By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
All photos copyright Owen Quinn
We are the Northern Ireland based Groups for the 501st Legion and Rebel Legion, both of whom are Global Star Wars Costuming Clubs. We provide high quality costumed volunteers for Charity and Community Events across Northern Ireland. We are a group of volunteers who all share the love of everything Star Wars, we love to attend Charity and Community events and best of all to put smiles on little and big faces with our costumes.
We’re on the look out for new people to join us in the 501st and Rebel Legion. Volunteers with passion for costuming, charity and community.
I’ve known these guys for over a decade now and been a photographer for them. We have been all sorts of places includ9ng Star Wars Celebration in London. Everything they do and all the money raised is for charity. Take it from me folks they are all big kids at heart (so I fitted right in) and their costumes are all crafted by them. Their work is featured in the photos accompanying this article so if you want to be a Jedi or a Stormtrooper then this is the palce for you. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Click on the link below to find out more and join.
By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Photos opright Owen Quinn
It’s not a convention without a Star Wars element and this time I ticked another one off the list by meeting Andy Secombe, the voice of the roguish and sly Watto from The Phantom Menace.
Watto is probably my favourite character from that movie as he was so different from anything that had come before. That distinct voice and ducking and diving with Qui Gon Jinn played by our very own Liam Neeson.
Andy was very polite and interested in the fan and if I hd the ash i would have taken all of the photos of Watto he had signed. Thee larger figure is on my list to get for my collection and now with my signed Watto photo, that ambition is one step closer.
By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
All photos copyright Owen Quinn
Having been to a couple of Walker Stalker events, I’d met a lot of the cast but still had some to tick off the list. I managed to tick off two in one day with Michael Cudlitz who played Abraham and Katelyn Nacon who played Enid.
I had seen Cudlitz twice before at Walker Stalker but had to meet Sonequa instead. So I finally got to meet him but sadly and unexpectedly, Michael was the least favourite meet among the Walking Dead cast to date. There was no queue and I was with my ife. I had brought the issue where Abraham forst debuts with me to be signed, a thing I’ve been doing for a while now. He looked over my head when I asked hima question and to be honest conversation was like pulling teeth. We were polite and got what I wanted but it was a disappointment.
Others have said he must have been having a bad day. He wasn’t rude, just seemed very disinterested. My omic was signed but thankfully Chandler Riggs and Katelyn Nacon were so good with the fans. But hey, i got what I wanted, just have a slightly disappointed taste in my mouth.
By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Northern Ireland Comic Con at the Eikon Centre Lisburn saw the appearance of three of the cast of the Walking Dead. Chandler Riggs, Michael Cudlitz and Katelyn Nacon entertained the crowds and I got two more off my bucket list.
By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Oh boy, I’m nervous as hell!!!!
So I think it’s fair to say that most of us grew up falling in love and continuing that love story to this day with Quantum Leap. As a writer this is one of the shows close to my heart that I have in my head to make my stories as good as can possibly be. Brilliant scientist Sam Beckett bounced across time within his lifetime putting right what once went wrong with the help of his holographic best friend Al Calavicci. Sam was the creator of project Quantum Leap and in the end he never got to get home. Many were left frustrated by this finale and they even spent his surname wrong at the end. Over the years there have been rumours of a movie or new series which would reunite the magical combination of Sam and Al.
This show for five years was pure magic and saved by the fans when the network lost faith. We laughed and cried in quick succession. Who can forget the time Sam leaped home into his younger self. He tries to change his family’s fates. His Dad will die of a heart attack, his brother will die in Vietnam and his sister will marry into an abusive relationship but ends up making things worse. Cursing God or fate or whatever is hurling him through time, Sam vents that it isn’t fair. Al stops Sam in his tracks by saying it’s damned fair. Al wishes he could see his family again, save his Down Syndrome sister from dying in an institution and tell them how much he loves them but he can’t. This is Sam’s reward, not his punishment. We cut to a scene where Sam gets to have a family dinner as he will leap the following day. Even now I’m welling up thinking about it because so many of my family have gone now.
That was Quantum Leap; the brothership between Sam and Al was the heart of the show and never wavered on and off the screen with both of them being reunited for an episode when Bakula became Captain Archer in Star Trek and Stockwell guest starred as a villain. They were brothers; they were family. They would die for each other so when Sam changes Al’s fate in the final episode it broke our hearts. Sam was never going home and he couldn’t allow Al to waste his life being his guide so he went back to the love of Al’s life, Beth, and tells her that Al is alive and coming home to her. Originally Al was believed dead in Vietnam but in fact was a POW. Beth married someone else and when Al returned home his heart was broken. He became a party animal forever chasing women like Tina because he could never have the woman he was born to marry.
