I was as surprised as anyone else to hear about the sale of Marvel to Disney today, but I must say, I think it'll be a good thing. It gives Marvel Comics the same financial security as DC has, the latter being part of TimeWarner, while previously Marvel had to survive purely on the strength of its comics (and, admittedly, starting with Iron Man, its in-house movies). That's why, in the past, a marginal Marvel title would be cancelled long before a marginal DC title would. Now, when the immediate success of every single title isn't make or break, I expect we'll be seeing more experiments and more creative risks from people whose love of the medium meant they couldn't help themselves but to publish comics they knew would find only a small audience, even when finances were tight. I've already heard from a few people fearing for Marvel's creative independence, but Disney also own Pixar and Miramax, and from what Joe Q's been saying, this is a similar deal. I've also heard specific worries about whether this will be the end for gay characters at Marvel, but I really very much doubt it. (Again: Miramax?) If Wiccan and Hulkling suddenly go back into the closet, I'll be the first out of the door. I promise you. If the gay characters vanish or go silent about their sexuality, I'm gone. But I'm betting it won't happen. (And let's give them a couple of months after the deal is done to see Wiccan and Hulkling and co. appearing where they naturally would, being who they naturally are, okay? I mean, don't start heckling me if Daken feels like kissing a girl that week.)

Hold me to the above. But hold your horses. And watch for your favourite edge-of-being-cancelled title to keep going a while longer now. Hmm, is it time for me to pitch that Defenders ongoing again?

Talking of comics, I did a long interview with John Siuntres of the Word Balloon podcast, which you can hear here, where we talk about all my Marvel projects, the TV stuff, everything, really. A pleasure to chat with him.

Finally, because it's been a long time coming, I want to make a fuss about this. Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story is finally out! Written by Simon Guerrier, it's a genuinely enormous book, the history of my character in all her media, and, in the typical Big Finish style, with none of the blood washed out of the carpet. So many of the creative people involved in Benny's history have gone on to bigger things that this is serious stuff for anyone who wants to look into the engine of all that's happened in our corner of the media in the last decade and a bit. My copy came with nice messages from Simon and Lisa Bowerman, who plays Benny, and yours can too (in that they'll sign it) if you order direct. Which can be done here, and if you want a preview, a couple of pages of the section covering the original Human Nature (when it was a Doctor Who novel) are available online here. And for those of you in search of icons and avatars, the wonderful Red Scharlach has a range of Bernice designs to choose from here.

So, exciting times all round. And I really must get back to finishing my holiday now. Until next time, Cheerio.

Good afternoon from the shores of Loch Oich, where we reside in only slightly faded splendour, at the kind of hotel which feels like a boarding school, with stuffed animals, after dinner coffee in the library, and a big oaken door with a brass plaque on it inscribed 'internet'. And hey, wifi too. I may have the smoked mackerel this evening. As those who read the Twitter feed know, I've been busy falling into several different Scottish rivers, out of several different whitewater craft. This was our third time rafting, and we found to our surprise that our current guide, a Kiwi (not literally), had known the guide on our first such experience, on the Tongariro River in New Zealand. She was called Viv, and we'd kept her memory with us as a kind of measure of life-loving energy and fearlessness. Our current guide told us she'd passed away. 'Oh,' I said, 'what happened?' imagining some leap for a too-distant handhold. 'Suicide,' he said. He went on to say that that was surprisingly common among raft guides, and hearing him talk later of how he'd spent 'six years of summer', from hemisphere to hemisphere, I connected it to the extraordinary depression and suicide rates among professional cricketers, for whom seasonal change is a very personal thing. So to find myself suddenly out of the boat when going down a waterfall, with everyone else, and then managing to get back to it after a lengthy separation and a few bashes to the hindquarters, and follow the rules to get back in, with a lot of laughing and very little drama... well, that felt even better than experiencing something feared and finding it to be okay normally would. Leaving a kayak mind you: not nearly so life-affirming. I had to let myself drift downstream after that mentally keeping a Beatles track in mind, as I told Twitter. ('Tomorrow Never Knows', with its refrain of 'turn off your mind, relax and float downstream... it is not dying' and not, as some suggested, 'Help!' or (unkindly, I thought) 'I Am the Walrus'.

