Oz Comic Con Report

So on Sunday 20 September 2015, I attended the second ever Brisbane  Oz Comic Con.

It was a full day, I left home at 7am and didn't get back until after 8pm.

I got down and lined up before the doors opened.  Once the doors opened we flowed in fairly quickly.  Some other cons I've attended that hasn't happened.

Oz Comic Con allows you to buy autograph tokens which is a huge time saver and I was able to slip straight into the Richard Dean Anderson autograph line.  I was glad that I did as that line became massive fairly quick.  I was lined up behind a really nice family and we had a bit of a chat as Mum and Dad tag teamed in and out of the line.  They had a cast photo of Stargate SG1 signed by all the cast members except one Richard Dean Anderson. 

There I was the almost lone MacGyver guy in a sea of Stargate fans. I had taken my copy of the only MacGyver tie in from the 1980's an original novel MacGyver On Ice.  As best I can tell it's set before the TV series.  (The only other Tie In I've found is the recent five issue comic book miniseries.)

 

Richard Dean Anderson had never seen it before. So I was stoked.  I also mentioned how much I also enjoyed his one season follow up Legend.  It was a steampunk western about a dime novel writer Ernest Pratt essentially living the life of his hero Nicodemus Legend. "So you were the one." He quipped. I shook his hand. 

After that I saw that Mark Sheppard's line had no one in it.  Like a flash I was over there.  Mark's filmography reads like a list of cool genre shows from the last two decades.  Supernatural, The X Files, Charmed, Leverage, the list goes on and on. I grabbed my DVD copy of Soldier of Fortune Inc.  The show was basically an updated version of The A Team.  Mercenaries hired by the government.  In the second season, the name changed to Special Ops Force, Sheppard and a couple of other actors were out replaced by Dennis Rodman.  I quite enjoyed the second season myself but I never saw the first season except for the DVD I'd found with two episodes.  As far I could find that was the only release for the series.

Mark Sheppard was really nice, he made a comment about being nearly hidden on the cover (that's him over on the far left) as he signed it. I commented that I loved his work and shook his hand. 

The first panel of the day I was planning on seeing was at 11 and it was nearly 10 so I decided to have a bit of a wander.  I hit the Dark Oz booth and grabbed a copy of Retro Sci Fi Tales.  This a great anthology title of fun old school Sci fi stories.  If you see a copy I recommend grabbing it. (The companion horror title Decay is pretty good too.)

I then got some issues of Birds of Prey signed by Nicola Scott and Greg Rucka signed my copy of Huntress: Cry for Blood.  I then saw Dr Paul Mason and grabbed a sweet print of the new Supergirl for Abbey.

After that I saw Jim Beaver and got him to sign Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting.  He called me an Idjit. (Why? Because I asked him to.)

Then I was off to the first panel From Comic to Screen to Comic. Jim Beaver took a little longer than planned so I missed the start but it was interesting to hear the stories of adapting from one medium to another.  Everything I heard from Wolf, Tom and James makes me so keen to see The Deep animated series.  And the Fury Road tie in comics sound very interesting.

After that it was time for lunch and some more shopping before heading back to stage 3 for more panels.  I took the opportunity to grab a couple of Gesalt books Unmasked and Wasteland Panda.  I briefly spoke with Wolf mentioned how much I enjoyed the documentary Comic Book Heroes and got him to sign my copy of Wasteland Panda.

Dean Rankine, Dr Paul Mason, Kylie Chan, Queenie Chan and Doug Holgate talked about the realities of publishing.  Very few people in Australia (and around the world) make enough from their art be it writing or drawing or other.  The need to have a second career.  Dean made a point that he would like to be JK Rowling and it's true we look to the outliers, the ones who got the million dollar advances.  I know I'm probably never going to make a lot of money from writing but I have stories I want to tell which is the same for everyone else on the panel.  It was sobering and Paul, I think, jokingly referred to it as the kill your dreams panel.

After that I quickly popped down to Dean Rankine's booth and grabbed The Itty Bitty Bunnies save Christmas.  This book is just the right level of messed up.

The rest of the day was filled with panels.

Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott's Black Magick panel was interesting and the presentation got me really excited to read this new comic.  Greg Rucka described it as "Witch Noir" which sounds intriguing and Nicola Scott's grey washed style makes this a must get for me.

Next was the Scrubs panel with Sam Lloyd and Rob Maschio.  While the pair did answer the questions asked there was a lot of joking around and by the end of the panel it was standing room only. 

That ended my time on stage three.  I must say that Amanda Bacchi and her volunteers did an amazing keeping things moving and making the panels enjoyable and interesting.

