I was born Rawle Edgar Glendon Austin, in Streatham, London, UK.

My parents were teachers originating from the country of Guyana in South America.

I have two younger brothers and sister and we were raised in a strict but loving household.

Education and self discipline were pushed heavily by our parents in our childhood and a lot of the spare time I had was happily spent reading fiction.

My love of comic books sprung out of my general passion for reading.

I devoured all the fantasy and science fiction tales that I could lay my hands on during my school days.

Looking back, it was probably fuelled by a desire for escapism from the strict regime at home.

An early inner rebellion manifesting itself in positive achievement and helping others.

A personal trait that still exists today.

The seeds for business activities were also sown in my childhood as my father was a landlord which led me to 16 years experience of property management from the age of nineteen. That was a character building exercise if ever there was one!

The Hidden People saga has recently been brought back into print for the enjoyment of others and would make for a great series of movies.

Truly fantastic writing by Sheila K McCullagh.

It was truly the original Harry Potter of it's day and well ahead of it's time.

Another favourite influence at the time was the BBC TV science fiction show Doctor Who starring Tom Baker in the title role.

The stories of the ancient Greek myths also had a great impact and I loved reading all those fantastic tales of heroism.

In particular the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice which you can read in the The Growlerverse section on the main menu.

The recent film Troy was an adaptation of a famous ancient Greek myth.

During this time I discovered some old black and white comic reprints of American publishers Marvel Comics and DC Comics while at school.

Judge Dredd is the U.K.'s premier superhero creation, published by Rebellion.

You can learn more here.

The fact that many of the writers and artists who cut their teeth working on those 2000AD titles now help to create many of the superhero comic books that I enjoy today is quite ironic.

Other early comic book stories read and enjoyed back in the day were Herge's Tintin and Goscinny and Uderzo's Asterix.

I read J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit but never got round to reading The Lord of the Rings.

Peter Jackson's recent adaption of this book was pure joy to behold and will have to read the book at some stage.

I always preferred Marvel over DC in those days, just something more exciting about the characters and the more coherent universe.

Moving on from the newsagents I found specialist comic book shops all over London which were paradise to a major fan like myself.

Later, with a fellow collector and good friend, Julian Martin, went to a comic book mart for the first time.

Comic books have been a constant part of my life since then and have lead to some memorable highlights.

This included a tour of the Marvel Comics offices were I met a few of the creators who were around at that time.

This cemented my ties to Marvel Comics and they have always been first choice to this day, though my tastes have broadened considerably since those early times. Check out Image Comics.

It was around this time I met my first love (she knows who she is) and what followed next was seven years of the most incredible life experiences and memories including visits to China and New Zealand.

This was a dream come true for a fan like me and seeing the whole delivery, display and return process, of comic books, from the inside was a revelation.

That was a great time in my life and made many good friends there, must say hi to Shannon Ward, Ceej (Cyril Julien) and Simon Draper.

It was during this period that Growler was born!

I left there in mid 1998 for a job in the Civil Service.

My reading tastes have now taken me to business, financial educational and historical books.

I have to recommend, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It's a great read.

Another huge influence in my life has been listening to music.

Especially, but not exclusively, the sounds of positive urban RnB and Hip-Hop from the early 90's up to now.

These have been hallmarks of innovation.

The following producers/performers have really laid the groundwork of this vibrant scene by creating fresh sounds and, in most cases, are continuing to break new ground in music and creativity.

Thanks to my good mate Danny Herbert whose support has been invaluable and contributed columns under the guise of the Hackney Herb & Danny Coolshoes.

Thanks also to Shazia Rasul whose throwaway line "Why don't you start a website?" was the catalyst to getting this started.

And a massive thank you to my brother Colin whose computer science skills taught me the basics of uploading stuff online.

I'm a fan of Bollywood, especially the films of Kareena Kapoor.

In 2004 (until late 2007) I started writing film reviews for U.K. based Chinatown Magazine. You can read my movie reviews right here on this site in the Watching Dragon, Hidden Growler column.

I have to mention and thank my good friend Liang Yan (her English name is Leanne).

I met her in China in 2004 while teaching English in TangXia Town, GuangDong Province, China.

The top line 'Yang Chen de Shi Jie' means 'Yang Chen's World'.

The next line 'bang1 zhu4 ta1 ren2, xiang3 shou4 sheng1 huo2' means 'helping people, enjoying life'.

I can't forget all the other great friends I made in China including Cai Zhi Hua (Irene), Wu Chun li (Wendy), Lu Qinming (James) and Yin Min (Michel).

I left the Civil Service in early 2007 and returned to China in late 2007 for three months.

I met many more friends during this time including Lai Li Hui (Lauren) and Yu Jing Fen (Fenmy).

I've recently begun a recent passion of learning to play the violin and am continuing to learn Mandarin Chinese.