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All Barr None – Collectormania

Published Mon, 26 Aug 2013 09:00:21 -0500

Last updated Wed, 28 Aug 2013 07:57:11 -0500

Gary Gray, our Senior Scottish Correspondent writes;

Showmasters who are responsible for the ginormous London Film & Comic Con also run an event in Glasgow called Collectormania that takes place on an ice rink (thankfully ice gets covered) at the Braehead shopping centre near Glasgow each year in August. This year for the first time they have managed to have a small comics strand running at it. Ostensibly Showmasters events are about TV and film stars, and this year they managed to secure Robert 'Freddie' Englund and Lance Henriksen who there were big queues for.

And to launch this they managed to secure a couple of US guests to come over, namely James O'Barr and Arthur Suydam. O'Barr revealing that he won't be drawing Brandon Lee's likeness as The Crow ever again, what with the new film coming that is a direct adaptation of his graphic novel. He also revealed that he will be involved in the entire process of the new movie and will be on set the entire time. For those waiting for that adaptation, signs are looking encouraging.

I attended Collectormania on the Sunday morning due to commitments at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and its fair to say there some teething problems on the Saturday. The organisers had chosen to place the comics section UNDER the pitched seating of the stadium, where the ginormous queues for the signings for the celebrities normally run…and they had also forgotten to put any signing up to direct anyone that the comics section was there, away from the main auditorium. Thankfully problems were resolved on the Sunday with much improved queueing and signage with better footfall.

It was a very small comics section to be honest, with O'Barr and Suydam's massive stands taking up most of the space. O'Barr, Suydam and their agent/editor Renee Witterstatter in good form,and I genuinely can't repeat any of their hilarious ribald anecdotes!

Other guests in attendance were comics legend Cam Kennedy who was his usual super hilarious self packed with dry wit. He was displaying some of his wonderful Dark Empire II artwork that is still just as mindblowing nearly twenty years later. Yishan Li who had popped over from Edinburgh, and was doing beautiful manga inspired sketches for fans. Gary Erskine who by the power of telepathy was also in Edinburgh (it was his partner in reality who was in Edinburgh) working hard promoting Rollergrrls.

A very small number of small press was also in attendance (due to size of venue constraints), some of them managed to sneak into the main auditorium. James Devlin promoting his SICBA award winning Dark Ascension. Black Hearted Press who had to split themselves in half with the other part of the team over at the mini comics fair in Edinburgh, and selling out of their latest book Royal Ascension very quickly! Jim Alexander promoting his latest book Amazing & Fantastic Tales 2, Ed Murphy of Roughtcut comics who had his new Freedom Collective book o display. And a couple of new discoveries (for me) Total Fear by Curt Sibling and Mimi & Auu by Chaos Alexander. And finally there was one small presser who came up all the way from London for the event, and apologires but I forgot to get her name, but big props to her for spending 8 hours on the bus!

Within the main hall it was absolutely jam packed, with a one in one out policy making it extremely hard to spot anything, but luckily I noticed the Electric Man guys promoting their excellent movie. But as to be expected it was the Film and TV people getting all the interest with massive q's everywhere for them. Overall a good start to the comics strand, hopefully Showmasters will move Collectormania to a bigger venue next year where they will have the room to expand the comics section.