I had a great weekend in Manchester for the STC25 con yesterday. It's the first time I've been in the city since the days of Oink! comic in the late 1980s, and it's changed a lot! I was very impressed. (Coincidentally, the FabCafe venue where the con was is just around the corner to where the Oink! office was way back when.)
STC25 was a celebration of Sonic the Comic, commemorating 25 years since the first issue was launched back in 1993. I was a regular writer on the comic for about seven years. Although Egmont's comic folded in 2002, an online continuation by fans has been running since 2003! This week saw the publication of issue 275, which was also published as an impressive print version. Many of the fan strips are of high quality, and I have no doubt that if the original comic had still been running they'd be contributing to it.
More about the online version here:
https://www.facebook.com/stconline/
STC25 was a small but perfectly formed event that attracted around 90 people. With most comic cons, we know there'll only be a fraction of attendees who know our work, but as this event was dedicated to one comic, every attendee knew our stuff, - better than us in most cases! (Well, it has been over 20 years and I've forgotten the details of most scripts I wrote for it.)
My thanks to Michael Corker and his team for putting on the show and inviting me, and to the attendees for being such a great audience! (It's always heartwarming to meet readers who read your work back when they were kids.) It was also good to catch up with fellow comic creators Nigel Kitching, Carl Flint, Nigel Dobbyn and Ferran Rodriguez.
Nigel Kitching and I were interviewed for a Q and A session in the afternoon, and you can see that on YouTube here around 4.50 minutes in...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekqv1GTimgE
Here's a few photos from the great day....
Here's the schedule of the starting times of events for STC25, the celebration of 25 years since the debut of Sonic the Comic. It takes place at the Fab Cafe in Manchester on Sunday 3rd June. If you're interested, there are only a few tickets left, (strictly no admission on the door) so please enquire at the Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/stconline/
It's a busy summer for conventions and the next event I'll be at will be this coming Sunday, 3rd June, at STC25, - a celebration of Sonic the Comic!
Back in the 1990s I was a regular writer on Sonic the Comic, scripting many of the stories featuring Tails, Amy, and Sonic the Hedgehog himself. I also created supporting characters such as Tekno the Canary and Shortfuse the Cybernik, and villains such as Commander Brutus and Metamorphia.
STC25 will be my first Sonic-themed event, and other guests will include Richard Elson, Nigel Kitching, Carl Flint, Nigel Dobbyn and Feran Rodriguez Sanchez. It takes place at the Fab Cafe, Manchester, and tickets are very limited and must be purchased in advance. (No on-the-door ticket sales.) If you're interested in attending, contact the organiser via their Facebook page at this link:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1996449803730588/
