Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

A Twelve Hour Shift in Birmingham

By Regie Rigby

Well alright, so I’m late again, but not nearly as late as I have been recently so the situation I most definitely improving!

Joy continues to be unconfined here at FoolCentral, and the stupid grin that found it’s way onto my normally taciturn visage as the ink began to dry on the Sunset contract remains in place. But, however much that little incident may have dominated my day last Saturday, there was a good deal more to the Birmingham international Comics Show that just our little comics deal. Indeed I’d go as far as to say that there might be a couple of people there who didn’t ever hear about it – although anyone who saw me would have wondered what I was grinning about…

I said last time that B.I.C.S. (as it’s known to its friends) was a hell of a show, and I wasn’t exaggerating. Sadly, due to work commitments and general lack of time I couldn’t go for the whole weekend – I went over on Saturday morning and had to come home on Saturday evening. Mind you, that did mean I was home in time to see England beat France in the rugby, which took the edge off the sadness a little.

Anyway. I got to the venue a little early on Saturday morning, because I’d totally overestimated the about of time it would take to get down the motorway, and I’d allowed myself more time than I needed to navigate my way around Birmingham. Everyone told me that the great city of Brum was a nightmare to drive through, but I actually made it to Millennium Point without incident.

Think Tank, a sort of science museum/education centre is a fabulous venue. The room occupied by the main section of the show wasn’t as big as Bristol’s engine shed, but it was big enough, well laid out and not at all claustrophobic, despite the lack of any apparent source of natural light.

Outside of the main hall, but rather crucially under the same roof, was a suite of talks rooms where the talks and panels were housed. Getting these all in the same building as the main hall has been something that has long been a dream of Comics event organisers, although it hasn’t been managed since the last days of UKCAC, and I don’t think anybody’s even got near it since the old Watershed days of Bristol – and even then there were a fair few events in the Hotels as well.

The other thing that really struck me was the excellence of the venue staff. By the time the doors opened on Saturday morning the queue was snaked all over the top floor. Just as I was beginning to think that there might be some serious crowd organising problems, a bunch of fabulously efficient and brilliantly polite uniformed security staff arrived and got everyone marshalled into some kind of order and accelerated the flow of people through the entrance.

Once in, things just kept getting better.

Unlike Bristol, where tickets and weekend passes have tended to be bits of coloured paper that are easily (and indeed frequently) lost by people as careless as me. Here we had rock festival style wristbands which were so much less hassle. And then there were the goodie bags.

Oh my goodness. The Goodie bags.

They were huge!

There were books, graphic novels, “regular” comics, badges, temp tattoos, game DVDs, a set of letraset pens and a green lantern power ring. I shudder to think what the retail price of that lot would’ve been. Rather a lot, I should think. All gratefully received I should say – there was some genuinely good stuff there, stuff I might well have bought if it hadn’t been free.

Once inside I was struck by how busy everything was. The hall was, as previously mentioned, well laid out and the aisles were reasonably wide, but even so there was a wee bit of squeezing required to get around. It was nice to see though – particularly since the gathered throng wasn’t exclusively made up of the “usual suspects”. In amongst the geeks like me were a good number of kids – it seemed to me that there were many more than I remember from previous Bristol events. This is a good thing, and evidence that the event got its marketing pretty much right.

Stationed right by the door it was good to see that the Blink Twice boys have lost none of their infectious enthusiasm, and even better to hear the rather ambitious plans they have for the future. I was, I confess, somewhat less pleased to learn that these plans have led to the mothballing of their long awaited project Moon!, which I’ve been hailing as the next big thing for what seems like years.

Still, the new projects (about which more in the future) do seem exciting, and so I guess I’ll forgive them so long as Moon! is merely postponed rather than cancelled. It was also good to see the Eagle Award winning writier Andrew “Hero Killers” Winter, all though in common with many of the self publishing stalwarts he had no new comics to sell this time. (In many cases mind you this was not for the want of trying – several people had newly printed tomes stuck in the mess caused by the postal strike and the frustration and stress behind some of the tables was genuinely palpable.)

Someone who did have a new comic to promote was the great Sean Azzopardi, whose Twelve Hour Shift comics have been a reality checking delight for some time. I’d followed the production of Downer, the latest in the series on Sean’s Livejournal, so I’d known it was finished, but in the light of the postal chaos I was pleased to see that the printed issues had made it to the event.

The “hero” of these comics, Steve Jones is a real “everyman”. A struggling artist who works shifts as a concierge in a block of flats to support himself and his art, I’m not sure how much he reflects the life of his creator, but he’s a pleasingly real character, just bumbling through trying to find time to have a life while fending off unwanted romantic entanglements and getting stuck with extra shifts covering for incapacitated colleagues.

This is no comedy, but there is perhaps a touch of Tony Hancock or Basil Fawlty in Jones’ character. He’s stuck in a rut he doesn’t like but can’t get out of and all of the shit seems to land on him. But unlike Fawlty he doesn’t rant and rave, he just moans a bit and gets on with things. I can relate to that.

Twelve Hour Shift is a story with real soul. There’s nothing flash or gaudy here, but there is I think something rather profound in the narrative thread, which when coupled with Azzopardi’s unfussy pen and ink lines makes this little book a classic in the making. If you like a bit of social realism and stories that mirror a workd you’re familiar with, you should check it out, you really should. Azzopardi is a terrifically understated writer with a gift for dialogue and a real talent for cutting to the chase.

At his current rate of production I reckon the next issue should be ready in the spring. I can’t wait!

Next time, more reviews from Brum, and of course a bit of news on the Sunset comic. (What? You thought I’d forgotten?) See you then!