Diary of an up and coming sociopath

It’s been an typically hectic couple of weeks (though thinking about it I am including, say, about 4 solid day’s worth of playing Pokemon in that so maybe it’s not quite as hectic as I’m making out) but I’ve been excessively busy by my standards. It all dates back a month when Seb, Cappsy, Josh and I went to Bristol. For the comic convention, that is, not just because we like Bristol, because I can assure you, we don’t. Or I don’t. Or rather, I don’t like the parts I’ve seen, but it could be alright, I suppose. Look, whether or not I like Bristol is far, far beyond the point, and I’d appreciate it if we could move on. The point is: Comics. Isn’t it always?

The drive to Bristol was remarkably pleasant. Allowing for 2 hours there and back, Josh and I had constructed a 4-hour playlist we believed would cover us nicely for the entire journey. You know what they say about the best laid plans, of course, and this wasn’t even a particularly well-laid plan. Not bad, but certainly not my best laid plan ever. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Pleasant it was, despite rapidly varying weather conditions, and even though the entrance to the car park in Bristol was unhelpfully blocked by an ambulance, prompting a 15-minute confused wander between Bristol centre and Temple Meads, we managed to get into the convention around midday without too much horror.

Inside the convention, I gave the place a pretty thorough going over. I got myself the issue of Ultimate Team Up I’ve been looking for for fucking years - the Clugston-Major issue where Spidey and the X-Men go to the mall, as well as a Captain Marvel “What If?” issue (What if Captain Marvel had lived? Answer, as with all What Ifs, is that there would have been lots of oddly pointless deaths and probably the Universe blowing up.) Josh and I also got Jeff Brown to sign some of our other books. In the evening, we went to the Eagle Awards dinner and saw the presentations. Now, I’m going to disseminate some information about the Awards that no-one told us, so hopefully anyone searching for terms like EAGLE AWARDS 2007 might end up here. The dinner is what you pay for. You are put on a table with a bunch of other people, though obviously not with Pros. The awards are FREE to enter. You DO NOT need a paid-for dinner ticket to get in. Had we known this, we probably would’ve just stayed in the local pubs/hotel bar which is where all the interesting action happens, unless you want to see the DC creators eating lunch on their big centre table. Which trust me, isn’t that interesting. Next year I suspect if we go, we’ll avoid the dinner. The awards were also a fucking powerpoint meets comic-sans mess, though Norman Lovett’s impressive genius manage to save it from being a total shambles. Might be nice if someone actually turned up to collect their own award once in a while too, especially since even Warren Ellis, who christ help up, lives in the UK couldn’t even make it down even though he might not have known he’d get, like SIX awards.

Phonogram didn’t win an Eagle, but they did win some time being interviewed by us for NTS. Between Josh’s pilfering of Uni equipment, my questions/transcription and Seb’s setting up of the whole thing, I’m remarkably proud of the resultant article, which I present here: Phonogram Interview

Following the awards, we went into the Bar and found McKelvie, who phoned Gillen to find him sitting outside on a bench. We started the interview around midnight, had a good hour of chatting, 45 minutes of which went into the interview. Given that they’re the creators of my favourite non-Brian Wood comic of the last 5 years, this was an intensely wonderful experience for me, and the slight surreality of the setting made it all the more enjoyable. Pre-recording comments: “Oh god, our voices aren’t going to go on the Internet are they?”

I was on the floor holding the mic, facing Seb, Gillen and McKelvie, and at one point during the proceedings, a spider the size of Wales started climbing the wall between Seb and Gillen. Cappsy and Josh also both spotted it and we exchanged some panicked looks, because truly it would’ve freaked the shit out of everyone involved had it leapt onto their faces and started to devour them, which I’m certain it would’ve done, but luckily the others didn’t spot it and we were spared a recording of arachnophobic screams. Post-recording they gave us a story about skanking in a club in San Francisco, and had Seb been quicker with the camera we could’ve had a really stupid picture of them to go with it. After this we packed up and began the drive back to London.

Somewhere down the A4 as we approached Slaughterford, I was coming to terms with the fact that we were going to take a bit longer on the way back than there. The M4 had been closed because SOMEone couldn’t wait before dying somehow, so we spent like and extra hour in the backroads of christ knows where between Bath and Swindon. A short pit-stop in the only services in the country where you can’t possibly buy a cup of tea, and we were back on our way, though by this point it was well past 2am. The playlist finally conked out on the M4 just as we re-entered outer inner-London, some time around 3am. Not that anyone else noticed, because they’d all gone to sleep. Despite our best efforts, I did have to spend some time driving in silence, but we made it home and, let’s face it, went to bed about the same time I usually do on a Saturday anyway.

Christ, I do go on, don’t I? I’ll cover the following couple of weeks tomorrow.