Dublin Comic Con Spring 2024 Edition Review

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Dublin Comic Con has been going for eleven years now and it’s been a full year since I was there. Instead of going to the summer edition 2023 with the Terminator cast, I ended up getting a below the knee amputation.

So I was detrmined to get there this year on my new leg and went I did. And I have to say it was the breath of fresh air I needed in a storm of chaos. We stayed at the Samuel Hotel which I recommend as it is close to the Convention Centre but I recommend you book your parking in advance at the centre.

The sets were back amazing attendees with a full sized Tauntaun which is my favourite creature from Star Wars. My only regret was not being able to sit on it but then again how the hell was I getting down again with a false leg? It was beautiful and really stood out the minute you saw it. Ghostbusters were present as was Mandalorians, Batman, Predators, animee characters, a female Wolverine, Star Wars characters and Superman. You also had an Indiana Jones set but were you brave enough to switch the golden statuette for a bag of sand? If course, you get to be captain of the Enterprise as well.

There were plenty of traders and choice to part you from your money but I love going round the stalls to see what is on offer. You had various costuming clubs, some more eye cathing then others but all in the spirit of the weekend. I also have to mention the guide dogs we met. We had to buy some of their merchandise as it is a brilliant cause and should be supported. We arenhuge dog fans in our house so it was a no brainer. Having them in a primary position is a clear sign that this event is not all about the money. There are great charities that can be helped out and when you get to meet the beautiful dogs being trained or are trained, you have to give something. We came away with two stuffed dogs, pens and pencils. In August get your arses up there and help out this great cause plus you get to meet and pet the dogs themselves.

But it is the guests people come to see and this year we Emily Rudd, the cast of Grand Theft Auto, Steven Ogg, Ned Luke and Shawn Fonteno, return of the voice of Bender, John Dimmagio, Supernatural’s Mark Shephard, Yellow Power Ranger Alyson Kipper Sullivan, Craig Fairbass, Theo Solomon and Devora Wilde. There were comic book artists and writers, something for everyone.

I had a great time and it thoroughly recharged my batteries. It may seem easy to run a show like this but trust me it isn’t. You are always going to people that moan but it was my nephew’s first one and he loved it. He got to hold birds he had never been able to before and see props from the movies. These shows are a generational thing for all of us. My son started as a mini stormtrooper nine years ago and now he is volunterring at it. My nephew will be back as will other members of my family. I was there when there were no comic cons in Ireland at all and when I heard about Dublin Comic Con starting, I offered my help from the start. I was tired of travelling to England all the time for cons.

Shows like this are vital to the future of fandom here regardless of who else comes and goes. There is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on all year round planning, set building and securing new and exclusive guests. I am 55 years young and freaked when I heard Kate Mulgrew was coming this August. That alone is awesome and a huge thing for fans for not only of Star Trek but Orange Is The New Black also. Not to mention all of the other work she has done. She is a great captain and a great actress. This is not to be missed especially as there are others to be announced.

That is the attitude to take when attending Dublin Comic Con. You are entering an environment where the worries of the world are left behind and you have no idea what you are going to walk into during that show (Tauntaun). It is a family and friends day where you revel in the stuff you love. Did I leave it still a fan of Dublin Comic Con ? Damn right.

Well done team Dublin Comic Con. You were just what the Doctor ordered. I got the celebrities I wanted and new faamily memories of us being together. Awesome.

TW meets Supernatural’s Mark Sheppard

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

This was my third encounter with a member of the Supernatural cast. I had already met John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan_ and Sam Campbell )Mitch Pileggi) so in Dublin on the 9th March 2024, it was the turn of the King of Hell himself Crowley.

I have been a fan of actor Mark Sheppard ever since I saw him in the X Files first season in the episode Fire. So meeting him especially after his brush with death last year was a thrill for me. We were lucky that we caught him early so there wasn’t many people round him so had a chance to chat with him about living in Ireland, his Dad and his heart attack. He let my wife fell the device they placed in his chest in the event of future attacks.

A nice guy that can chat about absolutely anything. I’m glad he’s now off my wishlist.

