Two tidbits for Doctor Who fans.  First up, James Strong has been announced as director for the Easter Doctor Who Special for 2009. He will be working from a script by Gareth Roberts ("The Unicorn and the Wasp").

"We’re so happy that he’s returning to the fold," Russell T. Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "James has handled Daleks in sewers, hordes of Adipose and Satan himself, as well as a Titanic with Kylie on board. But believe me, none of that will have prepared him for what we’re about to unleash in this next script!"

The soundtrack CD to the fourth season of the current Doctor Who will be released by Silva Screen Records on November 17. The disc will carry 27 tracks taken from throughout the season, which completed airing during the first half of 2008.

Those interested in downloading the album from the company can obtain it sooner.

The track listing is as follows:

1. Doctor Who Season Four Opening Credits (0:46)
2. A Noble Girl About Town (2:14)
3. Life Among the Distant Stars (2:30)
4. Corridors and Fire Escapes (1:12)
5. The Sybilline Sisterhood (1:53)
6. Songs of Captivity and Freedom (4:03)
7. UNIT Rocks (1:11)
8. The Doctor’s Daughter (1:38)
9. The Source (3:21)
10. The Unicorn and the Wasp (3:11)
11. The Doctor’s Theme Season Four (2:47)
12. Voyage of the Damned Suite (10:21)
13. The Girl With No Name (2:45)
14. The Song of Song (2:14)
15. All in the Mind (1:18)
16. Silence In The Library (2:57)
17. The Greatest Story Never Told (6:17)
18. Midnight (3:07)
19. Turn Left (2:20)
20. A Dazzling End (2:22)
21. The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble (2:44)
22. Davros (2:07)
23. The Dark and Endless Dalek Night (3:44)
24. A Pressing Need to Save the World (4:55)
25. Hanging On The Tablaphone (1:07)
26. Song of Freedom (2:51)
27. Doctor Who Season Four Closing Credits (1:07)

He was the “father” of Hercules and (actually) the husband of Xena, and now Robert Tapert returns to pop culture with a hand chosen set of horror movies and a new television series. In our exclusive interview, Robert fills us in on both plus where things stand with Xena and Evil Dead, plus:

• Witchblade on ITunes
• DC prepares a crash course on The Spirit
• Neil Gaiman, Guillermo delToro and Dr Strange oh my!

Catch the full exclusive ComicMix interview with Robert Tapert right here on Sunday, and in the meantime get warmed by and Press the Button!

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via or RSS!

Bryan Talbot emerged from Britain’s underground comix to become one of the most innovative creators in the UK.  He’s the creator of the critically acclaimed graphic novels The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and A Tale of One Bad Rat.  He remains a creative force, most recently producing Alice in Sunderland, a graphic novel released last year form Dark Horse and Cherubs!, with Mark Stafford, which Desperado released this summer.

Warren Ellis said, “Luther Arkwright is probably the single most influential graphic novel to have come out of Britain to date.” This month, Bryan Talbot’s seminal work is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary.  It was first serialized in Near Myths, a British title, before being collected as a miniseries and graphic novel through the years.  A new edition, using digitally remastered pages from the Czech edition, is being released by Dark Horse.

Talbot graciously agreed to chat with us about the work and its influence on graphic novels. Part one will focus on Luther Arkwright and tomorrow’s second part will explore Talbot’s career.

CMix: Bryan, thanks for taking the time to sit with us.

Bryan Talbot: Thanks for inviting me.

CMix: Do you agree with Warren’s assessment?

BT: Er…yes, it probably is the most influential UK graphic novel as I can’t think of another that’s comparable in that respect. Most of the "Brit pack", including Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, were fans of it years before they started writing comics professionally. Writers such as Warren, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and Rick Veitch have acknowledged its influence. According to Steve Bissette and Michael Zulli, it inspired them to want to draw comics.

CMix: He went on to say, "He took from everywhere – the films of Nick Roeg, head shop culture, 19th Century magazine illustrated, medieval woodcuts, classical portraiture, Sixties collage, Mal Dean and the New Worlds illustrators, anything and bloody everything, and adapted it all to work in the special environment of comics." Was there one element that started the process?

BT: Two years before starting on the graphic novel I wrote and drew a one-off eight page strip called "The Papist Affair" in my Brainstorm Comix series of underground comics. It was an excuse to do a Richard Corben-style line and wash strip and I invented the character of Arkwright for that, inspired by Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius novels. Mike created Cornelius and offered him as a template hero. So that was the starting point. After finishing the strip I started to think about fulfilling a long-standing desire I had to produce what we now call a graphic novel and started to develop it based around Arkwright.

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For those of you unaware, last week I took part in the Netflix Movie Watching World championship, in which eight contenders were put in a glass living area in the center of Times Square where we had to break the record for most films watched in a row without averting our eyes from the screen or falling asleep. The current record was 120 hours and 23 minutes, so we had our work cut out for us. There were 10 minute breaks in between each film, in which we could use the bathroom and wake ourselves up, but beyond that, our eyes had to be fixated on the 56 inch Plasma television. Whoever was to break the record (and there could be multiple winners) would win the Golden Popcorn Bowl trophy, $10,000 cash, and a lifetime membership to Netflix.

I was one of the three contenders selected from an online competition through Facebook.com, and among the others were competitive eating champion Crazy Legs Conti, former Netflix Movie Marathon champion Cheryl Jones, winner of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire: Movie Edition Jeff Jones, German champion who broke the world movie watching record three times, Claudia Wavra, and Guinness record holder for breaking the most Guinness records, Suresh Joachim. Needless to say, I was the underdog in this competition, seeing as how the longest I’ve ever stayed up in my life is 48 hours, and that’s all while doing things like driving or moving around.

Each of the competitors were asked to suggest films, and luckily the first film in the marathon was one of my picks: Iron Man . This would have been a lot of fun to watch again (let alone in the center of Times Square), and if I wasn’t so nervous about not taking my eyes from the screen, I would have. After talking to a bunch of the other competitors, I realized they had the same problem. Once we were able to overcome the excitement of being in the center of New York City with dozens of flashing cameras and gawkers, it became easier. (more…)