In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Happy Lantern Festival, as the first Full Moon of the Chinese New Year dawns... or dusks... you know what I mean?

Those of us hoping for at least one month of the current US Presidemcy which wasn't an entire new verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" were disappointed again when the US and Israel decided to bomb Iran. And those wondering "Why" have the disturbing benefit of multiple choices answers, as Trump, Vance, Rubio and Netenyahu all appear to have different explanations.

The fact folks were instantly able to point to a series of tweets from 2012 when Trump speculated that Obama would, because of plummetting popularity declare war on Iran as a distraction has not gone un-noticed.

Sigh...

A by-election in England last week gave us the first Green MP to ever win a by-election (As opposed to a General Election), and by a handsome majority too. This led Reform, who are finding out out that being hostile arseholes to pretty much every possible minority group is not paying off the way they hoped it would, to immediately pull a Trump card, and claim/whine that the election was rigged against them.


We bid a sad farewell to co-creator of Red Dwarf, Rob Grant, who passed away at the age of 70. "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!"

I've not watched the new Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode yet, but I have high hopes.

I did watch the latest Starfleet Academy which is a strange mix between working through grief via "Our Town" (a 1938 meta-textual play which, as far as I am aware, has no real pop culture relevance outside the US) and a rather beautiful subplot (Which was a lot stronger than the actual plot IMHO) with Robert Picardo's Doctor and SAM.