TW meets The Walking Dead and GTA’s Steven Ogg

By & photos copyright Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

As Negan’s right hand man, Simon was a psycopath that the zombie apocalypse gave free rein to his madness. You can just imagine he was either bullied in life or saw the world through hate filled eyes because it owed him favour that never existed. Things like the law prevented him from acting oit his power trip on those weaker than him. Or he was always like that; a nasty boss who would love to put a bullet through an employee’s head that made a mistake or degrade someone oublicly just for the sake of it. Such was his ego that he tried to overthrow Negan but ended up a zombie pet.

As Trevoe in GTA he is every bit the villain there too. But is actor Steven Ogg as arrogant in real life?

We had seen him at a couple of Walker Stalker cons in London but we had to get the bigger cast names first which weren’t cheap. A couple of years ago he was in the RDS but the photo and autograpg was for someone else. Simon was not a character in the comics just like Daryl but he like Norman Reedus has symbolised the Saviours as much as Negan has. So when he was announced for Dublin comic Con Spring Edition 2024 then I had to be there. Yes he was there as part of the GTA team but had Walkng Dead photos.

So what was he like?

He is Awesome! It is rare celebrities fo the extra mile for fns but Steven did this al weekend. No one came away disappointed at all. If ever there was an actor the polar opposite of the characters he plays then Steven Ogg is that person. He takes his time with fans, talks to them all, is respetful and values those that volunteer and cannot be faulted at all. Lesser celebrities can be divas so should take a note from Steven’s blueprint.

Wwhat a great weekend with such a great guest that cares about those willing to part with their money in these times just to meet him for a photo and an autogrpah.

Legend, legend, legend.

Dr Who Magic Moments: Ace & Tegan Meet their Doctors

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriros and Zombie Blues

I loved the classic era and as a teenager watched the fifth Doctor crew and saw the seventh Doctor and Ace deliver stories in the final two seasons that are all time classics.

We only saw what happened to Tegan after she left the Doctor via Big Finish audio plays and novels as with Ace. But when they returned in Jodie Whittaker’s final story, Power of the Doctor, everyone punched the air with joy. But what we were not expecting was the return of the fifth and seventh Doctors at the same time.

When the former companions are recruited by Kate Stewart to work for UNIT, Ace is happy to see the Dotor is now a woman but Tegan is fuming that he never got in contact again. The 13th Doctor’s evasiveness irritates her and she tells Yaz that they are her from decades ago.

But when the Cybermen launch their attack, Tegan fights alone until she is contacted by the 13th Doctor via a neural hologram that responds to her thoughts. Tegan’s Doctor appears and she chides him for forgetting her. He tells her he never forgot any of them. She asks what she is thinking seeing all these Cybermen and one word brings them back together; Adric. He died saving the Earth from a Cyberman bomb which wiped out the dinosaurs instead.

Similarly with Ace, we learn she left the Doctor under bad circumstances leaving a rift behind between them. Now facing a Dalek army beneath a volcano, Ace faces her Doctor’s hologram once again where they resolve their past.

There is something chilling about these two scenes that do somewhat overshadow the final 13th Doctor’s story but they are so welcome for so many reasons. It is nostalgia, a yearning for loose ends to be tied up and resolution. It is old friends returning and fighting once again and affirmation of the bonds they share that last across space and time. It is about being able to finally say goodbye to those we have lost and if the message is strong enough then the universe will find a way to make it happen. Tegan and Ace can finally move forward secure in the knowledge that their Doctor is watching over them and proud of the people they have become. Absolute and complete magic.

When the Doctor needs a rest, those he loves will stand in his place and be the defender he helped them become. There are friendships in life that will bind you to that person in ways you never see but are part of the person you will always be.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jC6HaSsf7p4%3Flist%3DPLKEzuOOEQvYNf1xvRn8D6bEN5JbvJXraV

Dublin Comic Con Tauntaun Display: Another Classic

By & photos copyright of Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors ad Zombie Blues

I love the Empire Strikes Back and I love a Tautaun. They are of the era I grew up on of stop motion by the late, great Ray Harryhausen. The cuts between the physical prop and running across the snow are so reminiscent of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and The Mysterious Island etc

So thos year when walking around Dublin Comic Con I nearly fell over my crutches when I rounded a corner and saw the guys behind DCC had included a brand new display as seen below. Let’s just say my only regret was I couldn’t have gotten to sit on him. I’ll just have to make do with my 12 inch collector’s series one with Han Solo.