We've been walking a lot. We've seen a brilliant German archaeologist called Dirk make fire in a crannog (a lake dwelling) and then keep it in a tree fungus, for up to twenty-four hours. We've seen a bat detector working on the grounds of Blair Castle (and where else but a Scottish estate would you find signage indicating how inexpensive a statue of Hercules was to build? Less than £25!) Today we walked near Corrimony Chambered Cairn, a round barrow with stones for a ceiling, which had been open (like a lot of the Wiltshire barrows), as if one could thus visit the ancestors, but had been closed off when people started building stone circles (just like in Wiltshire), in this case around it. I think that must mark a change in worship, possibly from ancestral to sky-watching, and with circular 'cup markings' on the biggest stone and a fougou passage element, in that you needed to crawl to get into the barrow, this one really had it all.

I'll just quickly add that Drumnadrochit, which has taken upon itself the mantle of being 'the town where Loch Ness is' is pretty horribly infested with sheer tat. But shining amongst that is the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre (there are a couple of others, I think, with similar names, so if you go seeking, be precise). It's quite surprising to follow an audio and video tour, in a town that relies on the Loch Ness Monster for its tourism, that, having rehearsed all the details of Fortean interest, with side trips and angles I didn't know about, sifts through the data and how it was unconvered, and pretty solidly comes to the conclusion that there is no monster. It's also refreshing to come out of such a tour feeling that, hmm, that all went a bit fast, I was a little overwhelmed by the detail of the hypothesis there at times, what was that he said about diatoms? Excellent stuff to perk up the jaded Fortean, and you sceptics would have a wild time.

Anyway, it's back to my desk tomorrow, having not really relaxed to the putty-like state I normally seek on holidays, but with loads of exciting stuff coming up, more having girded my loins. Talking of which, I'll be blogging again in a moment, with the Marvel/Disney news, and Bernice stuff. So I'll see you in a moment. Cheerio!

Okay, you may want to have a cup of tea beside you, we're going to be here for a while. The Hugo Awards for 2009 are going to be presented at the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne in September next year. The Best Graphic Story category is only a year old, and I think SF fans might benefit from a broad brush introduction to some of the many comics out there that they might consider nominating. I'd like this to be the first of many such articles, from many people.







Written by: Leah Moore and John Reppion.

Written by: Brian Wood.

Written by: Gerard Way.

You know, I don't know why I didn't mention anyone getting their Hugo Awards in that last lengthy bit about Worldcon. It seems a weird gap in retrospect, but in my defence I was writing at high speed in a style best described as 'stream of incoherence'. I was particularly delighted, on the night, by Cheryl Morgan's win for Best Fan Writer, and to see a friend of her's (you wonderful soppy old thing, Anne) weeping with joy for her was proof yet again how seriously these things are taken. So there, I was paying attention.

Some things I missed, like John Picacio and Lou Anders recieving Chesley Awards, for Best Book Cover and Best Art Director, respectively. Like Charlie Stross' onstage encounter with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (that's the sort of thing Worldcons are for, and, typically for a Worldcon, I was on a gameshow at the time). The Chesleys were, like all awards at these things, taken back to the bar. Unlike most awards, they lit up, but we couldn't find anywhere to plug them in.

So the only sane way to tackle this is chronologically. Either that, or you have to just post a quick overview. The thing about a Worldcon is that it's concentrated, largely relevant experience, a very fast stream of happenings coming at you, and relating to you, in a way which is the exact opposite of sitting at a keyboard and looking out of your window every day. I sometimes think of it as what my ideal for an afterlife would be. Yes, even with the bureaucracy and the fights on panels (you'd really need something to do in an afterlife). But I will try and cut to the chase for each particular event, or this'll be like one of those fanzine convention reviews from the old days which began with the author packing his suitcase and didn't get to the convention until after three pages of moaning about British Rail. So...

I'm back at my desk now, but still in recovery mode. Huge bloggage about Worldcon to come. But first, just a quick post about what happened with Captain Britain and MI-13 at the Hugo Awards.

I'm having a fantastic time at Worldcon in Montreal, preparing to present both drama category Hugo Awards this evening. We're in that pause as the convention draws in a breath ready for the ceremonies and parties of tonight, and everyone starts getting excited.

