Date:         Wed, 22 Sep 1993 23:34:24 CDT
From: Bill Haeys <[IANR 012] at [UNLVM.UNL.EDU]>
Subject:      Volume 3 Issue 38 Part 3

September 22, 1993           The Comics List Weekly      Vol. 3 No. 38
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Date: Tue, 21 Sep 93 17:07:25 WET DST
From: JH White <[c s g 194] at [cch.coventry.ac.uk]>
Subject: Convention Report: UKCAC '93

        Well, it was certainly an interesting weekend. Some of the following
stuff is only really relevant to 2000AD readers/UK residents, but I'm
including it all anyway. Here goes:

   Grant Morrison seemed to have great fun on the sunday, throwing the
"2000 AD Creators Love-in", with help from Garth Ennis, Rian Hughes,
Steve Yeowell and loads of other 2000AD-type people. The audience was
invited up onto the stage, the lights were dimmed, the music was turned up
and large quantites of free roses, bananas, M&M's and champagne were
provided for everyone. When the champagne finally ran out, Grant threw
large quantities of money at one of the audience and sent him out to
get more... amazingly, he actually came back.

   Among the topics discussed were: why hasn't ZENITH Phase 4 been collected
yet? (Morrison has no idea- it's an editorial thing); are 2000AD really
planning to bring back HALO JONES? (yes, but nobody at the love-in would
actually admit to working on it...); Who's writing JUDGE DREDD these days?
(It's split between Garth Ennis/John Smith/Mark Millar/Grant Morrison);
howzabout a BIG DAVE/JUDGE DREDD crossover? ("Judgement on Manchester");
where's Morrison's proposed FLEX MENTALLO series gone (DC say it's "too
weird") what's Garth Ennis doing next on HELLBLAZER (he's leaving it); and
the ever popular "somebody pass me the booze...". The whole thing finished
with a very loud Grant Morrison rendition of "New York, New York", with
Grant's microphone thrown at the ceiling and everyone trying to get out
of the way when it came down again. Oh, and Jill Thompson was there-
probably because of the free champagne :-).

   For the most part, the other panels were far less interesting- here's
the highlights: Matt Wagner's no longer being harassed by fans asking
"where's MAGE II?", they now want to know where THE AERIALIST is (it's
in comics limbo, and liable to stay there until AFTER Mage II...); Alan
Grant said (on the DC panel) that the DC DREDD series (JUDGE DREDD: LEGENDS
OF THE LAW) was "getting there, slowly but surely...". The Fleetway/Dredd
panel, when asked about the same subject, gave the same answer- but
emphasized the "slowly" part. It doesn't sound promising. Carlos Ezquerra,
co-creator of JUDGE DREDD and STRONTIUM DOG (who sounds an awful lot like
Manuel from FAWLTY TOWERS... 1/2 :-) said that he eventually left Strontium
Dog because he "wouldn't kill off the character who'd paid for his second
mortgage...". Fleetway brought in Colin MacNeill and Simon Harrison and
killed the character anyway. He also said that he likes scripts with a
minimum of detail- because his english isn't very good and if there are
long panel-descriptions then he's likely to misread things. This from a man
who's lived in England for nine years and done art for english-language
scripts almost every week from 1972 onwards...

        I'm not going to dwell upon Hassan's notorious quiz ("What was the
Red Bee's trained bee called?" "Who's the odd one out- Green Arrow, Green
Lantern or Black Canary?") or the costume parade (with Solar, Man of the
iffy- well, it was something like that... :-)

                -Morph