Forgotten Heroes: Hellraiser 3’s Joey Summerskill

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.

Before she kicked ass in Star Trek Deep Space 9 as Jadzia Dax for six seasons, Terry Farrell headlined the third movie in the Hellraiser franchise and being totally biased, this is my favourite one. While Jadzia faced all manner of aliens and mysteries none could prepare her for anything more fantastic and terrifying than going toe to toe with Pinhead and his new breed of Cenobites.

In Hellraiser Hell on Earth, she plays Joanne Joey Summerskill, a frustrated and troubled reporter who works for channel 8. She is feeling repressed by her news boss who wants her to show more flesh to become an anchorwoman which she refutes. As fate would have it, she becomes a pawn in the battle between Pinhead and his human half, Elliot Spencer. In the previous movie, Pinhead was split into two entities who are now in constant battle for control of his soul; a battle that finds Joey plunged into the biggest and deadliest story of her career.

At the emergency room she meets a young teenager called Terri who has brought a young man in for treatment. She tells Joey she met him at a nightclub, the Boiler House. Joey hears the commotion and runs in to see the man being pulled apart by hooked chains that seemingly come out of nowhere. He explodes. Her boss does not believe her as she has no proof. Determined to find the girl, she goes to the Boiler Room in search of her. Terri finds her instead striking a deal to stay at her place in exchange for information.

Terri gives Joey the cube, the Lament Configuration, the young man had while he lay in the street and that the cube is where the chains came from. Joey confides in her that she has bad dreams about the death of her father in Vietnam. That he lay wounded while the helicopter flew off leaving him behind to be tortured at the hands of the enemy. As Elliot Spence, Pinhead’s human form, was a military man this allows him to form a connection with Joey.

Driven to solve the strange death, Joey learns of the bizarre statue that the owner of the club J.P. bought thanks to Terri. However, the shop has been closed and nothing has been sold from it in months. Checking inventory records they discover the statue came from the Channard Institute (as seen in the second movie) and unbeknownst to him it contains Pinhead himself. The statue is in fact the Pillar of Souls and thanks to J.P. the demon has begun harvesting innocent women and growing in power. Once he has fed enough Pinhead will be able to leave the pillar and walk the Earth.

Spence tells Joey she has to stop him as she witnesses Pinhead’s origins when he opened the box to indulge in his primal sexual urges. The only way is to fuse both sides of his being together once again. Too late, Joey arrives to find Pinhead has murdered everyone in the Boiler Room and new Cenobites have been born. One is the DJ who fires CDs from his mouth slicing his victims. The other is Joey’s friend, cameraman Doc who is now fused with his equipment to become Camerahead. J.P. has become Pistonhead.

As the streets explode around her Joey races for her life as Pinhead and the Cenobites pursue her for the Lament Configuration. She manages to send them to Hell but Pinhead uses her dreams against her. He poses as her father using her love for him to convince her to hand over the cube. Now all powerful Pinhead traps Joey in a machine that will turn her into his latest Cenobite. But Elliot bursts in and fights with his evil self managing to fuse them both back together. Joey is able to free herself and the Lament Configuration has turned into a diamond shape. She stabs Pinhead through the heart sending him back to Hell. She has only one last thing to do. Joey tosses the cube into the newly laid concrete of a building. However when built, the building interior reflects the markings of the Lament Configuration.

