This is the news!

Being late to the party, I just watched Newswipe while eating breakfast, thereby setting myself up to be thoroughly confused for the rest of the day. Superficially, the show is like a news-oriented version of Brooker’s first-rate TV-bashing Screenwipe being smashed into The Daily Show with a hammer.

Although superior to previous BBC4 Daily Show wannabe The Late Edition—primarily a vehicle for Marcus Brigstocke to be smug and patronising, and Steve Furst to be as unfunny as humanely possible—Newswipe at times left me bewildered, and may just be the instrument that propels reality into a whirling vortex of postmodern news doom.

The problem with Newswipe is the news itself. When Chris Morris parodied the genre, in 1994, via The Day Today, he was remarkably prescient, but still able to stroke the absurd stick until it burst, exaggerating every aspect of the news to comic effect. Unfortunately, the news subsequently became The Day Today. While idiots in 1994 somehow mistook the Morris show for real news (“Sacked chimney sweep pumps boss full of mayonnaise”/”Headmaster jailed for using big-faced child as satellite dish”), today, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the real from the fake, such is the flash, sound-bite-oriented, ratings-grabbing and absurd nature of modern news broadcasting.

And so with Brooker, the show begins with him being Chris Morris (the newsreader and the comedian), talking in Chris Morris fashion about real news, which is being portrayed in a manner like The Day Today, without irony, and continues to dissect news broadcasts that look like they’re written by Chris Morris by highlighting the absurd nature of them by sometimes being Chris Morris and by sometimes being absurd.

Overall, the show—bar the odious poetry section—is still worth a look. Brooker’s entertaining, and he briefly waggles his fact muffin to debunk a few of the wilder news claims. But I couldn’t help feeling that the show is almost redundant. The news has become a parody of itself, and trying to create a comedy vehicle around it (albeit one concentrating on satire and deconstruction) results in the frustration of a show being slightly drier and more serious than what it’s reporting on, which is supposed to be dry and serious in the first place, but isn’t.

It’s enough to make your brain hurt.

It’s a dog’s life

Every once in a while, 2000 AD serves up a new strip that manages to attain ‘classic’ status, despite the premise being fairly ordinary. On balance, perhaps it’s actually this ordinariness—with a typically 2000 AD twist applied, of course—that marks such a strip out for longevity, because it’s not trying too hard.

A case in point is Kingdom, scripted by the usually reliable but rarely remarkable Dan Abnett. On the face of it, Kingdom is another future war story, following a battle against swarms of highly evolved insect-like creatures, referred to as ‘Them’. The twist is that the protagonist, Gene Hackman, is a tough bipedal dog-like creature wondering the Earth with his pack, getting guidance from unheard ‘urgings’ and discovering there’s more to his life and world than ‘scrapping’ and orders.

On the page, the story comes across as an odd mix of Mad Max 3, the battle scenes from Starship Troopers, and Grant Morrison’s We3, with its mix of post-apocalyptic settings, stunted language, massive and bloody battles against overwhelming odds, and intelligent, genetically enhanced canines. However, the twists in Abnett’s tales, his deft characterisation and the assured changes in pace (from frantic battles to thoughtful contemplation of Gene’s aims and desires) give the strip an identity all its own.

Abnett’s dialogue is a particular standout. Rather than aping the irritating broken English of the film world, he crafts a new language for his characters, simplifying the English tongue. Peppered with phrases known to dogs, the language comes across as a living, breathing thing (a particular standout being the phrase “your mouth is full of wrong”), and so, by extension, does the entire strip.

Ably assisted by Richard Elson’s workmanlike art, with its direct storytelling, clean lines and strong panels, Kingdom is a joy, and deserves its place amongst the very best of 2000 AD’s titles.

Kingdom: The Promised Land is available now for £11.99. For more information about 2000 AD graphic novels, check out the 2000 AD Books website.

Hop to it!

As if bomb squads don’t have a hard enough time, Jumpman is tasked in this platform game with defusing bombs in Jupiter Headquarters, a place that clearly needs a serious heath and safety check. Precarious platforms and all manner of hazards await our athletic chum in this dated, playable and frequently frustrating platform game.

With Jumpman originally arriving on 8-bit computers in the early 1980s, it’s not much to look at, and the sound is guff, but designer Randy Glover had a wicked sense of humour and a real sense for level design. Therefore, each of the 30 levels brings its own set of dangers, such as ledges that vanish once you defuse a bomb, UFOs that dart around the screen, and manic robots hell-bent on killing you in the face. Also, when you inevitably come a cropper and tumble down the platforms to your untimely demise (and a jolly, slightly sarcastic rendition of the death march), you still defuse bombs that you bump into and can therefore sometimes complete a level during your dying moments, which is a nice touch.

Aside from poor aesthetics, niggles with Jumpman largely relate to some screens being absurdly difficult and controls being twitchy on the faster levels. However, if you can put yourself in the mind of a 1980s gamer—it was a time when gamers were real men: hardcore, but with mullets—you’ll find Jumpman a compelling, challenging, and occasionally maddening game.

Jumpman is available now for 500 Wii points (about £3.50). It’s tough, so wimpy gamers need not apply. Mullets, however, are optional.

Ignoring the ladder entirely, our hero aimed for the bomb by leaping majestically.