BugPete No More

Those who know me, especially those within comics, will probably be aware that the BugPowder website has been something of an albatross around my neck for the last couple of years. BugPowder is, amongst other things, a weblog for the UK small press comics community, of which I have been a relatively major player at various points over the last 15 years. Originally BugPowder was a mail order service running from 1996 to 2000 and the site was intended to be an online shop along these lines but that never transpired and then Blogger came along. Since then my involvement with the scene has waxed and waned. Sometimes I’m incredibly enthusiastic, other times I really couldn’t care, but BugPowder was always sitting there, regardless of my levels of interest, demanding to be updated. Since 2001 I’ve gotten other people involved but, understandably, they often had their own projects on the go which required their attention. And seeing as when I’d started BugPowder it was as my own thing rather than joining up with someone more established at the time, this made sense. Recently I started thinking about grooming people to take over but the one guy who looked like he was a good candidate went off to become a Wikipedia Admin before I twigged, which was bloody typical.

So here I am with a site I feel obliged to look after but really don’t have a huge amount of interest in doing so. I recently put out a call for new contributors and when it appeared that one of them a) was posting a lot of stuff, b) was relatively new to the scene, c) appeared to be likely to stick around for a while, d) didn’t appear to have any other major projects on the go and e) wasn’t stupid (not that anyone else posting is stupid, but it’s an important criteria) I consulted with my man Jez and made the offer.

From this day on Matthew Badham owns BugPowder.

Which is a kinda weird statement because technically Jez owns the site because he pays for it and I own the name in the sense that most small pressers of a certain age think of me as “BugPowder Pete” and will no doubt continue to do so.

But Matthew’s running the site now. It’s his responsibility. Not mine.

An analogy I used when talking to Matthew was how old fanzines in the 70s and 80s, such as Fantasy Advertiser, would change hands but retain a list in the masthead of “Editors Emeritus” – those who used to run the zine but have now moved on. I’m now the Webmaster Emeritus of BugPowder, available for sage advice and the occasional contribution but with no real say in how it develops. And from Matthew’s point of view he has a site with a good pedigree which he can keep running as it is and/or can develop into whatever he wants, with whoever he wants. And that’s the essential, exciting part of all this. I’ve always been aware that BugPowder has an enormous potential to grow and develop into a really useful resource if only I gave enough of a shit about it to do so.

The way we’re going to run this is Matthew will become the public face of BugPowder (once I get around to editing the About sections of the site) and any queries will go to him. Initially he won’t know what to do with them so he’ll come to me and I’ll explain it but eventually he’ll be able to run everything on his own with no hand-holding, probably around the time of the Caption convention in August, and we’ll do the final hand-over.

Interestingly I don’t know much about Matthew. He wrote a long article about small press comics in the Judge Dredd Megazine recently which showed he knew his stuff, and I think he’s connected with the Engine Comics guys on some level, which is good as Barry Renshaw is, from my perspective, one of the key movers on the scene these days. But he’s not part of my extended “gang”, and that’s a good thing. New blood and all that.

As for me, I’m free!