#Having a super weird summer holiday - because unfortunately things have lined up poorly so that the summer

[rowenabean]

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[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #339

Top Ten Things to Remember About TF Nation 2018

It’s been a fortnight, by the time you’re both reading this, since I was at TF Nation. In that time a lot has happened. Well, not a lot a lot. I’ve zipped about the country a little bit. It’s nearly time for school to start. I’ve made about six different promos. So some stuff has happened.

Anyway, I'm finally ready to talk about it. I’ll be posting pictures this weekend too (hopefully they’ll be up by now). It was a strange TFN for me in a number of ways, and I'm going to self-indulgently reflect on that.

Normally I drive from My Home in The North, down the M6 to Brum, and get to the Hilton Metropole around late-afternoonish on the Friday. Dump my stuff in my room, head out for a mooch, check out the Friday night festivities, hopefully catch up with friends in the bar, and try to get a relatively early night to feel rested not just for the first full day of the con but also for the inevitable Long One on Saturday night. But a couple of things were different this year. For one, I was working in London, so I caught the train from Euston instead, and go to the hotel quite early. For another, I had what we in the trade refer to as a Minging Cold and felt Proper Rotten. So apologies to anyone who I gave my lurgy to. Anyway, an upshot of this is that I didn’t feel too much like hanging out in the bar or really being all that sociable. I think if D.C. Douglas hadn't been doing his excellent Erotic Fan-Fiction Show on Friday night I'd probably have just hidden in my room to play Civilization VI on my own. But I really didn’t want to miss Chase from Rescue Bots delivering a bit of late night smut, and I’m glad I stuck it out, because it was fantastic.

Although I always love TFN the holy-cow-wow factor from my first con visit a few years ago waxes and wanes. This year I knew I wasn’t looking for any toys so I didn’t engage quite as strongly with the vendors. And I still felt crap for most of Saturday, popping back to my room a couple of times for a rest, and taking a long walk back into the NEC to try to find some drugs. Fortunately, the addition of concentrated Lemsip to my system gave me sufficient strength to power through the afternoon, and by the evening’s festivities I was feeling much, much better. The Stan Bush concert was incredible, and I spent the rest of my time in the bar, chatting to friends old and new.

Sunday, by contrast, was a hardscrabble day of running around and trying to get everything signed by the guests, as I’d squandered Saturday on feeling poorly and taking it easy. But I spoke to everyone and got all the signatures I wished, even if I was trying To Be Good and not spend several hundred pounds on artwork. But I did, at least, get a beautiful Spiderling picture from Nick Roche, which will eventually hang on my daughter’s wall.

So anyway, it was a really cool convention, but it felt slightly disjointed and I left with a melancholy feeling. I think a lot of that was due to me being away from home, and spending the weekend I'd have ordinarily used to go back and see my family at TFN instead. Plus, as is always the case with these things, I like chatting to people more than mooching and purchasing, and there just isn’t enough time, especially when you’re friends with the creators themselves. But it was great. I love TFN, it’s one of the highlights of my year. I hope I can go again next year; obviously it’s an expense, but more than that it’s time out during the summer holidays and time away from my kids. It's always going to be a tough decision, at least til they’re old enough to want to come with me (I don’t think they’ll be staying up till 2am discussing celebrity sex abusers for quite some time, however).

Here, then, are my favourite bits. Or at least the bits that have hung around my memory most powerfully. Cheers, TFN, and thanks loads to everyone involved in the organising.

Stan Bush: “I would have waited an eternity for this,” said Nick Roche when introducing him, and I think he meant it (although it does sound suspiciously like a line from a film. Lord of the Rings, maybe?). Mr Bush did not disappoint. Quintessential 80s rocking, with lots of implied slow-motion montages. Music to drive motorbikes to as the sun goes down over the naval base. It was amazing.

Saturday Night: Like I said, I spent the rest of Saturday night with friends in the bar. It was great fun, and really affirmed my love of the convention, and of Transformers fans in general. Everyone just seems so chill, and all on the same page, just sharing in their love of the franchise and its associated art. I’ve been very lucky to get on friendly terms with various Transformers creators over the years; I hope by calling them my friends I'm not overstepping any boundaries and coming across like some weird stalker. I really like these guys, and chatting to them is an annual highlight. Wish it could happen more often.

Sunday Afternoon: I normally leave fairly sharpish, to be honest, once the con winds down, but with no real hurry to get home (no excited children waiting for me, alas) I hung about a bit longer, and sampled some of the famous Sunday night vibe. I was chatting with a different set of friends, people I see at the Travelling Man store in Manchester, and it was a really nice come down after the highs of Saturday night. I can see why people like staying Sunday night, and not just out of a desire to make TFN last as long as possible.

