Time to vote 🗳️ : The Princess of Wales (then Duchess of Cambridge) cover photo of Camilla for Country Life Magazine has been nominated for PPA magazine cover of the year award. Voting closes on Friday 28th of April 2023. It is a public vote and no sign up is needed. Click here to vote: 🗳️
(W) Jeff Parker (A) Ciro Cangialosi (CA) Joshua Middleton
"I am the screeching fingernail on the chalkboard of justice. I am the sour ball in the candy jar of goodness. I am NEGADUCK!"
He's the exact opposite of DD in every way… evil, nefarious, dedicated to stealing lollipops from kids and not helping grandmas across the street! And now, he's ready to begin a reign of crime and terror the likes of which St. Canard has never seen – except… dang it, all of the other villains are ripping off his ideas! What's a criminal mastermind to do when the city's thick with other criminals, stealing his shine? Why, take his villainy on the road, of course!
Written with fiendish glee by arch-author JEFF PARKER and illustrated by the suspiciously talented CIRO CANGIALOSI, Negaduck features a regular rogues' gallery of cover artists, including JOSHUA MIDDLETON, JAE LEE, TRISH FORSTNER, and a special Whiteout homage cover by that series' co-creator, STEVE LIEBER!
Dynamite and Disney are celebrating Stitch Day (6/26/2024) with a new graphic novel - Lilo & Stich #626 - featuring Lilo and Stitch, aka Experiment 626. Additionally, The first four issues of the ongoing Lilo & Stitch comic are being assembled into a collection called Lilo & Stitch: 'Ohana.
Lilo & Stich #626 is a 96-page graphic novel anthology that will feature solo tales about Stitch, Lilo, Nani, Jumba, Pleakley, Bubbles, David, Myrtle, and more. The graphic novel contains work by creatives Moana McAdams, Chuck Brown, Daniel Kibblesmith, Jeff Parker, Miriana Puglia, Emiliana Pinna, Giulia Giacomino, George Kambadais, and Edwin Galmon.
Lilo & Stich #626, featuring a cover by Sean Galloway, goes on sale on June 26, 2024.
Lilo & Stitch: 'Ohana will collect the first four issues of Greg Pak and Giulia Giacomino's ongoing Lilo & Stitch comic series. The collection will be available as a paperback and a hardcover.
Lilo & Stitch: 'Ohana, featuring the issue #1 cover by Joshua Middleton, goes on sale in June 2024, ahead of Stitch Day.
The sixth issue of Lilo & Stitch will also release on June 26, 2024. The issue will feature covers by Nicoletta Baldari, Trish Forstner, Edwin Galmon, and Craig Rousseau.
(Images via Dynamite - Sean Galloway's Cover of Lilo & Stitch #626 and Joshua Middleton's Cover of Lilo & Stitch: 'Ohana)
King Charles looked for heroes to honour – and picked William, Kate and Camilla. Laugh? Cry? You choose
Can we really say Britain has a modernised monarchy when archaic titles are being handed out as if it were 1348, not 2024
Wed 24 Apr 2024 13.11 CESTS
I wonder if I should award myself an honour, something grand-sounding. How about Most Excellent Keeper of the Belfry? It has a nice ring about it, even if I have done nothing to deserve it. That latter consideration is of course no bar to our fossilised royal family who have this week breezily been giving themselves ludicrous sounding honours as if this were 1724, not 2024.
Camilla is now, as of yesterday, the Grand Master of the Order of the British Empire. What empire, you might ask? Rockall was Ronnie Barker’s pithy response, and that was about 40 years ago.
Kate is now a Companion of Honour, an award reserved for those who have excelled in the world of the arts, medicines, or science. Is this perhaps for creative doctoring of photographs?
The Duchess of Gloucester – there’s a household name – has been made a Member of the Order of the Garter, an Order created by the king in 1348 to reward his court favourites (while, incidentally, beyond the palace walls, much of the population was dying from the Black Death).
William has not missed out either (even if Harry has). The Prince of Wales is now Great Master of the Order of the Bath. Well it won’t wash.
The honours in themselves are absurd, and make the mythical Ruritania look like a beacon of modernity. So much for the spin from the palace that the monarchy was going to be modernised under Charles. Perhaps the latest medals are to be made from recycled precious metals?
Even more absurd, if that is possible, is the notion that the royal family can with a straight face award medals to themselves.
Take the Royal Family Order. This is awarded to female members of the royal family simply for being female. And for being a member of the royal family. Not a terribly high bar if you happen to be female and are born or marry into the family.
