Review: MCM Memorabila/Comic Con Birmingham

I first went to Memorabilia about 15 years ago and continued to go to pretty much every show after that for a decade. Then I stopped. Why? Well, for the first few years things got better every time, the show increased in size, with more stalls and more guests whom I was interested in meeting. Then the reverse started to happen. There were fewer stalls and it really didn't seem worth the cost of entry. So I stopped. This was about 3 years ago.

During those last couple of years of me attending a change was happening to Memorabilia. As the stalls decreased, the amount of random other stuff increased. The Robot Wars arena was there every time, a wrestling ring, Back to the Future Delorean, all of them taking up big chunks of floor space. The name 'Comic Con' was being tagged on. This Comic Con was advertised as a separate event, with its own guests, but the ticket got you into both events, which made it all really rather confusing.

I returned on Saturday to find that the change had completed. Memorabilia is no longer Memorabilia. The name is still there, in small writing, but I can see this being gone completely by next year. It's now a definite comic con. And not a 'comics' convention either - the comics presence is really rather small - but a comic con in the vein of San Diego, i.e. a pop culture event.

1 page comic #5

Another in a series I promised would end on the third. This was a complete nightmare to colour, for no reason other than I was being useless and kept making silly mistakes. I'm still not happy with it, but I eventually just admitted defeat and gave up.

Book Review: Hear The Roar! The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Thundercats

ThunderCats was one of the biggies in the 80s. I'd definitely say the top 3 franchises that launched  in the 80s (thus I can discount Star Wars as 'top 3' sounds a lot better than 'top 4') were Masters of the Universe, Transformers & ThunderCats.

This book, written by David Crichton, covers every single aspect of the ThunderCats creation, cartoon and toyline, in great detail. This book covers everything: the initial ideas for the series, its development, profiles of all the writers, all the voice artists, commentaries on all the episodes, the toyline and much, much more.

Review: Batman Classic TV Series Batmobile

To many the Adam West version of Batman is the definitive Bat-incarnation. It's campy and silly, but deliberately so. This was a TV show that was supposed to be fun and there's no denying that this it is. After years and years of waiting, the DVD/video rights have finally been sorted out (due this November!) and leading up to it there's been a mass of new merchandise.

I've talked about the figures before, but it's taken this long to get hold of the Batmobile that goes along with them. The main reason was off-putting online reviews, saying it was way over-priced, of low quality and generally a big disappointment. Since I was going to have to import this thing from America, this would have pushed the price up even further and it wasn't something I was prepared to risk.

Until now.

The price has dropped somewhat over time and the cost of importing reached a level that I was happy with. And you know what? I'm more than happy with it.

Update: The Batmobile is now available in the UK exclusively from Toys R Us for £50.