The Lost Light Love-In: I love Lost Light, and the final (?) TFN panel dedicated to the book was a delight. Revelations, discarded plots, behind-the-scenes info, some subtle teases; it was everything a fan could desire. But the real takeaway was the display of friendship between writer James Roberts and artist Jack Lawrence. It was so, so cool that these two old buds got to make a comic together based on one of their favourite things in the world, and that we all got to read it. It was the perfect, bittersweet end to a long and lovely ride.

An Annie for Annie: my kids might not have read a lot of comics but at the end of the day, most kids still love Spider-Man. My youngest is called Annie; Spider-Man's daughter is called Annie in Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows; the artist of Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows is Nick Roche; Nick was at TFN. It's not hard to get from one thing to the other, and now I have a really great Spiderling picture. I'm hoping it’s something Annie (my Annie, the IRL Annie) will cherish as she gets older. And don’t worry about my eldest, she’s already got three Nick Transformers headshots.

Filth: I’d heard of, but didn’t really know much about, D.C. Douglas’s “Erotic (Zombie-Related) Fan-Fiction" show. I’m not a big Resident Evil fan so I’m almost entirely unfamiliar with his work as Albert Wesker; as far as I’m concerned he’s Chase from Transformers: Rescue Bots. But he’s funny on Twitter so I thought this would be funny too, and quite frankly who wouldn’t want to go see something about erotic fiction at a Transformers convention? Anyway, it didn’t disappoint; it was hilarious and proper mucky. Kudos to the organisers for putting it on, because it’s not the sort of thing I've seen at TFN before. The icing on the cake was the fact that I got to go up on stage and take part, although I reckon my bits could have been dirtier. So to speak.

Blimey!: there was a period of my life when I was probably just as excited for the Combat Colin strip in Transformers as I was by the ongoing story of those robots in disguise themselves. So to finally meet Colin’s creator, Lew Stringer, and get an original Semi-Automatic Steve sketch, was marvellous. I really wish I'd had more time to chat to him, though; he’s a font of knowledge about British comics and their history, and more than that, he was a massive influence on me, my artwork, and my writing. It’s funny sometimes, when you think back, the things that shaped you creatively. Combat Colin is, I think even Lew would admit, fairly niche in terms of popular culture, but the books I’m writing at the moment owe just as much to the adventures of Colin, Steve, the Giggly Sisters, Megabrain, Madprof, Combat Kate and the rest, as they do to the various superhero writers and great novelists that I've cribbed from disgracefully over the years.

Where it All Began: I started collecting Transformers with issue 11 of the UK comic. The lead story in that issue – “Man of Iron” – was illustrated by Mike Collins. Mike was at the convention, and he signed my VERY FIRST ISSUE OF TRANSFORMERS EVER. I mean, how cool is that? Like with Lew, though, I didn’t have much chance to speak to him unfortunately, and I never managed to get an original sketch either. Hopefully he’ll be back!

Those Wonderful Toys: I didn’t really buy anything this year. Most years I either get myself something or at least pick up a couple of small things for the girls. But I knew I was spending more on artwork than usual, plus in general I just wanted to be more frugal, so I didn’t want to go flinging money on “Plastic Crack”. The only thing I really, really wanted was a Power of the Primes Rodimus Prime, which comes with a little Hot Rod that you can combine with his “trailer”, Powermaster Optimus Prime style, to turn into Rodimus. Rodimus, of course, is my favourite character, and this was a gimmick I came up with myself when I was a little kid, so of course I was super excited at the prospect. I think I saw one, briefly, on Saturday morning, but that was it: one. And it was gone so quickly I began to doubt myself. Anyway, with my One True Love not being present, buying toys was kind of an afterthought, but all the same: I love looking at them. Especially the third-party/custom jobs they have in the Forge. The huge Optimus was terrific, but I especially loved the life-size (well, human-sized, I guess) Optimus rifle. They should sell that thing at Toys R Us! Oh...

Geoffrey and Helpers: speaking of TRU (RIP), cosplay. Cosplay is Gold at TFN. This year was no exception. Utterly fantastic Vortex, Functionist Council, humanised Rodimus and Magnus, and loads more besides... it was great, really great. The sheer scale of the undertaking, the finesse, the performances: hats off to you, one and all. But the icing on the cake, for me at least, was the guy who dressed up as Geoffrey from the Toys R Us adverts, except wearing an Infinity Gauntlet. I mean, come on. That’s just incredible.

So there you have it: TF Nation 2018. It was a very emotional experience for me this year. Really, really cool. I do love it. I hope I can go to one of the meet-ups, especially if they have one in the north. And I hope I get to see people in between now and next year, too. Having said that, for a variety of reasons I’m thinking I might give next year a miss, or maybe just go for one day or something.

Unless they get Judd Nelson as a guest. Or anyone else from Rescue Bots. Or Peter Cullen. Or if they have a Weird Al Yankovic concert. Or if they do a huge “End of IDW (version 1.0)” retrospective. Or if they have all the new creators. Or...

Jesus, it never ends.