No, he never did, and there was no intention to. This was before we had any idea we'd be able to actually afford an american guest one year; and I'm not sure if we'd've chosen Joe Sacco anyway, as someone like James Kochalka would have been more appropriate in many ways.

Sacco was a guest at that UKCAC and that's the only time I've ever met him; andypop also met him through work more recently, when the big buzz about his Palestine book was around.

I might have written something for somewhere, but not terribly officially. I wasn't in the best of moods and I was staying with my brother, so was slightly torn between comics & socialising with family. I seem to recall I did have my eye on Sacco for more than one reason but abruptly switched into a different mode at about 9 pm before I even got loads of heavy drinking in, and went off to hang out with my brother instead.

This was in the first year or so after I'd split up with Andy, if I recall rightly, and I wasn't always terribly settled.

No, but he was one of the guests at UKCAC (UK Comics Art Convention) 1998, held in Manchester (this strip is about that). I didn't go to his talk, but Jenni managed to snag him and buy him a drink so we fetched up chatting to him in the bar. He's a very interesting guy, and I'd certainly recommend hearing him talk if you get the chance -- his comics are great, too.

A little before the internet arrived and made such things kind of obsolete, I was running (with damiancugley) a listings zine for lesbian, gay, queer, trans, feminist and grrl zines (and other stuff along the same lines). zines = short print run photocopied booklets, usually about quite personal stuff.

People got listed by sending us stuff, and we got sent a lot of strange and distressing stuff -- long rambling letters about what lesbians "really need", an incredibly bad porn script, anguished poetry by self-harming teens ... and the NAMBLA starter pack. Lucky us ... but it wasn't especially obscene (presumably because it was being exported, they'd checked its legality in both countries) until you started reading it and caught the subtext, ugh. We didn't list them -- most of our people were young isolated queer kids, so it was important to keep predatory elements off the list.

But I kept everything -- hoping against hope that someday someone'll start a zine archive -- but the way things are going it'll probably have to be me!

.... I've seen the Gingers somewhere recently, in fact. Damian's shelf? Loads of good stuff, I have. One day I'll make a museum.

-- it's one of my collection of comics about lesbians by men. I've been sent lots over the years. Still, I guess if your fetish-cluster is Star Wars, lady body builders, lesbianism and comics, what are you going to do?