So I'm delighted to announce that, one country down, something has happened to distract me from my nerves: Marvel have announced, at Wizard World Chicago, that me and Leonard Kirk will be working together again, starting in November, on a miniseries featuring the Dark X-Men. I'm very excited about the project, and to be working with editor Nick Lowe and Leonard again. The band's got back together. Here's the cover for the first issue, with certain characters missing...

Now to get back to rehearsing my Hugo introductions. I'll have a full Worldcon report shortly, and will Twitter who wins! (Especially swiftly if Doctor Who makes it four in a row!) Until then, Cheerio!

Or Jeeves and the Big Dumb Object.

'I've started to Twitter, Jeeves', said Bertie Wooster, gazing out over the slightly too French spectacle of Montreal from the rather too big window of his rather too high up hotel.

'It was, sir,' said Jeeves, 'only a matter of time.'

'Can't quite get the hang of one hundred and forty characters or less, and by the time you've added hash worldcon oh nine and anticipation SF to the thing you've so little room left you might as well pop round in person and crack open the sherry.'

'What are you twittering about, sir?' said Jeeves, with a stony look on his face that suggested he'd placed the emphasis exactly where he wanted to in that sentence but it had been a close run thing.

'Well, this Hugo Award thing I'm presenting. Semi Best Watchermacaulit. Great honour. Feel I should talk it up.'

'I have, sir,' said Jeeves, 'laid out your evening wear for the occasion, and have taken the liberty of writing a few notes that you might wish to puruse in the moments before stepping out on stage.'

Bertie peered at him suspiciously. Whenever he heard about Jeeves writing anything, he remembered the occasion when he'd had the fellows from Tor over, and while his own monograph Night of the Space Robots had somehow failed to materialise in any anthologies, Jeeves' half-hearted lunge at the same subject matter was now represented in many of the Year's Best collections. 'I shouldn't think I shall need cribs,' he said airily. 'I was chatting about this to that Father Christmas chap last night-'

'George R.R. Martin, sir.'

'That's the chap. Too many Rs. I said that to him too. As well as offering some very prescient critique on those books of his. Didn't drag the poor fellow through it, short and to the point.'

'What was your point, sir?'

'Just that a lot of time and trouble would have been saved if the giant eagles could have just taken the blinkin' ring to Sauron's abode in the first place. You could tell I'd touched a nerve. By the end of it he looked quite surprised. Anyhow, he said that Locust was going to win. I shall add that to the list for today's larks. Must find a copy.'

'I look forward to that, sir. Now, sir remembers that sir has a panel today?'

'Yes, something about reforming Worldcon.' Now this was more Bertie's subject. He was keen on the reform of almost everything, especially if doing said reforming involved say, light chatter over golf and entertainments in the evening with like-minded folk who got everything done and then wanted nothing more than to tell one about it. 'Did the rounds on that subject last night also, a Wooster is always prepared. Miss Morgan briefed me top to bottom. Basically: I'm all for it, as long as it doesn't involve young gels with the hots for him with the hair setting fire to things.'

'I believe I glimpse your meaning, sir.'

'It's all very well, letting the sex get involved in planning these Worldcon hoo hahs, and running the Science Fiction Writers of America, Jeeves, I discovered last night! I expressed me incredulity to the damsel on a number of occasions, popped back to check, but it seems she really does -'

'Indeed, sir.'

'- but what we don't need is a lot of them, a pile of them, an anime of them, as the Greeks would put it, cluttering up the corridors and stopping old chaps with beards down to their knees from hobbling over to 'Whither Elves' in Room C289. For that I will not stand.'

'I have taken the liberty of summarising sir's thoughts on that subject too, sir, on a piece of paper which I have similarly dared to slip into sir's cuff.'

Bertie, buoyed by the thought of breakfast, decided to indulge his man's aspirations for the moment. Best to let him think he was making a contribution. 'Top hole, Jeeves,' he said, 'top hole.'

I finished the novel. Phew. That is, I finished the first draft of it. I'd said to myself that I'd get it done by the end of July, last Friday. But then my Agent told me he was off for the weekend at 1pm on that day, so my working week became something like the end of a romantic comedy, as I mentally 'rushed to the airport' to get it in. And I did! At 12.55pm! 'Don't rush it,' he said, 'you could just send it to me on Monday.' But I think deadlines are important as a motivational tool. And I didn't rush it. And I'm still happy with it three days later, which is almost unique in my experience. And during that I also finished two comics, and... so I'm tired now. So very, very tired.