Why? Well my mother's lineage is from Scotland, (Clan Chattan), so the Scottish Highlands are calling me even now... I hear the bagpipes playing even way over here in Southern California... LOL!

Even though these past two weeks has seen mostly blog posts on the 2009 NYCC that just ended Sunday... We have actually been blogging about more Comic Cons and Pop Culture Conventions outside of North America, because so many of our newest Blog readers are from outside the USA.  We also wanted to include areas that could be combined for Cons and tourism at the same time for travelers interested in seeing beautiful places before or after the cons...

Plus this Comic Expo in Inverness is scheduled as a 'Valentines Special' as it occurs the 14th and 15th February of 2009!  A beautiful area to be in after Con hours!

Details for the Con are as follows:

The Con's Guest List includes:

Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll is the author of fifteen published books, including the New Heroes series for younger readers. He has also written for 2000 AD, FutureQuake, SFX, Judge Dredd Megazine and Solar Wind.

Gary Erskine
Gary has been illustrating for nineteen years and contributed character designs and storyboards for television, commercials and games development for every major comics company, as well as licensed properties such as Star Wars, Terminator, The Mask, Shrek, Madagascar and Transformers. He is currently working with Garth Ennis on the new Dan Dare.

Alan Grant
Alan Grant is best known for his comic work on Batman and Judge Dredd. He was the only UK writer on the hit BBC TV kids' show Ace Lightning and is currently writing the script for an animated movie.

Leah Moore
Was previously blogged about as attending this convention. However, I have been messaged February 7th by Leah that she will NOT be attending unfortunately.

Frank Quitely
Widely considered to be one of the top comic-book artists in the business, Frank has drawn All Star Superman, We3, New X-Men and JLA: Earth 2, (all written by his frequent collaborator Grant Morrison), Missionary Man and Shimura (both for Judge Dredd Megazine), The Authority, Sandman and Batman: The Scottish Connection, among many others.

The first Hi Ex Comic Expo had programs and workshops throughout both days. There are planned programs for the 2009 Expo at this time also, as can be seen by going to:

www.hi-ex.co.uk/events.htm

Additionally there will be exhibitors and creators there with their publications for sale.

Hi-Ex is organised and run by my Facebook Friends, artist Vicky Stonebridge,  and also 'Futurequake' editor Richmond Clements!