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With Further Ado #217: TRIPWIRE Turns Thirty

With Further Ado #217: TRIPWIRE Turns Thirty

Posted on by Ed Catto

Those thirtieth birthdays come up fast. One minute you’re celebrating your first legal drink with friends. The next minute, you blink and you’re thirty. Where does the time go?  (Spoiler alert: it only gets worse, gang.)

But we all should remind ourselves how lucky we are to celebrate these milestone birthdays. And as fans, we’re ALL lucky that TRIPWIRE magazine is celebrating its 30th Birthday.

Many talented folks have been involved in Tripwire over the years. It’s been a groundbreaking UK magazine that always seemed to really “know its stuff”. But for me it all comes back to enthusiastic passion of my friend, Joel Meadows. He has a vision, and like the very best (and the most creative) entrepreneurs, he found ways to make it happen.  Here’s the official backgrounder on TRIPWIRE for those who are less familiar with it:

From 1992 to 2011 (with a  short break between 2003 and 2007) TRIPWIRE published over fifty issues of our magazine that covered comics, film, TV, novels and related media. We interviewed everyone from Stan Lee to Mike Mignola, Alan Moore to Joss Whedon. In 2013 we decided to wrap up our physical publishing programme and switch to online/ digital. We produced a few digital editions but it got very hard to get readers to pay for content so we decided to have another rethink. This website is the result of that rethink.

Continue reading “With Further Ado #217: TRIPWIRE Turns Thirty” →

With Further Ado #86: Interview with Joel Meadows of Tripwire Magazine

With Further Ado #86: Interview with Joel Meadows of Tripwire Magazine

Posted on by Ed Catto

Tripwire was one of those magazines about comics that always made you feel smarter after you read it. Or maybe that conversion happened right when you bought it. It was a gorgeous magazine and always looked smart too.   I’m excited to say that Joel Meadows, the man behind Tripwire, is at it again and Tripwire is returning. I had a lot of questions for Joel, and he had a lot of thoughtful answers.

Ed Catto: The news that Tripwire is returning is just fantastic, Joel. But first, can you tell me, or remind me, how it all started?

Joel Meadows: Tripwire began way back in March 1992 – or actually it began the previous year. We published one issue of a magazine we called The Review, which was a very basic fanzine that I did with someone I went to school with. We printed about 100 copies, but it was fun to do. So, we came up with Tripwire in February 1992 and published our first issue in March 1992. At that point, I was doing it with a neighbour of mine and someone I went to sixth form college with. We launched the same weekend as Vertigo.

EC: I loved those Tripwire issues. In your opinion, what made it special and unique among all the Geek Culture magazines?

JM: When it started, we were a lot more sarcastic and a lot more irreverent towards our material. I was only nineteen when it began, and I learned a hell of a lot as we continued to publish issues. We had a very British attitude to our material, which initially was comics and music, but we dropped the music and replaced it with film and TV in 1999. We were prepared to take chances, and we were the first place to cover the Vertigo creators, like Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Peter Milligan, and Frank Quitely. I was a big fan of former UK magazine Speakeasy, and I think that had a big influence on me when it came to Tripwire. Continue reading “With Further Ado #86: Interview with Joel Meadows of Tripwire Magazine” →