Steampunk Thursday: MCM London Comicon

I attended the MCM London Comicon at the weekend, with fellow Steampunk authors Kit Cox and Jema 'Miss Emilly Ladybird' Hewitt.

Raring to go!

It was the usual mix of giant Pac-Men, Manga and Anime characters (that are totally lost on me), zombie-hunting commandos, and PVC fetishism... Sorry! I mean dressing up as Harley Quinn from the Batman franchise.

That's a whole lot of villainy right there!

I was there selling my Pax Britannia novels, but there was also some interest in YOU ARE THE HERO from some of the older attendees, shall we say. It's also always nice to bump into old friends as well, such as Spindles and his crew, and film-maker Martin Gooch.

Spindles, Miss Spindles, film-maker Martin Gooch, and Mrs Spindles.

I also met a young man who's already had his first book published! Well done, Richie!

YOU ARE THE HERO - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks

You can see a few of my photos from the weekend here, but you'll find more of them here.

Tie-in Tuesday: Batman Villains Re-Imagined

Freestyle Bane

Does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak.



(Courtesy of Geek Syndicate.)

As the Skyfalls, the Dark Knight Rises...

The Dark Knight Rises Ultimate Trilogy Trailer

This. Is. Awesome.



And that's official!

LEGO Batman 2

Batman's very last line gets me every time!

JG at the Kapow! Comics Convention

So here's a thing. Yesterday I met Gareth Edwards.

Gareth Edwards, writer and director of the sublime movie Monsters, 

and Jonathan Green, who writes about monsters.

Anyway, I was at the Kapow! Comic Convention in Islington, London, not working for once but as a punter. I'd not been to this particular con before so I was keen to see how it compared to others I'd attended.

I hadn't even made it through the doors into the convention centre when I bumped into SFX Magazine's Dave Golder, Rob Power and Amy Swapp (official photographer for the day). Which was nice.

Kapow! It was busy.

Inside the place was heaving. Fans had come dressed as all manner of comic book superheroes (including a lady Loki, lady Thor and lady Robin), there were comic artists drawing sketches, previews of forthcoming movies, celeb interviews on the SFX stage, Joe Quesada being interviewed on the stairs, people queueing to have things signed or to attend panels, and even some comedy wrestlers.

I caught up with Ben Smith and Keith Richardson of Rebellion (and chatted about the popularity of the Pax Britannia line and Pye Parr's awesome artwork), bumped into Ian Livingstone and his son, met Kevin Crossley (illustrator of the forthcoming Blood of the Zombies) in person, said "Hi" to other writery types (like Lou Morgan and Will Hill), and met the inestimable Dr Geof, at long last.

Kev Crossley.

Dr Geof.

I sat in on the Arkham City designers panel and also the directors panel, after which I got to meet Gareth Edwards.

Gareth Edwards, director of the forthcoming Godzilla reboot, and Jonathan Green, who was a massive fan of the Godzilla cartoon back in the late 70s.

I probably asked him the strangest question of the day, in hopeful anticipation of some awesome material for a forthcoming project, but unfortunately he couldn't help me (although he kindly said that if he could have he would have)*.

The moment Gareth signed his first ever piece of Godzilla merchandise, captured for posterity on my camera. Honestly. (Gareth pointed this out himself.) Another first for www.JonathanGreenAuthor.com.

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank Colin Goudie, editor of Monsters, who I bumped into earlier in the day. He was very friendly and very generous with his time, and he didn't breach any NDAs. Promise.

I ended the day having a curry with Steve Yeowell and Chris Weston (two of my comic book heroes). Best line of the night had to be when Chris said, "I write my own stuff now. I can't be doing with writers... Oh my god, you're a writer, aren't you?" We then went on to discuss whether the recurrent themes in a writer's work could be boiled down to one word. Our conclusions were:

Garth Ennis - loyalty
Grant Morrison - self-enlightenment (or possibly transformation)
Ian Edginton - hoarding
Jonathan Green - faith

And before chucking out time (having been lost in Bloomsbury for half an hour or so) I was toasting Angus Abranson's good health at his 40th birthday party.

So all in all, a fantastic day.

And by the way, did I mention that I met Gareth Edwards?

Gareth Edwards, a very patient man, with Jonathan Green, a bit of a sad fanboy.

* In case you're wondering, I asked Gareth if he had ever read any Fighting Fantasy gamebooks as a child. He hadn't.

This Guy Moves Like Batman

It's going to be a cold day in Hell when Mr Freeze makes an appearance in Arkham City