Monday, 4 June 2018

Thanks for STC25!


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....
 

 



 
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5 comments:

  1. James4 June 2018 at 23:39

    All I hear when you talk is "plob plob plob plob". You have a horrendously dull accent Lew. Where is it from, and remind me never to go there!!!!

    Other than that, it appears it was a good convention?

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  2. Chris5 June 2018 at 09:15

    Lew, as a long time reader of yours (both in comic and blog form) and a long time STC fan living in Manchester I was very excited to see this event right on my doorstep. Then I noticed the date, it was the last day of my holiday in Italy! D'oh!

    Thanks for posting this and linking to the highlights vid, I'll watch that later. Glad you enjoyed the day!

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  3. Lew Stringer5 June 2018 at 10:02

    Thanks, Chris. I'll be up Manchester way again this Saturday for the Wythenshawe Comic Con if you can make it. Details to follow in my next post this afternoon.

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  4. Unknown5 June 2018 at 19:35

    It was a great day - frantic and fantastic! A really good, enthusiastic atmosphere. Really good to catch up with some of the old STC team and the new talent and fans. I was made to feel most welcome. Liked the venue too!

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  5. Lew Stringer6 June 2018 at 00:32

    Yes, I'd heard a lot of praise for FabCafe but had never visited one before. It was a bit dark for drawing, but we managed ok. A good day I'll always remember, thanks to a great bunch of fans.

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