Then there are the military honours and decorations. Charles himself has accumulated dozens of medals, enough almost to sink one of the battleships under his command as a five star admiral. Oh, and he is also a five star general in the army and a five star air chief marshal in the RAF.
What stupendous military service or acts of bravery have led to this avalanche of medals? Well, he did captain a coastal minesweeper several decades ago for a short period. And he has only crashed a plane once.
The royals in fact have amassed between them over 100 military medals and decorations, and for what? Prince Edward, the Royal Honorary Colonel of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, has never seen active service and even dropped out of his Royal Marines course because he couldn’t hack it.
Prince Andrew, to be fair, did merit his South Atlantic medal for service in the Falklands War. But did anyone stop to question whether it was a good idea, in 2011, when he was mired in accusations relating to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and serious questions were being asked about his self-serving activities as the UK’s trade ambassador, that he should be awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, a highly prestigious award in the archaic hierarchy of these things.
This latest set of nepotistic awards makes the royal family look ridiculous, arrogant and breezily self-serving. It also illustrates graphically how our monarchy is still an imperial one, wedded to a distant past and totally out of touch with modern Britain.
Moreover, giving themselves high honours like loose change when they have done nothing to deserve them serves to cheapen the value of the honours received by those who do deserve them. What is your one medal for outstanding bravery worth when Charles can pin dozens to his chest?
The whole honours system, started in 1348, has been about patronage. This easy corruption of the ideal of merit so graphically and repeatedly shown by the royals in their own favour is consequently mirrored further down the ladder, as prime ministers hand out life peerages and knighthoods to their mates, and to those who have given their party large amounts of money.
A proper honours system which allows society to recognise outstanding achievement is very worthwhile. But we don’t have it. Those who deserve and receive honours are lost in the trivial, the corrupt and the absurd.
I am reminded of an old television advert whose punchline was: “Award yourself the CDM – Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.”
Norman Baker was the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes from 1997 to 2015
If you’re wondering why this was randomly released:
It’s their pathetic attempt to distract you from this:
Pity it’s not working:
How many people living in poverty could have been helped with this £8 million? For a few pictures only to be replaced again when the other "heir" takes over.
Time to abolish the biggest waste on tax payers money since time began.
The last show (of the second last week) in Taipei, Taiwan for Asia Tour 2022-2023 (06 August 2023), before a well deserved day off. Tuesday kicks off the final week of the tour!
Taryn Donna has been covering Bombalurina for the weekend, and is having her fun, here with Saverio Pescucci as Alonzo.
Sophie-Rose Middleton was covering the mystical Tantomile.
Saverio captures a photo of some Kittens, Cian Hughes as Carbucketty and Gabrielle Parker as Jemima, who gets the sidestage photo treatment.
Johnny Randall as Mistoffelees is looking forward to the rest day, and Gavin Eden as Skimbleshanks is looking for a certain missing Munkustrap, played by Matt Krzan.
Matthew Levick as Bill Bailey does some exercising, and takes a break.
It's Cian Hughes' last performance! Give him a cuddlepile!
Cian is leaving the Asia tour!
With Sophie-Rose Middleton as Electra, Gabrielle Parker as Victoria, Bradley Delarosbel as Alonzo, and Taryn Donna Borman as Cassandra. 20 May 2023 (X).
When the Queen made her final appearance, she used it to signal the future she had referenced at the start of the celebrations. While her appearance was laden with symbolism and called back to the past (her walking stick belonged to Prince Philip and the black hat-pin at the center of her emerald-green hat was a sign of mourning), this moment was about what would come next.
In a statement the Queen said she had been, “humbled and deeply touched that so many people have taken to the streets to celebrate my Platinum Jubilee. While I may not have attended every event in person, my heart has been with you all, and I remain committed to serving you to the best of my ability, supported by my family.”
It reaffirmed the vow she made when she was just twenty-one years old to serve her whole life.
Her Majesty will end her reign confident that she has fulfilled her promise - and more. The future had been planned for and the succession of the House of Windsor is secure. There may never be another Platinum Queen, but the modern monarchy she has fashioned over seventy extraordinary years will live on.
The New Royals: Queen Elizabeth's Legacy and the Future of the Crown - Katie Nicholl
The Duchess of Cambridge is seen photographing The Duchess of Cornwall for the special guest edit of Country Life magazine. Taken in the gardens of The Duchess’s private home at Raymill, Wiltshire. -- George Grant