138 Showmasters Glasgow Film and Comic Con – 22nd July 2023

	Location
	Braehead Arena, Glasgow 09:00 -18:00
	Mission Report
	I’ve said for a long time now that I was only ever three bad troops away from quitting the hobby.  Over the years we’ve got to two in a row then had a couple of decent events that have swung it back in the other direction.  With the two immediately previous being fairly bland affairs and my history of contempt for the annual tedium of this event I was clearly stacking the deck in favour of walking away.  It was such a done deal I wouldn’t even have bothered turning up to clinch it, but I’d already gone to the trouble of growing the beard…   At the organisers instance costumers are expected to be out for the early bird queue at 09:00 on the Saturday.  As I’ve previously belaboured, these people regularly attend these events, they’ve seen us multiple times and have no interest in doing anything other than not lose their place in the line.  So it is, the first two hours of the day are a colossal waste of time.   The general entry begins at 11:00 and the wider public are always more interested in our presence.  Oddly there was no signage indicating what the event actually was, leading to members of the public stopping to ask but apparently all the tickets had sold out online in advance so possibly this would have been unnecessary.   The session until lunchtime passed pleasantly and quickly enough with a couple of brief sessions outside to cool down as the aircon in the shopping centre seemed to be off and the ceiling vents if they were open, weren’t providing much respite from the heat.   When it came around the afternoon was somewhat quieter, even before it got towards the 15:00 mark when some of the stall holders looked to be closing up shop.  By the back of 16:00 it had gotten so quiet we were able to march the entire group around the hall without any hassle, occasionally being stopped along the way by latecomers looking for a last minute photo before we called it a day.   Early start aside the event succeeded in not being egregiously bad, but failed in offering any encouragement to be overly keen to repeat the experience in general any time soon…
	Personnel
	Visual Archive

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114 Showmasters Glasgow Film and Comic Con – 18th August 2019

Location
intu Braehead, Glasgow 10:00 – 17:00

Personnel

Adi Gallia	Lynn McDavid	Jedi Master
Chewbacca	Paul Smith	Wookie
Jessek	Julie Sword	Rebel Pilot
Kit Fisto	Brian McDavid	Jedi Master
Ko-jo	Andi Taylor	Ewok
Kyle Venson	Fraser Stevenson	Rebel Pilot
Obi-Wan Kenobi	Alex Dick	Jedi Master
Sabine	Gillian Mackay	Fringe
RLUK	Mark McCreadie	Crew

Mission Report
“Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant good afternoon to you, wherever you may be, I’m Vin Scully and it’s Alien Day here at Braehead Arena…”

The exciting public debut of three new RLUK alien costumes help fight back the tiredness following all day Saturday at the event (full disclosure, there would have been an additional alien because I had my Jawa with me but by the time I was sure Julie was coping in the Quarren mask my enthusiasm for kitting up was sitting somewhere in the lower, lower, sub-basement level of the shopping center) which was fortunate because the public attendance surely wasn’t of sufficient volume to help perk the proceedings up.

The start of the of the day was spent hanging about the dealer hall waiting for Garrick Hagon to be available to have a group photo with the pilots afer which it was out to the food court area. I don’t think I saw a member of the public show any interest in our presence until just before 11:00 which made the morning session a long, slow, slog until lunchtime.

After a hurried lunch I was due on the Rebel Legion table. I mentioned in my field report for Saturday that the UKG table had a decent location at the entrance but got little attention and unfortunately for the RL (and Mando Mercs) the table was about 3/4 of the length of the event hall away from that entrance, down a side corridor towards the public locker area. While it was admittedly positioned outside the door to the room being used for photo shoots which saw a lot of passing traffic, these people were only concerned with getting to and from their celebrity photosession. Indeed in the hour I was there the only non-member who looked at the tables or spoke was the eternally lovely Katy Manning who offered to turn an X-Wing Helmet into one of the lampshades she makes. I’d love to know what the conversion rate is on those who stop by the tables who go onto become cleared members of the respective costume groups because it’s a definite drain on the number of crew and costumers available per day for what seem like a real low benefit.

Following my table time it was back out to the shopping centre where the usual suspects were making a last push to the bitter end of the event. Although the event was officially on till 17:00 by about 15:45 the centre was emptying and some of the stall holders had already packed away. With only Paul and Julie left kitted up we elected to take a last walk round the hall itself (more exactly one of us walked with his long legs and stilts, others trotted quickly behind in an attempt to keep up) before calling it quits…

Visual Archive

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113 Film and Comic Con Glasgow – 17th August 2019

Location
intu Braehead, Glasgow 09:00 – 17:00

Personnel

BH-7240	Julie Sword	Greedo
DZ-0576	Ian McMillan	Tusken Raider
DZ-91810	Lynn McDavid	Jawa
ID-14527	Bev Duffy	Officer
IG-5780	Glenn Stuart	Imperial Gunner
JD3D-6598	Iain Hamilton	Dredd 3d Street Judge
SL-77314	Alan Dalgleish	Darth Vader
TB-29578	Sheraz Khwaja	Biker Scout
TB-89909	Jenn Mair	Biker Scout
TD-35500	Brian Hannah	Sandtrooper
TK-6084	Stuart Thompson	Stormtooper ANH Stunt
TK-7336	Alex Bourke	Stormtooper ANH Stunt
TK-14520	Mark Duffy	Stormtooper ANH Stunt
TK-18910	Brian McDavid	Stormtooper: First Order
UK-0000	Paula-Jane Bourke	Spotter
UK-23306	Iain Dickie	Spotter
XP-6275	Mark McCreadie	Batman/X-Wing Pilot

