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Tripping Over Myself by Joel Meadows #4 – Bristolling

Published Sat, 29 May 2010 02:00:07 -0500

This week's column is a slight change to what readers have been used to seeing here. Last weekend it was the annual Bristol International Comic Expo, held at the Ramada Hotel. Bristol is always entertaining and there were a few decent guests including Chris Claremont, Phil Noto and some of the usual British suspects. I chaired a Marvel panel that featured Paul Cornell, Kieron Gillen, Rob Williams and Neil Edwards which went very well and there was a reasonable buzz around the hotel over the weekend. Unlike heading over to the US, there was no flight involved: we just jumped in the car and we were there. UK shows are a different beast to US ones as they are a bit more low-key and relaxed, centred around the bar. We caught up with friends like occasional TRIPWIRE contributor Matt Badham, David Baillie and one of the organisers, David Morris. We also saw a few fellow journalists like Alec Worley and Stephen Jewell too. We also got to pick up the first issue of Madam Samurai, a new comic published by Shane Chebsey's Scar Comics. This is a two- volume graphic novel series written by Gary Young, Harry Brown screenwriter, and drawn by the criminally underrated artist David Hitchcock. It's a fantastic historical adventure and hopefully might garner Hitchcock some attention. It's always worth attending shows like Bristol because you usually find the odd gem.

We've always been happy to embrace new things, whether they're new titles, creators or companies and technology falls into that criteria. TRIPWIRE has always been about utilising print the best way possible but the arrival of the iPad has made us think that this is a fantastic alternative or compliment to the more traditional medium. Electronic readers have existed for the past few years with Sony's eBook and amazon's Kindle but the iPad appears to incorporate the qualities that people like about print with the advantages that online offers. It has a colour viewer with a very high resolution so you are able to replicate the experience of print but offer more of an interactive feel thanks to being able to include links to online material, something that will become even easier when the new operating system launches later this year.

I am and have always been a total Mac junkie too so the idea of creating a magazine for an Apple platform greatly appeals to me. If all goes to plan, TRIPWIRE will exist both as an iPad application and as a more regular print publication with each complimenting the other. The problem with online vs print is that you are forced to sacrifice image quality for format and an iPad version looks like a great bridge between the two, so it's something that we are embracing. Maybe we may even see an iPad version of this very website, Bleeding Cool, at some point which would be fun…

TRIPWIRE #54 is out in July 2010 and available to order in the UK from Diamond Comic Distributors, item code JUN101939, priced £6.95.

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