Similarly Al gave up his chance to get home when Sam leaped into Magic Johnston, a soldier in Vietnam under the command of Sam’s brother Tom. Tom is destined to die but a woman photographer dies instead allowing Tom to return home to his family. It is only when her photos are developed does Sam realise the POW they passed were Al and his fellow inmates. Al sacrifices his chance for happiness so Sam’s brother can be saved.
So now we have a continuation rather than a reboot. Magic Johnson is now running project Quantum Leap. Dr Sam Seong takes the work of Sam and tries to solve the mysteries of where he is. He soon finds himself bouncing across his own lifetime just like Sam putting right what once went wrong. His holographic sidekick this time is Addison Augustine but with Ben’s Swiss cheese memory, he does not realise she is his fiancee.
Like Sam’s wife in the original, Donna, Addison will be forced to watch the man she loves become romantically involved with other women changing the dynamic. But has the substitution of love with brotherhood be able to give us the same emotional heartbreak between Sam and Al did?
These are big shoes to fill. The original cemented itself into the hearts of millions and everywhere they went Scott bakula and Dean Stockwell were given a reverence that is not usually held for actors. It was the fans that got Dean Stockwell his star on the Hollywood Walk. Beautifully written, directed and acted, the fact anyone would try to expand on that universe is a credit to them.
What can we expect? Will we have the same theme tune? Will we get the electric halo effect when Ben leaps? Can we please have the hand link and is Ziggy still going? Will we get the famous ‘Oh Boy!’ The inclusion of Magic Johnston may well throw some light on what happened to the original team of Quantum Leap. Is Addison Al’s granddaughter? Where is Sam’s daughter Samantha that worked on the project to get her father home? Is the Evil leaper still operating? Lothos anyone? What happened to Donn and Goochie?
We are going to spend more time in the present day which i fear may impact on the quality of the story that Ben is involved in. Where is the mystery when we will see more of that team? Remember the impact when Sam remembered that he had a wife waiting for him that leaping had wiped from his mind? Even Donna would not stand in the way of Sam and Al’s friendship. These questions need to be answered. Does Raymond Lee have the charisma that Scott Bakula had to endear himself to the audience and make Ben the everyday man we root for? Will we care that the love of Addison’s life doesn’t know her? Scott bakula has stated that he has passed on the chance to come back but then again so did Andrew garfield and Toby Maguire on Spiderman: No Way Home.
Well today the world will get its first glimpse of the first episode and only time will tell will be finally solve the riddle of Doctor Sam Beckett?
By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
all photos copyeight Owen Quinn
Every writer knows that sometimes things get a bit too much and that story that seems so fluid in your head somehow stumbles on that path between your brain and your fingers. No matter how you try writer’s block is a given and something many struggle to overcome. There is no easy solution to beating it.
At one point I had completely lost my mojo for nearly a year. I tried time and again to write but it didn’t feel right or read well and to this day I could not tell you why it hit me for so long. Stories and characters would rush through my head constantly but when I sat in front of that keyboard, it deflated quicker than brewers’s droop.
But in time it came back. Maybe I had written too much and put so time into it with no obvious return that part of me subconsciously gave up. I write best when the house is asleep and naked if I’m honest about it. The words and stories come flooding out because there are no distractions but this can impact your paying day job as late night sessions impact the recommended eight hours for total body health. So that in itself is a fine line to walk. You have to pay the bills but you’re driven by this urge to get these stories and characters on paper in the hopes they may one fay pay those bills leaving you free. There have been many nights where I have lain in the dark tossing and turning. My rational mind is telling me to get to sleep as work hours were not that far away while the other part of me was gnawing at me to get up and write stuff down. That was how my first Zombie Blues story came about. It was written at two o’clock in the morning and the whole first zombie story was completed there and then. I immediately went back to bed and fell right to sleep.
But it’s not always that simple. Right now I’m knee deep in editing Zombie Blues 3, The Time Warriors Only the Dead Get Off at Kymlinge & Other Stories and the new book Darklands and had an idea for The Last Tiger for the Time Warriors series. So it’s very easy to overload the brain so this weekend I walked away for some head space. First of all i took my wife to dinner for her birthday, attended Comic Con Northern ireland out in the Eikon Centre, Lisburn and then went for a walk round the Titanic Quarter and the Belfast Harbour where we had some lunch.
