On 2 February Alan Moore was signing at Gosh comics in London. The event was scheduled from 14:00 till 17:00 but overran till !8:30. I popped in quickly to the basement before it all started to say hi, but Melinda had not been feeling well so wasn’t present. The main entrance and shop upstairs didn’t seem to crowded, but then I was told that there in fact was another entrance with a line around the block. So when I left to come back towards the end I was surprised to see people still waiting in line. Was a good reminder of how writers build up a loyal fan base over the years and are an important cornerstone of the media industry.

The power of the writer has also been reaffirmed by the Screenwriter’s strike in the USA, where most of the Los Angeles economy has been paralysed for months. The downside of course is that a lot of film crew (including a few of my friends in Hollywood) are without a job and TV programming is getting back to cheaply produced reality TV.

But it does prove again that without imagination, without the actual craft of constructing narrative, all the million dollar special FX, equipment and facilities are useless toys.

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