By Convention There Is Colour

It's a very sunny day. Now that it's midsummer, the nights up here are always very light until around 2-3 am. It does make it a bit difficult for me to sleep since it's quite different to my experience in the Central Belt. While we have a long holiday-seven whole weeks this year- I'd still say that most of the adult school community are on their knees, figuratively speaking. The presenteeism of service culture infected our school year long ago and while we should be involved in fewer academic activities, there's still an unspoken impetus to address the attainment gap.

Having said all that, we are still fitting in some less qualifications-oriented events. I'm taking some seniors to a debating workshop at the High School next week and on Thursday, we held our long-awaited first Comic Con.

We've had a comics club on Tuesday lunchtimes for the last two years and after El-Con at the town hall last summer, we decided that our own mini-con would be a good way to promote reading. I originally envisaged a Dads-and-Lads event around the release of Black Panther - that's how far back the idea goes. Our new HT had suggested we link in with the Primary Transition events in June and so we've been planning and building partnerships for a couple of months.

I'd like to thank the Art, Drama and HE departments; the janitors, the library assistants; the Comic Characters Club; the Warhammer club; Sarah Forster; Waterstone's and Yeadon's bookshops; El-Con; our Head Teacher and cosplaying staff ; P7 teachers in Elgin and beyond and the parents and kids who attended. The numbers far exceeded my imaginings, with the Escape Room being a huge hit.

We need to have a meeting to discuss what we might do differently but although it was a bit chaotic at times, I think it was a success in terms of parental engagement and I'd do it again next year- although maybe on a Saturday morning and certainly not in the last weeks of term!

EA's Comic Con was a chance to celebrate the work of the library and that rare thing, a full-time trained librarian in the school. It's forty years since I first used the Central Library in East Kilbride; I had already been a member of Strathaven Library for about a year and had just borrowed an Edgar Allen Poe collection at that time, inspired by the BBC2 Horror Double Bills. In EK, I discovered more Moorcock , more ERB, Fritz Leiber and Lin Carter's Thongor books. I was reading Thongor Against The Gods forty years ago today for the first time and I just bought an issue of Marvel's Creatures on The Loose the other day. ( As I've posted before, I've been buying a lot of Marvels from the 70s lately, intending to get a spinner rack- but that's a story for next time).

Thongor is best described perhaps as Conan transposed to ERB's Barsoom; a barbarian hero-god with little of REH's Cimmerian hero's pragmatism and savagery but a wide streak of Flash Gordon's chivalry. Thongor battles deviant Druid priests, man-eating plants and dinosaurs in derivative and repetitive stories, rescuing his bland and beautiful princess, like most of Burroughs' heroes. For all that though, I am fond of Carter's purple prose- his lurid and baroque descriptions of horror-filled cities and Lovecraftian demons, wizards lairs and trackless jungles always delight me. I'm a big fan of Tower at the End of Time, The Black Star and the shameless John Carter pastiche, Jandar of Callisto .I've also just bought his allegedly best pulp novel, Lost World of Time. 

Creatures on the Loose began life as Tower of Shadows, the first rip-off of Joe Orlando's "weird mystery" titles for DC. It became a sword-and-planet vehicle for Gullivar Jones, then Thongor during 1973 and finally a horror sci-fi title for Conway's Man-Wolf.

I own two other issues for their Kane covers. The stories are by Val Mayerik and the legendary Gardner Fox, whose Sword-and-sorcery pastiches I discussed last summer.

https://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2018/07/barbarity.html

They're trashy Bronze Age comics- pale imitations of the award-winning Conan. The most interesting thing about the series  is seeing Thongor becoming a redhead like Killraven, without any explanation.

Our school library also hosts our monthly staff book group. The great advantage of such a group is the way it directs you to literature you might never have heard of or chosen for yourself. In recent weeks, I've enjoyed Circe by Madeline Miller and Ordinary People by Diana Evans but I've raved about The Overstory by Richard Powers. At over 600 pages, it's a sprawling read but almost a psychedelic experience. I felt I was having my mind expanded as I read it and I was reminded of themes from Moore's Swamp Thing and Englehart's Celestial Madonna.

It's about 41 years since I first visited Morecambe on holiday with my family where I lucked out with Marvel Grab Bags and a Treasury Edition and actually saw the original Parker Brothers "Rom the Space Knight" toy. More about that next time, perhaps.

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