Chris' Botcon Europe 99 Report

I' 100% sense :)

Anyway, here I go,

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Unfortunately a week before the convention, I found out I couldn't make it on Friday as originally planned, so I only went on the Saturday -hopefully I will be able to attend both days next year. The only suggestion I have to make about the date arrangement is that is should be on a Saturday-Sunday, rather than Friday-Saturday (although, I do know that since it was held in a church this year, Sunday wasn't exactly possible). I got up at 5am on Saturday morning and had a 3 and 1/2 hour car journey to London, before spending about 20 minutes trying to find the place.

Once there, my brother and I waited outside with many other fans for the doors to open. Since I'd not seen any other TMUK members for at least a year, I was unsure if they'd changed or not. Being the rather shy person that I am, I decided to subtly open a copy of HS #11 and read it, flashing the cover in the hope that someone would recognise me. Fortunately, Martin McVay and Sven Harvey showed up about 5 minutes after we arrived, and various fanzines were swapped. Lawrence Evans arrived shortly after and we exchanged various TF and Animé (hey, I remembered how to do the cool accent things :> ) videos and there was a brief conversation, before the doors opened, and they went inside, since they'd already got their pre-registrant packs, while, Adam and I had to queue up for ours. After a small queue, I gave George Morgan and Ken Flatt a few copies of HS #11, and said hello, before Andrew Mehta and I went off to find a table to display fanzines on.

On behalf of all the other fanzine editors their, and myself, I have to say thanks to Hellbat for lending us one of his spare tables, to place fanzines on. Once we'd set the table up, and I'd put all my copies of HS on, Martin McVay came and placed a few of his Transformers Untold Story fanzines on the table too. Matt Dallas and Lawrence Evans had both brought their own personal copies of CG2 and Japan Files respectively for people to read. Matt (like a number of others) commented on how I'd grown since they last saw me, and how my artwork had become really good (thanks Matt - the cheque's in the post).

I went downstairs to pin up some of my artwork for the walls, and met Raksha and Magic, who were also pinning up art. I talked a bit with Raksha who commented about how nice it was to have space to put up artwork, without having the many snake cages taking up most of the space. Nick Roche arrived and started putting up some of his stuff. We started talking about the Destrons and he said he'd like to draw some Destron stuff for the fanzine, since they were some of his favourite characters. I thanked him commenting on how it would be really cool to have someone who can actually draw really well do a comic strip for the 'zine, rather than just printing my stuff every issue. He told me my stuff was really cool, and said that my picture of Jazz was well drawn, and that he loved the way I'd done the colouring on the Blue Jackal picture. - Thanks Nick, (The M.I.B. Fort Max I promised is also in the post :> )

I showed him the Death Cobra that Lawrence Evans had built for the Constructibot contest, and he mentioned that Matt had built a transforming Unicron! Both Nick and Matt appologised for using words they shouldn't have said (Nick said he recognised the "GOBOT!!!!!" that Lawrence had used as part of Death Cobra, and Matt confessed to building Unicron with parts from a "POWER RANGER!!"). Both asked forgiveness for mentioning those, which was pretty cool. - Remember children, Say no to Gobots and Power Rangers. :)

I then went off upstairs to take a look at some of the dealer rooms upstairs. I went in to Hellbat's "Tower" as he named his dealer room, and began to look around. Ken Flatt (who'd managed to get Andrew Mehta to cover for him on the door duty) came and said "hi" and we proceeded to talk about fanzines we'd brought along as well as all things Destron. We went into the larger dealer room where the fanzine table was and we began to staple together numerous copies of "Lost Chronicles" Green Edition, while chatting. Ken had the idea of getting a Destron group shot done, where we were all in the Liokaiser pose - until I pointed out that Liokaiser would have one 6'4 leg (Lawrence/Killbison) and one 5'10 leg (Chris/Drillhorn/me), plus arms that would probably scrape along the ground since both Hellbat and George (Hellbat and Gaihawk) are so tall.

Ken went back to door duty, while Lawrence and I went outside and sat with Raksha, Magic, George and a few other fans waiting for Simon Furman to arrive. I was really pleased to see Magic and some other fans reading HS #11. - I was half tempted to put a sign saying "Transformers Coffee mats" next to the pile where they were. After about 20 minutes, we saw a man on a bike, while a bloke who looked a bit like Simon Furman getting a lift on the rear axle, "No it can't be him" thought Lawrence and I - it wasn't. (A case of Liege Maximo Ice Cream Lawrence?)

Lawrence and I went inside, and back to the fanzine room, where we found Ken Flatt and Nick Roche, looking at the various fanzines. Julien Lemel started talking to me and I handed him a copy of HS #11 (which I later caught him reading *tut* *tut* <Julien, if you're reading this, HS is the unofficial Transformers Coffee Mat, and I demand that it is used appropriately :-) *smiles* >. My brother came and showed me the TF's he'd bought so far; Trailbreaker, Dreadwind and Getaway (all loose and complete). He commented on how with some dealers it was a case of "Shall I buy this loose TF toy? - Or a Spanish villa?" - a phrase that ended up being used buy a few other convention attendies who I didn't know.

There is always one incident at an event like this that some of us will always look back on and cringe at. For me, it was probably when Ken, Lawrence and I were in Hellbat's Tower looking at TF's and I was going on about how cool Simon Furman's work was, and that it would be a pretty cool idea if we kidnapped him in Hellbat's van, and later kidnapped some of the TF artists, that we could restart the UK comic. - What Ken and I didn't realise was that Simon Furman was just a couple of yards away, talking to Lawrence!!!!!!! Simon Furman laughed it off, and ended up signing a copy of HS #11 for me, and a copy of Lost Chronicles for Ken. (We were both really pleased, and I pinched myself incase I was dreaming). - Mr Furman, if you're reading this, then THANKYOU from the bottom of my energon distributer pump for making my day.

