STGCC 2014: More Hot Guests Means More Hunky Biceps for Diva!

Just as fans were about to calm down from squealing after fan favourite Humberto Ramos was announced as one of STGCC 2014's guests, organizer Reed Exhibitions pumps up the adrenaline by adding 12 more names on the guest roll!

Returning to our shores will be one of Red Dot Diva's most favourite, most awesomely-bicepstuous artist and New Times Best-Selling writer - David Mack.

At last year's STGCC, David's booth was so hot it was radiating like red Kryptonite. Fans stood by for several minutes, just to admire at him drawing "live", and he sold off most of his books and art prints. Red Dot Diva would know - she was helping him out at his booth. (Read her experience here.)

Together with Eisner-Award artist Cameron Stewart, the two will be representing part of the team of "Fight Club 2" - a 10-issue graphic novel series just announced last week at San Diego Comic-Con.  "Fight Club 2" continues the story of the popular 1999 movie by Chuck Palahniuk which starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. David Mack will be cover artist for "Fight Club 2", while Cameron Stewart will pull his weight doing the story's artwork.

Cameron Stewart has also been in the headlines recently for giving Batgirl a practical and modern new look that has pleased many fans around the globe. Together with co-writer Brenden Fletcher, artist Babs Tarr and colourist Jodie Bellaire, Cameron will be writing "Batgirl #35", beginning October 2014. Red Dot Diva already knows that there will be waves of Batgirl-Echolocation-like Squees when Cameron hits the STGCC showfloor. Also, cosplayers - get your costumes ready! Like NAO!!

In addition to graphic novels, Cameron's range of work includes the Shuster-Award winning noir mystery-thriller webcomic "Sin Titulo", and providing drawings for the animation used in Canadian singer Skye Sweetnam's music video for "Human".

And wait, dear Western pop-culture fans, there's MORE.

Pic by Luigi Novi

French artist Olivier Coipel will also be making his way to STGCC! (-insert loud gasps-)

In 2007, Olivier Coipel started working with "Babylon 5" writer J. Michael Straczynski for the Marvel book "Thor", and also designed the look for the God of Thunder. He was later involved with Brian Michael Bendis for "Siege" and was penciller for "X-Men" with writer Brian Wood, amongst other Marvel projects.

Word is, he is involved in another hush-hush Marvel project. Olivier had to cancel his appearance at Comic-Con recently, so one wonders if a special announcement about his next project will be made at STGCC instead??

"My Little Pony" fans and bronies, rejoice! Andy Price, the lead penciller and ink artist for the insanely popular "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" comic by IDW will be coming to Red Dot Island too! The first issue of the series had over 100,000 copies at pre-sale, which led it to be the first indie comic to beat DC and Marvel in the last 9 years. It was the only one out of two comics which were non-DC or non-Marvel that was in the Top 100 comics sold in 2012. No mean feat, indeed!

Adding to the team of toy designers visiting the convention this year is Frank Kozik, the creator of the iconic Labbit character. Vinyl toy collectors know him well from his work with KidRobot for his popular Smorkin’ Labbit series. Frank is also known for designing poster artwork for rock bands. These bands include Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Butthole Surfers, Blink 182 and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Then, there is yet another returning artist who has gained a large following in this region. He is none other than Harvey Tolibao, who was guest in STGCC two years ago in 2012. Harvey has worked with both DC and Marvel in various projects like the "Green Arrow" and "Silver Surfer" series . His next project will be the "Ghost" series with Dark Horse.

On the manga/ anime side of things, famous seiyuu (voice actor) Tomokazu Sugita will make his first appearance in South-East Asia. Tomokazu Sugita has voiced many roles in a range of Japanese anime and games like Ragna the Bloodedge from fighting game "BlazBlue", Gintoki of the popular "Gintama" and Kyon from "Haruhi Suzumiya".

Red Dot Diva is not familiar with the anime/ manga world, but she thinks this cosplayer project called "Sleepless Child" which was launched in May 2014 seems intriguing. This collaboration of "Cosplay x Illustration" comprises of two personalities - illustrator Shirahane Nao (AKA Dmyo) from Korea, and Taiwanese cosplayer Stayxxxx. Stayxxx is a female cosplayer famous for gender-bending and doing male characters. In "Sleepless" Child, she will take the form of Eiji Seiun, the male partner of Mirai-chan, who is actually the official mascot character of Culture Japan.

And if anime/ manga lovers are clamouring for more guests to fan love during the convention, the following guests will also be heading to STGCC - writer of Corpse Party Makoto Kedouin (KEDWIN), independent engineer DJ haLRu (MONOMIND), and music-composer estha (GEOGRAPHIC).

From what Red Dot Diva has learned, this is not the end of the STGCC 2014 guest announcements! She happened to get wind of another returning guest when she was at Comic-Con last week, and the official word is that there will be MORE Biceps ... er.. she means, names... waiting to be announced!

So while one's holding onto their seats for the next guest list, Red Dot Diva recommends releasing some tension by doing the Happy Nerd Dance and Joyous Geek-Squee for what seems to be a really exciting STGCC coming up in just 5 weeks!

AHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!