a genuinely intellectual alternative in Britain's political future), who today had one of their Birmingham-based MPs, Sharon Ebanks, exposed as the fraudulent racist bitch that anybody with half a brain cell knew she was before her entire electoral campaign began.

And what did she say that appalled me so severely, you may ask?

Well, aside from an 18-month backlog of 'white is great, kick the darkies out' bullshit, that she "wouldn't be supporting the England football team during the World Cup because it contained too many black players."

In her debauched words of 'infinite wisdom', she quotes that:

"The England team is not English, and shouldn't be called the England team."

It gets worse:

"I won't support them. The English are a race of people. If England is playing, it should be English people involved...'they' hope that you won't complain about ethnics if there is one in your favourite team. What better way of introducing you to the acceptability of being swamped than via your favourite game?"

Let's get something straight here, if only in direct reference to her most recent (and preposterous) declaration: the fact that several of our players are not white does not mean that they are not English. They were born here, educated here, and trained as professional footballers here. They play for English teams (the only 2 that don't, oddly enough, are both white), and, dare I say it, will be proud to be representing their country come 2pm on Saturday in Frankfurt, Germany. Just because their ancestral background may differ to other members of the squad does not make them any less English.

The BNP claim that they are not a racist party; instead, they declare that they are simply "patriotic".

I'm not a huge believer in patriotism, (after all, as Texan Bill Hicks once said, "your parents fucked here. Big deal. The world was round the last time I checked") although I've generally turned a negligible eye to it up until now.

But if I've been living in a cave for the past 20 years, and this is modern society's *true* definition of patriotism?

Then fuck patriotism.

You judge somebody by what's inside them, not by how they look. End of fucking argument. If you're English and want to complain about the foreign influx over the course of the past 40 years? Then blame our forefathers; after all, they were the ones who deemed it fit to colonise most of the nations currently "swamping" our humble shores. There's one thing I can say for sure: these guys have arrived in a far more tranquil fashion into our country than we did into theirs.

Anyway, that'll do for tonight. I've got fables to write tomorrow, as well as the first day of the World Cup to watch. There's also the matter of a large bottle of Plymouth Gin, although that's another story entirely... ;)

11:27 pm: 6-6-6? Hmmm...
Standard British time, there's about 40 minutes to go until we hit 7-6-6. Oddly enough, The Lord of the Flies is yet to make an appearance. The fact that he apparently didn't bother showing up for the 6th of June 1906 celebrations doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, either.

I'll take it one step further: I've actually had a good day. A stark bloody contrast to yesterday, I can tell you. Maybe this whole thing has been, well, over-hyped?

Or maybe it's just that he's busy. Perhaps The Great Unclean One is too preoccupied doing other stuff to celebrate 'his number' upon our humble earth. Maybe he'll take us by surprise and unleash his cataclysmic wrath upon us all on Saturday, at 1:58pm, minutes before England's World Cup campaign gets underway against Paraguay.

That, friends, would piss me off more than a maladious cocktail of Dan Brown's prose, George Bush's mindset and Robert De Niro's decision to star in Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Y'see? Satan could upset me yet.

Meanwhile, it's time to stop drinking this bottle of Absynthe. I think I may have damaged my mind...

08:21 pm: It could only happen to me! AGAIN!!
This whole 'Ben: Master of Disaster' thing is REALLY starting to do my bloody head in...I mean c'mon, how much more of a vigorous shafting does my self-confidence have to take?!

Read on, true believers...

Seemingly not content with my recent back catalogue of calamitous misadventure (stapling thumb to desk, referring to my pal's new girlfriend as a 'sea monster' as she stood behind me etc.), I today, whilst out and about on my lunch break, decided to take a short cut down Temple Street towards my next port of call, the bank. As I strolled down the hill, I noticed an interesting selection of flyers for upcoming gigs posted in Swordfish Records' window. Tragically enough, as I neared the kerb to take a closer peek, I stumbled, tripped, and then in the most graceless of fashions, crashed down to the earth. You should have seen me go, man. I went down like a preacher's daughter.

The only way that I could have possibly looked *any more* of a penis would have been if I'd stolen a helmet from a Roman soldier, painted myself bright pink and then sprayed a thick and very prominent blue line up the front of my body. I was too ashamed to tell anybody back at work upon returning from my lunch, although I'm sure a few of 'em will end up reading this. Bastards.

Why does this always seem to happen to me? Bleedin' hell, I can't think of ANYBODY else that's anywhere near as prone to these inane acts of staggering stupidity as me...sob...

Do any of you lovely folks feel obliged to cheer Ben up whilst he's in severe need of ego-boosting upheaval? The more embarrassing the story, the better...

10:13 pm: "Ben, what the fuck did you carve into your arm, man?!"
My new tattoos rule. Seriously.

As soon as I locate my bleedin' camera (I haven't seen it since taking saucy snapshots of my recent and 'highly erotic' one-in-a-bed romp) I'll take a bunch of photos of the 3 sweet-as-fuck Aztec/Incan/Mayan symbols my good pal 'Tattooist Burt' etched into my forearm.

They itch like fuck, mind. I've gone through my latest tub of E45 lotion faster than Kirsty Allie's beer gut vanished into her nip/tuck specialist's 'to be sold to Clinique's soap department' bucket.

Now THERE'S your nice thought for the day, right?

01:25 am: Tattoos and treadmills. Plus saving energy, too.
The new treadmill I have up and running in my home is electric. However fast as I 'run' I cannot generate as much power as is used to move the feckin' thing. Therefore, the only sensible solution is that I should stop using it in order to save energy.

Well, there's that, plus also the fact that I'll then have more time to consume calorific alcoholic goodness in the pub, too.

BTW, my new trio of forearm tattoos would appear to have upset several people already -- several passengers onboard tonight's London-Birmingham train included. I very much hope that this trend continues. If anybody is aware of folk with an anti-tattoo disposition, please feel more than free to forward them in my general direction. I will then reward their debauched perception of body art with an in-your-face display of, well, body art. Covering my right forearm and everything.

If they look REALLY closely, they'll be able to see little ickle specks of dried scabby skin, too. Just for added 'Oh my God! You complete freakazoid!!' value. Which, naturally, I thrive in.

Time for sleep, Benny Boy...