Before we start…
There’s a couple of photos of The Blacklist and Greystoke star Christopher Lambert wielding a sword towards a First Order Stormtrooper. They’re good photos and all, but…
I’m just bothered slightly by…
Well…
Darth Vader was there and he’s pretty famous for two things, 1) bad asthma and 2) having a laser sword…
So why choose a TK instead of…
Y’know…
I mean he’s got to be in the top 15 “people famous for using swords” list, right..? And that’s before you even consider…
Like…
I mean what’s even the connection a sword has to Christopher Lambert to start with? He’s most famous for wearing a rain hat and being Dexter’s dad*…

Mission Report
There’s a good reason Julie and I rarely troop at the same event and then only very specific costumes and that reason was clearly demonstrated by the extra 30 minutes it took to get us both out in costume on the Saturday morning. I’ve touched on the ambivalent nature of our relationship with the Early Bird queue denizens in the past so the delay was probably no great loss to proceedings.

I’ve been meaning to attend this event in the Returns suit since… before I owned one, but a combination of my indifference to spending my weekend standing about a food court and… No, actually that’s pretty much the entire reason now I think about it… meant I never actually got round to it in years past so for the first half of the day that’s exactly what I did.
Unfortunately this meant that the first half of the day was spent correcting people who wrongly assumed I was a cosplayer of their acquaintance and being mistakenly caught in some fairly in-depth conversations who seemed to believe I was joking about that!

A later lunch meant there was some time to help spot in the early afternoon prior to a stint at table duty. I’ve done this before at the same event where it seemed slightly more productive, and while I’d have said that this time round the table was in better location for catching passers-by, weirdly I’m fairly sure I could count those that paid the slightest bit of notice in the hour that I was there on the fingers of one hand. I’m not sure how this reflects on the experiences of the others over the weekend, but it seems odd to be reducing the number of costumers or spotters available to undertake this if it’s not a productive use of time…

Following the table stint there was a mad rush to get kitted up again to make the debut of my Rebel Command X-Wing Pilot costume in time for the RL/501st group photo they’d planned, after which the few of us remaining in costume returned to the shopping centre to allow the last vestiges of the public to get their final snaps before getting my first opportunity to actually wander round the event hall!

Visual Archive

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*This is a Raiden/Mortal Kombat: Annihilation joke don’t @ me about the Highlander franchise…

81 Glasgow Film & Comic Con 2016 – 20th August 2016

Location
Braehead Arena : INTU Braehead, Glasgow 09:00 – 17:00

Mission Report
In all honesty, I was not expecting to Troop again this year, least of all at the event formerly known as Collectormania Glasgow which (as we got no charity contribution for doing and rather boringly involves standing about in costume in a shopping centre) I’ve never shared other peoples fascination with as a gig. Fortunately for me though my attendance on this occasion was in the role of Spotter which largely relieved any potential tedium and as it turned out, a large part of the day was spent behind the ISS display table – greatly benefitting my plantar fasciitis.

I’ve never had any real interest in being parked behind this display in the past but oddly I found it a fairly enjoyable way to interact with the public while not in costume which is usually the anthesis of acting as a spotter (this event aside, where various punters seemed insistent on asking me questions about where to queue and how much entry was. You’d think after nine years in the same venue Showmasters would have learned to signpost their event and have staff available to deal with these type of queries…) and served as something of a relief to the stresses of trying to keep an eye on costumers who were wandering off unsupervised due to the scarcity of members fulfilling that duty.
Anyway, I know the display table causes some controversy at events in terms of keeping it manned, but I’d be willing to do so again even if 80% of the information I gave out concerning the helmets on display was entirely made up!

Fortunately for my wallet, none of the items on sale, nor guests, were of particular interest to me (although I was somewhat awestruck by what a gentleman Colin Baker was on occasion I bumped into him briefly backstage) but clearly the presence of Ray Park was a big draw for some of our crew. He seemed a pleasant enough chap, and genuinely flattered by the Honorary Member presentation that we performed for him, although I suspect in hindsight he regrets his subsequent attempt to impale a poor unsuspecting female helper through the head with a runaway lightsaber blade.

All in all it was a good day, had I not already made other arrangements I’d have given serious consideration to returning for the Sunday. It may not have done anything to convince me to play dress up again any time soon, but it was nice to see the squad in action once more…!

Visual Archive

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69 A1 Toys May The 4th Event – 4th May 2014

Location
INTU Braehead, Glasgow 12:00 – 16:00

Mission Report
So a (literal) long weekend of trooping comes to an end with our attendance at Braehead on behalf of A1 Toys. To be honest even if this had been the best event ever it was probably still going to come as an anti-climax after the fun Lego Store events and coming on the heels of two 14-hour days in and around costumes even if there had been more to it than effectively manning a photo stand it would have been hard going to complete.
Mercifully though it was fairly short and being old hands at shopping centre events we were canny enough to ask to change in the access corridors behind the scenes as opposed to trying to get kitted up one at a time in the tiny (and bulging at the seams) stock room behind the shop.

Not that any of this was the fault of the staff who looked after us well enough, but it just seemed slightly un focused as an event, being positioned three-quarters of the centre away from the shop we were promoting (which itself seemed to only acknowledge the May 4th event by offering 50% off toy light sabres) and there not even being any flyers for the staff to hand out to promote their brand with our presence. None the less they seemed to indicate the shop had been busier than normal which was attributed to our presence, but it just wasn’t the type of event I’d have enjoyed even if I had been feeling up to it…

Visual Archive

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