Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Bristol 2003 - Part Three: Funtime With Miranda And The Girlies

By Regie Rigby

As I have already said, my experience of Bristol this year was very much about the people I met there. There isn’t space here to tell you about everyone – I got up to ten thousand words on this instalment at one point and the only way to bring it down to something even remotely manageable is to leave a lot of folk out. For that reason, I’m going to concentrate largely (although not exclusively) on people who are associated with comics I picked up over the weekend. This is after all a column about comics, and so this seems to me to be a reasonable thing to do.

So, I’ll start with the very first person I spoke to on Saturday morning. The doors had just opened and I was mooching my way around the venue vaguely intending to try to find the SBC stand. My eye was caught by a bespectacled woman sitting behind a small press laden table and I found myself stopping to take a look at the vast array of comics.

Now this is odd, because I never do that. Normally at these shindigs I prowl around for a bit working out which stands are where before I get around to stopping at any of them. Stranger still for an antisocial old Goth like me, I was soon engaged in an actual conversation. The woman’s name was Debs, and she was representing something called Funtime Comics. This was my cue to start racking my addled brains to try and remember where I’d heard of Funtime before.

It didn’t click, not even when Debs told me she had recently arrived from New Zealand. I confess I very nearly exclaimed “Hey, you might know the guy who runs the website I write for – he’s from New Zealand too!” but I restrained myself. After all, I reasoned, NZ might be a small country with more sheep than people, but even so it’s ridiculous to imagine that everybody knows everybody else.

Well, it turns out that it’s not so ridiculous after all.

Eventually Debs asked me what my interest was in comics and I told her about SBC. To which she exclaimed “Oh, my friend Jason runs that…”

Comics is, as they say, an incredibly small world.

This of course led me to the answer I’d been racking my brains to find. I knew Funtime Comics because there was some stuff about them up here at SBC a while back. http://funtime.comics.org.nz/index.html>Funtime Comics is a fantastic project, a New Zealand based comics cooperative which simply gets people together to make comics. I love this idea, and the verve and enthusiasm on display at the Funtime Comics table. The comics on offer were rough and ready, and unashamedly home made in some cases (indeed, in some cases that was the entire point) but - all mind you were worth reading.

Think about that. The likes of DC and Marvel might well have higher production values and glossy paper and all of that malarkey, but they certainly can’t say that everything they publish is worth picking up, now can they?

So, if you’re reading this Debs, a big “HELLO!” to you. It’s also worth pointing out at this juncture that Debs’ own review of the weekend can be read over in the Small Press section, and I would respectfully steer you all in that direction. I’d also point you at Teacake Comics, Debs’ own self publishing venture. All the above comments apply here too.

As it happens, just a couple of tables down I came across a comic I can’t believe I wasn’t already reading - Comeuppance Comics’ rather lovely Miranda. I managed to pick up issues one and two on Saturday morning, and loved it so much I signed up for a subscription right there. This is a self published venture, but the production values are insanely high – higher in fact than they are on many of the books from the big four publishers.

We’re talking glossy paper, colour covers, the full works. These books look absolutely stunning, and I’d almost o so far as to say they’d be worth buying for the art alone – and you know my views on that. But Miranda is more than just a pretty face and the story is well worth reading too.

Basically if you like 2000AD (and who wouldn’t?), you’ll love this. In issue one alone we have killer robots, giant space ships, time travel and the fall of the Berlin wall. Chuck in a touch of political intrugue, some gorgeous monochrome art by Allan Bednar and Robert Blancas (not to mention a full colour centre spread in the style of late eighties 2000AD, which I particularly enjoyed) and a strong willed well written heroine (the eponymous Miranda) and you have one of the finest action/SciFi comics I’ve read in ages.

The writing is sharp, witty and well paced – a hell of a lot happens in the first two issues but almost non of it requires long explanations or pages of exposition. Miranda’s scripter Lance Parkin keeps a tight rein on the discourse which makes the whole thing a pleasure to read. Huge, huge fun. You have to read this book – go on, bugger off to Comeuppance Comics’ website and order a subscription. Issue three should be out any day now and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

At the same stand, I also got hold of issue three of The Girly Comic, which you will remember was one of the gems I discovered at Bristol last year. This year for their third edition, they even made it a flip book! This is particularly cool because it allows readers who have qualms about picking up something called “The Girly Comic” (and I’ve never been totally sure about the name myself) to flip the thing over and read something called Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

Actually, now I come to type that…

What is really cool about this book is the fact that the quality is not merely consistent, it just keeps getting better! Stories are short, but perfectly formed and although they provide enough variety to ensure that there’s something for everyone, they hang together beautifully. The Girly Comic is a fabulous blend of great art and fine storytelling wrapped into a neat little A5 package. In my report on last year’s Bristol I told you about issue one of this fine publication and told you that you had to buy it.

I made a few polite enquiries about their print run and stuff when I saw them this year, and then I had a quick look at this column’s hit rate. It would appear that a few of you ignored my recommendation. What can I say? I’m deeply wounded, but there is still time for you to correct your oversight, so don’t worry. Trot over to the Factor Fiction website and they’ll be pleased to let you order copies of all three issues.

Don’t make me remind you again!

So, you have your homework boys and girls. Go and check out the Funtime, Miranda and The Girly Comic websites. Do it right now, because there’s more I want to tell you about and I don’t want to overload you all.

I’m still trying to edit this column down to a manageable length, so I’ll leave you to digest this little lot and I’ll be back with yet another Thursday update same time tomorrow, when I’ll have news of demonic disturbances in Victorian London, some seriously pulp fiction, the odd zombie, a clown, a nun and a whole host of cats – and that’s just for starters!