Next I was up to stage one to see Richard Dean Anderson.  Man he is funny and irreverent.  I think Jack O'Neil is probably closer to the real Richard Dean Anderson that Angus MacGyver.  There were alot of questions asking him to pick his favourite thing - favourite line, favourite cast mate, favourite show etc.  But there were some funny stories like the time his brother tried the egg to fix a radiator trick that MacGyver did in one episode.  It didn't work for the Anderson brothers but they did enjoy the scrambled eggs. Or the last time he came to Australia there was a water leak on the plane and it had to turn around.  The next morning on the new plane, the pilot saw RDA and said had he known MacGyver was on board he would have kept flying and gotten MacGyver to fix it as they flew.

Lovely stuff.

Next was the Kevin Smith panel.  I've enjoyed Kevin's movies over the years.  Clerks, Mallrats, Jersey Girl, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II are all enjoyable films and I'd heard that he is really funny.

I wasn't disappointed, he went over time but it didn't feel long.  Stories of film financing blended into stories about Johnny Depp and making a stupid walrus movie.

I liked the message at end about as long as you're not hurting anyone have a go at your dreams.

While a long day it was a fun and enjoyable day.

The Search for the Golden Boomerang (1941) by Laura Bingham

When I started to look into Australian Pulp one area that I wanted to look into was Australian Old Time Radio.  I'd found a few reference books and one of the series I read mention of was The Search for the Golden Boomerang. I looked for copies of the serial on-line with no luck (I'll have to have another look for them)  but the other day I was in Archives Fine and Rare Books and I saw a copy of this tie-in book from 1941. 

I grabbed it to find out more about the story.  The serial and the book were aimed at children and tells the story of  a young Aboriginal boy Tuckonie and his search for the golden boomerang.  I was surprised to see an Aboriginal lead in the 1940's (although Arthur Upfield's Bony series  starting in 1929 had an Aboriginal lead)

I'm presuming that each chapter was based on a episode of the show which ran for about ten minutes if what I've read on the internet is correct..  Tuckonie is looking for the golden boomerang to help his tribe as legend has it that the boomerang brings prosperity to the tribe.  Tuckonie meets up with the Harvey family traveling to search for gold - reading the story it was set in the 1940s  there are cameras mentioned in the stories as well as trucks, 

Along  the way, an Aboriginal spirit Ng'rui Moch and his medicine man try to stop people searching for gold.  While Tuckonie is inclined to believe in the magical powers of the spirit world, the father John Harvey is much more sceptical and in reading the story John Harvey seems to be the hero.  Indeed it is Harvey rather than Tuckonie who discovers the true nature and identity of Ng'rui Moch. 

The story is quite simple as one would expect from a children's radio show and book but I enjoyed it and I want to track down some of the 1440 episodes of radio show that had John Meillon (better known as Wal from the first two Crocodile Dundee movies) as the voice of Tuckonie as well as the further books that were written based on the show.

The book also features gorgeous colour plates and I wish that the book wasn't so fragile so that I could scan some of the pages here.

What's new Brad?

I'm a little behind in promoting my stuff but better late than never!

I did my first ever podcast appearing on Percival Constantine's The Exploding Typewriter

My topic was Creating Pulp Characters.  Percival was a great host and it was a pleasure chatting with him. 

Sadly, this is the final episode of this podcast and if you have any interest in writing in general or pulp writing in particular I would highly recommend listening to the other twenty episodes.  Percival has assembled a fascinating array of guests covering a number of interesting topics. 

Pro Se has released the first of my Pro Se Single Shots : Australis Incognito: Bus Bait Blues

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PULP DOWN UNDER IN NEW PRO SE SINGLE SHOT SIGNATURE SERIES-
AUSTRALIS INCOGNITO DEBUTS FIRST DIGITAL SHORT STORY!
...

Masked men and mystery women from the Land Down Under explode to life in author Brad Mengel’s Pro Se Single Shot Signature Series- Australis Incognito!
Crime is alive and well in Australia and thankfully so are several Pulp Heroes ready to take on evil! Brad Mengel’s own creations, including The Question Mark, The Cutlass, The Aggressor, Sai, Risqué, The Bushranger, and others will stand alone and combat thugs, crooks, and psychopaths in their own stories. But behind the scenes, a puppet master of Machiavellian proportions is yanking the strings, jerking the world toward the brink with every tug, and pulling Australia’s heroes closer together. Closer to the answer. And to the final battle.
In the first stand alone short story, Bus Bait Blues, a hero known as The Question Mark follows in her predecessor’s footsteps trying to protect the common people of the city. Witnessing what appears to be the pick up of a young girl for a life of prostitution on the streets, the Question Mark uncovers something much more heinous. Can she survive the gauntlet she must run to save a girl and herself? Or will she be the second bearing the name The Question Mark to disappear? Find out in Bus Bait Blues by Brad Mengel.
Brad Mengel’s Australis Incognito, a Pro Se Single Shot Signature series from Pro Se Productions, features an evocative cover by Jeffrey Hayes and digital formatting by Russ Anderson. The first short story in the series is available for Kindle at http://tinyurl.com/loya4o2 and for most digital formats at http://tinyurl.com/lp8wb6f for only 99 cents. Australis Incognito - A Pro Se Single Shot Signatures series from Pro Se Productions.

