The thing that catches people out with the Silmarillion is that it's not a novel. It's a collection of mythological tales that just happen to be entirely made up by one guy. So if you're not into the style and register of the Táin or the Mabinogion or the Odyssey, it's probably not going to be for you.

I've never read the Lay version of the story, but I assume it's going to be collected in this edition? I might pick this up to go with my Children of Hurin and read it then.

The English are the Galls. One set of them, anyway, along with Vikings. "Gall" means foreigner in old Irish. Irish cultures were Gaels.

Not Tolkien's elves. But Luthien's mother Melian is a Maia, basically an angel or lower goddess.

If you mean Secret Empire, then I think you're replying to the wrong person!

So Hope joins Rachel in the "Interesting Characters We'll Throw Out Just To Get Jean Back" corner?

Of course, through nearly ten years of possible exposure, I do know how it ends! I'm more of a "the journey is the worthier part" guy anyway, so I'm not hung up on spoilers.

Yeah, I saw! I've never read any of them (I was more the Artemis Fowl generation), but my younger brother did.

It is. And it's always great to see David Lloyd drawing anything. There's a couple of panels in Nightingale just seared into my brain, they're so good. Though I think Happy Valley with PJ Holden might be my favourite of Ennis's "bomber" stories.

Yeah, really looking forward to seeing Baby Driver. Any new Wright film is good news.

I really like Dini's version of the Riddler. He actually brings something different to the table. Because the giggling psycho villain position (all respect to Frank Gorshin here) and the useless joke villain positions are being very ably taken by other characters.

The three Cassidy mutants are really the only good ones, because they're the only ones with any actual character beyond the national stereotypes (thanks, Chris Claremont and Peter David. I mean that sincerely). But other than that, it's pretty terrible.

Andrew Weiss on his Armagideon Time blog did a great "Nobody's Favorites" article on Starlin's Gilgamesh II a couple years ago - "Its only purpose is as a pretext for the most insufferable type of pseudoreferential wankery…" Ouch.

I was over in Brighton all last week working on a show in the Fringe Festival (and we did pretty great!), but I also found the time to pick up my own weight in books and comics - Brighton's great for that kind of thing, and Dave's Comics has a great sale section. So I got:

And in typical American fashion, payback against Britain (a different country) involved Americanising Ireland's only non-crap superhero.

At least he is Brazilian. I was really excited to see Banshee onscreen before First Class came out, then it does and he's yet another bloody American, like (early-version) Colossus, Pyro, and Storm.

I'm kind of tired of Americans saying that since they're tired of existence, it's time we all died. Why can't you guys just get tired of America existing instead of hoping for worldwide exinction?

Is Phil that great of a detective, though? I mean, he's smart and a pretty decent man, but he tends work things out only as the next person involved in the case shows up to threaten him, then turns up dead a few hours later. His actual success rate is probably pretty low.

Captain America is really the only one who got a proper, catchy theme that you could hum, and they pretty much phased it out after Avengers. I can't remember hearing it at all in Civil War.

Did they fail though? They didn't learn each other's language, but they did learn to communicate. Everyone leaves knowing they're on friendly terms now, and everything beyond that is just details.