Sisters, doing it for themselves #2: the comics, and more!

Great piss-up, but, well, y’know?

Cover art:
Gill Hatcher

So, the crew at Team Girl Comic managed to stage a launch event for their 5th issue which exceeded all expectations, their own above all. But you can’t judge a comics collective by its ability to organise a night out in the pub, especially here in Glasgow, where successive generations of teenagers have known that a simple bottle of Buckie is the secret to a good night on the bevvy. No, ultimately TGC must stand or fall by the quality of their comics. With 5 issues containing 94 strips and cartoons by 21 contributors across a total of 160 pages there’s more than enough of TGC available definitively to make that judgement.

Celebrations and felicitations!

Edinburgh Games Hub: so hot it’s cool- it’s Official!

My enthusiastic response to my first visit to the Edinburgh Games Hub means that readers should be unsurprised to hear that I kept my promise and turned out for the EGH’s official Grand Opening on August 31st. Gav joined me on the bus ride to Edinburgh for the day and we arrived around lunchtime to find the cafe already thronged and buzzing. Needing to relax a bit after our journey, we promptly plonked ourself down at the nearest convenient table- which just happened to be the one upon which Zia (Shaz, the proprietor’s mum, remember?) had laid out all the special munchies she’d prepared for the day. Soon enough we got to talking with the guy already sitting there, who was there with his young son.

Derek & Gav in the Edinburgh Games Hub cafe

Sisters, doing it for themselves #1: "Drink! Girls!"

“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date”

Too much fun?
Nah, but phew!

Writing, several weeks ago, about the crazy busy time I’d been having, I mentioned another adventure in the Glasgow indie comics scene. It’s a measure of just how crazy busy I’ve been (and that’s both crazy busy and just a bit plain crazy too) that it’s taken me this long to get round to writing up an exciting event which took place way back on July 26th. It’s also a bit embarrassing, but I can live with that; I’ve already had to live down worse thanks to RD/KA! after all!

Style & attitude!

Once again demonstrating the way in which the tendrils of social networking are working their way into our lives (a demonstration which will later prove to be strangely apt…), today’s story started with yet another random item popping up in my newsfeed via a fB friend. This is already ubiquitous enough to have become almost boring- or would so become if the results haven’t so far proved so exciting. It’s certainly difficult, as a writer, to vary your hooks for stories when so many seem to be starting with the fB newsfeed! Anyway, the event in question was COMICS NIGHT! with Team Girl Comic, in Glasgow’s well known centre of alternative grassroots culture (and oldest pub), the Scotia Bar. Comics? Girls? Drink? I needed no second bidding.

'Death Ray Manta': indie, still psychedelic after all these years

“Like, cosmic, man!”

The origin of Death Ray Manta

The many-splendoured universe that is digitial gaming is terra incognita to me I must confess. I mean, I’ve played video games hundreds and hundreds of times: across different platforms- arcade games, Spectrum games, PC games, console games, social network games; in genres too numerous to mention, but which barely amount to a representative sample of what digital gaming is and has been. All those games, and all I know about the single most important new gaming medium of our age is the depth of my woeful ignorance.