Metro 7 by Matthew J. Hellscream (2014)

 

This novel is the first Australian kickstarter,  I was lucky enough to meet Matthew at the Brisbane Library Comic Book Reading group.

 

Metro 7 was a really good book, Hellscream makes an exciting scenario with lots of complicating subplots .  The story opes with the crew of the Icarus transporting the most dangerous prisoner in the

galaxy back to New Earth for trial when they get a distress signal from the Metro 7.  Metro ships are basically giant space cruise ships.   

 

What the crew finds on board the Metro 7 makes for an exciting adventure that might be best described as Matthew Reilly meets Alien turned up to 11.  Indeed there was one scene that was a neat homage to Reilly's Scarecrow series that I was grinning ear to ear, however Hellscream writes the scene in such a way that it is still effective even if you weren't aware of what he is homaging.

 

The characters were all well drawn and I got enough information about each of the main characters to understand them and I want to know more about them.  More than that Hellscream has created an entire universe that I want to see explored in future books

 

I'm also keen to see more of Hellscream's writings in other stories.  This is recommended

 

  

The Wild Gesse II by Daniel Carney (aka The Square Circle, AKA The Return of the Wild Geese)

So every collector has a 'holy grail" an item that has been eluding them.  There have been several for me, Decision for Dusty Fog, The Hardy Boys Survival handbook, The Three Investigators 39 The Case of the Wandering Caveman and The Wild Geese II.

I'd found copies of  Daniel Carney's The Wild Geese and The Whispering Death and found a copy of Mike Hoare's Mercenary. I'd found a DVD copy of The Wild Geese and caught The Wild Geese II on pay TV.  Hell I'll even count the Marvel New Universe Marc Hazzard: Merc where one of Hazzard's team mentioned that he was involved in the events of The Wild Geese and that Richard Burton was wrong for the part.  (The Warhawks series mentioned a Wild Geese mission and the manga Hellsing has a team called the Wild Geese but as I learnt Wild Geese has become a bit of generic term for mercenaries)

But do you think I could find a copy of The Wild Geese II or The Square Circle or The Return of the Wild Geese to give the novel all the titles it's known by.  To call the novel a sequel to The Wild Geese in really a misnomer.  In the novel there are no characters or references to The Wild Geese.  The novel follows a Lebanese mercenary John Haddad in his attempt to free Rudolph Hess from Spandau prison, Haddad is joined by several of his men from the Beirut Civil War. 

The movie changes one of his men to Alex Faulkner (Edward Fox) the brother of Alan Faulkner (Richard Burton) from the first movie.  The original plan was for Burton to reprise his role but his death forced the recasting,

The book deals with Haddad scouting the rescue and then playing all of the interested parties off of each other - the irony is that he is successful getting Hess out of Spandau but after being locked up for over thirty years all Hess wants to do is return to the cell that has been his home.

I'm glad I found a copy of the book and enjoyed reading it.

Now Available - Poker Pulp.

          

Aces and Eights, a Dead Man’s Hand. Life and Death dealt over a shuffle of a deck. Stakes from dollar bills to souls tossed into the center of the table. And sitting around, waiting for the turn of a card, to raise, check, bet, or fold, are rogues, scoundrels, dames, and sharps. Every single one betting their last breath on the hand they hold. Pro Se Productions presents Poker Pulp, an anthology centered around the storied, legendary game of cards and chance. Authors J. H. Fleming, Michael Krog, and Brad Mengel deal three tales that up the ante, taking Poker to an all new level of Pulp. Action, adventure, and intrigue are the game of choice in Pro Se Productions’ Poker Pulp.

My story "Strip Poker: A Risqué Story" introduces the new pulp heroine Risqué.  She prowls the mean streets of 1920s Sydney where Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine rule the criminal fraternity.  In this adventure she bets her life on a game of strip poker with the vicious razor gang that attacked her cousin.

Poker Pulp is now available from Amazon and Smashwords.