We went and watched the Simon Furman Q&A in the main hall and listened to all the questions asked. He's a really cool guy, and managed to cover every question - excluding the fact that he forgot that he'd wrote two British Generation 2 stories for Fleetwood - with ease. Afterwards I got the impression that he's not just a TF celebrity, rather more of a fan (of the original generation 1) with a huge talent for fiction writing who was lucky enough to be able to write them for the TF comic.

After the Q&A, everyone went off to watch a video Paul Hitchins had prepared for us (Thanks for making us really jealous of not owning a copy of that video Paul :> ), featuring all the TF adverts and trailers ever made in the UK, US and Japan, along with all the unseen footage of Transformers THE MOVIE. The highlight of the video for everyone was one Micromaster advert where a seven year old playing with some toys had said "Transform!" as he changed one of the toys; only it had been overdubbed with a voice that can only be described as Barry White with a very sore throat - the whole room roared with laughter, and the segment was played again since it was so popular. Lawrence, Ken and I ended up having a conversation with a female Irish fan (We thought she was Irish- but don't quote us on that. - If you're reading this, then sorry for not being able to recognise the accent) about the Japanese cartoons, which apparently many fans there hadn't seen.

Lawrence and I had a short conversation with Paul Hitchins about the title of TF:TM in Japan. Apparently, all the stuff he has connected to it, calls it Transformers The Movie, where as it's proper title was "Matrix Forever", and was only released after the Victory series and contained small plot twists so that it was like a "story of a story" - if you know what I mean. Is there any non fan based continuity without loopholes???????? :-).

While everyone was outside of the main hall, Simon Furman judged the art contest and the Constructibot contest. First prize congratulations go to Nick Roche for is picture of Ratchet, and Mr. H. Bat for his Starscream and Galvatron diorama. - Both excellent stuff. While everyone else was having stuff signed, I went and had some noodles with Ken Flatt, who was back on door duty. - Chef Andrew Mehta, makes good noodles, although it took roughly 1/2 an hour :). We talked about various stuff and my brother Adam came and showed us all the stuff he'd bought, plus informed us that all our fanzines upstairs had gone (Stick the word FREE next to something and you won't see it again). Simon Furman finished his signing / chatting session in the main hall and walked past us, before stopping to grin before coming over and saying goodbye to Ken and I.

Ken continued with his door duty, while Lawrence and I went to the auction that was being held in the main hall. We were rather miffed since we were both short on cash, and there was some great stuff on offer that we really wanted. Jason Joiner (I think it was him) was an excellent auctioneer, - he even managed to sell a "Galactic Rangers" (or something to that effect) video, by first offering to run it over in his car, and for a couple of extra pounds, you'd be able to sit in the car while the video was being run over. - If I'd have had the money, I would have bought it just to run it over.

After this the convention pretty much died. There were roughly 2 and 1/2 hours left of the convention and nothing left to fill them since most fans had pretty much discussed various TF things to death, and the central ("Old Skool / the longest serving members" of the) TMUK crew (excluding Matt Dallas <who stayed a little longer>) had all gone down the pub. Since simultaneously tracking down all 6 members of Liokaiser was almost impossible, Lawrence, Ken and I had to settle for a photo of just us ground troops. - Still I think Jazz Morgan (who took the photo (rather than having appeared in it) since George and Hellbat had disappeared) is (I think) working on doing a composite shot of the human version of Liokaiser, may have got a picture of him, Hellbat and George done, so he can edit the photos together.

I do have a few complaints though. There seem to be a huge number of copycat conventions happening this year (no offence to the organisers of these), and it seems that things will nose dive due to the numbers of conventions taking away the magic of BotCon, by making these events routine rather than the years big TF event. I would like to ask the dealers and other fans on here to not go organising any TF conventions, but, rather to support BotCon Europe, and the EXCELLENT Transforce conventions (which I sadly couldn't make this year). One idea I had was to have one of the conventions in the Summer, and one in the Winter (roughly 6 months apart) so that people can afford to go to both of these excellent events, and so that we don't have to wait too long for a TF convention while still maintaining the quality of these two events.

Another complaint is that there was very little in the way of fan based stuff. If I hadn't have got Andrew Mehta to make a fanzine table on the day, then I'm sure the whole fanzine thing would have been forgotten about. Considering the numbers at BotCon Europe, there were very people taking part in the art contest, with relatively few pictures on the display wall and the majority of the pictures on the wall being drawn all drawn by a small number of people who brought lots of pictures. - The same thing with the Constructibot display. The Fan element of the convention seemed to have been vastly overlooked, - a problem that hopefully will be sorted out next year. There was a lot of spare time, during the day when people tended to be just hanging around. What about putting on a fan panel for some of the fanzine / news group editors or artists to answer questions or whatever, like at the US conventions?

Lastly, I have to mention the fact that the name tags were pretty much a useless way of identifying people, since the text on them was unreadable from anything over a few feet away, due it being printed in small, unclear font in red ink. Next year, make them easier to read, so we can identify each other better. Another suggestion is to bring a printer along with you next year so you can make more passes (since you ran out on the day) with proper type on them for the on the door visitors. Also, use metal chain as the chain round the pass, rather than string or wool, which itches and breaks easily.

Anyway, all that is left to say now is that I really enjoyed myself. Getting to see a lot of my friends in the club / on the e-mail group again, was really good, and I hope we can all have a cool time next year too. Thanks to George, Jazz, Ken, Hellbat, etc for organising it.