I tell you it cleared my head, helped me to rela and hence this article is the result as well as continuing with Darklands or the Last Tiger, depending on which one fires up in my head.
Another of the things closest to my heart is photography so I was able to kill two birds with one stone as with writing you need a certain eye for photography. With writing and photography you see things a little differently, think sideways.
Now none of this is life changing stuff but maybe it will help someone out there stuck between the real world and the one they are trying to put down on paper. So before work tomorrow, I have to pay a quick visit to the walls of reality crumbling threatening us all. Well, that’s a story for the future. As always. stay tuned.
Saturday 17th September 2022 was the day I got the opportunity to tick another Walking Dead actor off my bucket list. Over that weekend, three of the cast appeared in Northern Ireland at Comic Con Northern Ireland out in the Eikon Centre Lisburn. Of course, I had to go.
I had seen them before at the Walker Stalker conventions over in london but had not met two of them. Enid was never in the comics and was created especially for the show as a love interest for Carl Grimes. When Carl died and the time jump took place, Enid became the doctor of the Hilltop. Her time would come to an end when she along with several others including Tara and Henry end up being kidnapped and decapitated by Alpha and the Whisperers. It was an iconic comic moment and the real life visual was no less shocking.
When I spoke to her she was so nice and chatty. She revealed she had only gotten the script of her death three days in advance. It had been shrouded in secrecy as King Ezekiel in the comics found his head on a spike. The television show diverged from that completely. Rick Grimes and Michonne both recently left the show so losing another big name charater so soon probabaly saved Ezekiel. She also signed the Walking Dead issue 144 featuring the heads on spikes moment picking the character that looked like her.
A great actress and a pleasure to talk to, Katelyn is a worthy addition to any convention.
On sale now from Amazon, Forbidden Planet and other outlets is the latest issue of Phantasmagoria Magazine featuring my tribute to the late Uhura herself, Nichelle Nichols and much, much more.
BIG INTERVIEWS BUMPER ISSUE! Randy Broecker, Adrian Cole, Anastasia Diakidi, Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, Paul Finch, Mick Garris, Stephen Jones, Kevin R. McNally, Roberto Segate and Stephen Volk!
Also: ChillerCon report, fiction, articles, reviews, artwork and much more!
On saturday the 17th of September I got to tick off a want to meet celebrity from my bucket list. Son of the 3rd Doctor Who and acclaimed actor in his own right, Sean Pertwee.
If all the rest of the guests had cancelled and he was the only one that turned up, I’d be a happy man. What I liked and what impressed my wife was that he was so down to Earth making real valued time for everyone that wanted to meet him. It was refreshing to see my wife tell him of the old prison that the Eikon centre in Lisburn is built upon. Sean didn’t know that and genuinely was interested in the history of the place. We also spoke about Doctor Who, his late Dad’s aspirations for him to be James Bond , something I’d wanted to ask him for years. he laughed as he told us the story behind that. It became evident very quickly that this man had no airs or graces and took a genuine interest in everyone he spoke to.Sean is a man with his feet on the ground and not swayed by the celebrity life. Despite his extensive career, I really wanted something from Dog Soldiers (the perfect werewolf movie) to sign but all i could find was the DVD or Blu Ray. So I brought Batman comic issue 77 in which Alfred was killed off, murdered at the hands of Bane which is pictured below. It also fitted in with his fellow cast members from Gotham in which Sean played the perfect Alfred and unlike any that have come before.
Sometimes you leave a celebrity feeling let down and just another piece of fodder to line their pockets but not this time. My wife left a fan that day and I left on a high. Let’s face it, it was his father’s era that helped forge the Time Warriors books so i finally got the chance to show my appreciation. Legend.
“Garth Ennis is a Northern Irish-American comics writer, best known for the Vertigo series Preacher with artist Steve Dillon, his nine-year run on Marvel Comics’ Punisher franchise, and The Boys with artist Darick Robertson.”
On a wet but warm Saturday on the 3rd of September, I ventured down to Forbidden Planet in Belfast to meet writer Garth Ennis. My friend is a huge fan of his and has educated me on just how they have toned down the Boys compared to the comics. I got several comics signed but mostly almost the full set of Batman Reptilian which for those of who lucky enough to have read it is gruesome but a really good read. When he comes back I will get the rest of the set signed and few others too.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 