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Vienna Comic Con promises to be ‘bigger and more galactic’

The second Vienna Comic Con (VIECC) takes place on November 19th-20th at the Messe Wien in the Austrian capital.

Published: 21 October 2016 12:04 CEST

Vienna Comic Con promises to be 'bigger and more galactic'

Cosplay star Yaya Han. Copyright: Yaya Han/Bryan Humphrey

American actress Jeri Ryan, known for her role as a ‘liberated’ Borg drone in Star Trek: Voyage, will be among the stars attending.

Other actors who’ll be at Vienna Comic Con include Welshman John Rhys-Davies, who played the role of Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, American Mark Pellegrino who portrays Lucifer in the fantasy horror TV series Supernatural, Gemma Whelan, who's known as Yara Greyjoy in the fantasy-drama series Game of Thrones, as well as Northern Irish actor and DJ Kristian Nairn who plays Hodor in Game of Thrones.

One of the highlights of Vienna Comic-Con promises to be the cosplay contest. The first prize is a trip to the US to next year's C2E2 – the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo – and automatic qualification to participate in the final, the Crown Championships of Cosplay.

For those of you who don’t know, cosplay (short for costume play) is a performance art in which cosplayers wear costumes representing a specific character from sources such as manga and anime, comic books, video games, and films and TV series. US-Cosplay star Yaya Han will join Vienna Comic Con this year and will be one of the judges of the Cosplay Championship.

There will also be the opportunity to attend panel events with prominent writers, such as Michael Vogt of Hitman.

This year, organiser Reed Exhibitions expects 25,000 fans to attend Vienna Comic Con and around 300 exhibitors.

There will be a chance for fans to meet the team behind Vienna Comic Con at the Wien Mitte shopping mall on Friday November 4th.

For more details go to the VIECC website: http://www.viecc.com/

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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