For me I like this movie becaue it uses a strong female lead against which Pinhead falls again. Farrell does a great job of portraying a strong woman being held back in her career by chauvinistic men while at the same time mourning a father killed before she was born. She can only imagine how he would be which is why she hands over the Lament Configuration to a disguised Pinhead so trustingly. He does what evil does best; they take something normal and that comforts us and twists it to suit their needs. Joey always knew that evil gave reporters their most gripping and rating grabbing stories but she gains a whole new insight into what evil truly is here and the lengths humans will go to indulge in extreme sexual pleasures. At the same time since there is a Hell then there must be a Heaven where her father is and one day she will see again.

It also shows her that even in Pinhead part of him is still good which means that though the battle between good and evil will rage across the millennia, good will always find a way to win.

Forgotten Heroes: Doctor Who’s Katarina

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

photo copyright BBC

I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.

Long before Donna was brain wiped and Adric was blown up saving the Earth from the Cybermen, the first Doctor (William Hartnell) was having a traumatic time. It had been all peaches and cream up until the Dalek Masterplan when trauma and tragedy were the love children of chaos. If ever Doctor Who got dark then this was when kids all over the country got scared for very different reasons. They no longer hid behind the sofas after this story, they moved house.

In the previous story, The Myth Makers, companion Vicky (Maureen O’Brien) has stayed behind in Troy but not before she instructs one of the handmaidens of Trojan priestess Cassandra, Katrina, to help a wounded Steven Taylor (Peter Perves) back to the Tardis as Troy fell. Desperate to escape the Doctor took off with her on board. She thought the time machine was some sort of temple but she soon became familiar with her new environment.

The Tardis lands on Kembel where the Daleks have been plotting an all out invasion of the galaxy with Earthman Mavic Chen and an alliance of aliens. Earth agents are well aware of the invasion and must warn the authorities of the imminent attack. Brett Vyon (future Brigadier Nicholas Courtney) takes the Tardis crew aboard his ship when the Doctor steals the Taranium core of the Dalek weapon. The Daleks are in hot pursuit and force them onto the prison planet of Desperus where some prisoners try to hijack the ship. One convict, Kirksen, takes Katarina hostage in the airlock leaving the Doctor with an impossible choice. If he gives in the Dalek invasion will succeed. If he does nothing, then Katarina will die. Steven and the Doctor argue with Brett to take the ship back to Kembel but Vyon refuses. He cannot sacrifice everyone else just for one girl.

Katarina takes the choice out of their hands by opening the airlock and blasting her and Kirksen into space. Stunned, the Doctor hopes she has found her Place of Perfection and will always remember her as one of the daughters of the gods.

Katarina despite her short spell left an indelible impact on the show. Never before had a companion been killed. She was the first and not the only one in this story. The Daleks have never been so powerful and close to success than they were here in the Dalek Masterplan. Indeed the Master made a play on words for this story in the recent Power of the Doctor. Katarina is considered primitive by our standards yet she fully embraced the Doctor and Steven as allies. The Doctor in her eyes was a good man against a huge evil. With the fall of Troy still very much in her thoughts, the Dalek threat will see more people die in fire. The worlds of children will be torn apart by this new darkness. greeks or Daleks, it made little difference; they would come and destroy innocent lives for their own dark avarices. Their base needs will consume everything that is not like them and destroy it.

That’s the thing about looking back across history and thinking people at that time were primitive compared to what we have now. From their perspective, they were very modern and civilised. They were the epitome of what it was to be human at the time. That is what makes Katarina so special and should never be forgotten by fans or history. She was a simple handmaiden who met a man who opened her eyes to an universal truth. She recognised that it didn’t matter what time she was i; all that mattered was that each time had its own darkness to fight and it was up to us to tand up and fight.

Evil may be timeless but so is heroism.

Dublin Comic Con is Gearing Up For the Cast of GTA

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

If you love Grand Theft Auto then you have to get yourself to Dublin Comic Con to meet Steven Ogg, Ned Luke and Shawn Fonteno. Steven was also the evil Simon in the Walking Dead. As right hand man to Negan he slaughtered the junkyard people before trying to take control from Negan. As punishment Negan made him into a zombie and tied him to his chain link fence along with all his other captured undead.

He recently returned in the spin off series Dead City in a flashback scene.

Get your tickets today.