Sunday, November 02, 2003

My plan was to give people fliers at the London Festival, perhaps even get some sketches.
BUT it soon became clear that there was not room to move in the small convention hall, and the bar became much more alluring.

Erm, I was side-tracked your honour.

Actually, I did give a lot of the fliers out, but whether any new contributors will come forward is another matter.

On a brighter note, the London Festival was a great experience.

I hope that the positive response to the event allows for an even bigger show next year (not just in terms of size of venue, although that was my only grumble this year). As the traditional comic mart (literally a hundred yards away from the Holiday Inn) today did not seem as busy as usual. It is a shame that certain other organisations could not dovetail their events into what Kev F Sutherland laboured hard to set up on Saturday.
Mentioning no Maus signings.

Jonathan Ross was an absolute gem. And I intend to tell him so by the magic of old-fasioned mail - may have to deliver it by hand to the BBC though.

The Viz talk was not as well attended as I expected, but there were a fair number of people who only attended the con for them judging by what I overheard.

I've just thought of another grumble. Directed at the hotel or possibly gents with bladder problems. The flooding of the one toilet that was available in the function area is rather annoying. It was still out of action today.

Friday, October 31, 2003

In 2001, I put together Just One Page an art contribution-driven charity comic book, where each page began with the same three panels: an alien comes to earth looking for a hero and mistakenly ends up at a comic convention. More of that later (or earlier ?), but this is the story of the second Just One Page.

I missed the final UKCAC, which used to be the top comics event in the UK, where Vertigo would hunt and trap British writers and comics artists from far and wide would supplicate themselves at the feet of Tharg.

But a few years later, Kev F Sutherland came on the scene with his Comics Festival near the beautiful spa waters of Avon, in Bristol. Having a passing interest, I took a day trip to the event, where I met Marcia Allass of Sequential Tart and Lee "Budgie" Barnett (named after the Adam Faith character ?). Each year since, I have made a weekend of it, and highlights have included Bryan Talbot's talk on One Bad Rat (so good I've seen it twice since), Al Davison's autobiographical talk (coming to Caption this year), meeting lots of Norwegians, and the annual chance to meet up with friends and new comics folks alike.

Last year, there was a second "annual" comics festival in London, which was JUST SO CONVENIENT !
This got me thinking again. If I could just collect the sketches at London and compile another Just 1 Page at Bristol ...

Well, that was the original plan.