A Look Back At 2018 And A Look Forward To 2019

Plans Ahead For Tripwire

2018 was another big year on Tripwire and its editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look back and teases a few things people can expect for 2019…

2018 was a pretty good year for us at Tripwire. We managed to do a number of new things:

•We were a major part of the first ever Portsmouth Comic Con back in May. We brought guests like Walter and Louise Simonson, Shawn Martinbrough, Cully Hamner, Gene Ha, Ben Templesmith and quality British guests like Frank Quitely, Sean Phillips and Chris Weston to the show. We enjoyed being a part of the show and it was fun to utilise our years of experience.

•We got to do some new interviews with great subjects like Brian Michael Bendis, Chuck Palahniuk and Jeremy Mann.

•We have increased the amount of originated material on the site and as a result, the traffic on the site has increased significantly. Related to that, we increased the number of contributors to our site including the addition of Stephen Dalton, Tim Cundle, who has given us quite a shot in the arm, and James Mottram. Regular contributors James DC and Tim Hayes were there too making a decent contribution.

•We visited quite a few shows over the course of 2018 including Lucca Comics and Games for the first time in Italy, New York Comic Con as ever, London Film and Comic Con in Olympia plus MCM Comic Con in Excel twice this year. The convention landscape changed a lot in 2018 and it has been interesting to see that.

So we did achieve quite a few things last year but we have no intention of sitting on our laurels for 2019. Plans for next year include:

•Doing a great deal more with our YouTube channel. From the first half of January, there will be a new programme up at least once a week hopefully where we discuss all things genre movie and TV, giving people primers to many of the biggest new blockbusters and high-profile TV shows coming in 2019.

•We shall also be offering more brand new, exclusive content on our Patreon campaign. Once a week, there will be a brand new piece of writing or video or audio interview, so people will need to check this out starting the beginning of January. Here’s the URL https://www.patreon.com/tripwiremagazine

•May 2019 sees a second Portsmouth Comic Con and we are involved once again with a number of international guests confirmed so far including Marvel and DC legend Roy Thomas, Batman writer Steve Englehart , Image artist Tomm Coker and Star Wars artist Russell Walks. It will also feature many top UK talents like Sean Phillips, Chris Weston, Laurence Campbell and more. We are excited to be involved with this again. We are also putting on the first ever Tripwire Awards, which people can vote for now.

•May should also see the publication of our first ever interview book, featuring our classic interviews with Alan Moore. This will be published by one of the biggest US comic publishers and an official announcement will be made in January.

•We shall be continuing to increase our original material with writers like Tim Cundle, Scott Braden, Tim Hayes, Stephen Dalton and others like James Mottram and James DC giving us exclusive reviews, interviews and features.

2018 was the fourth year that Tripwire has existed as a website and we are very excited about our plans for next year. Thanks for reading and thanks for visiting the site

Joel Meadows
editor-in-chief Tripwire