Being stuck in a hotel on the hottest weekend of the year doesn't sound very enticing but the Bristol International Comic & Small Press Expo was such an enjoyable and laid back event that it was worth a bit of vitamin D deprivation.
Although the once-essential news mag Comics International has now confirmed it's folded, comics fandom still found out about the Expo and tickets had sold out before the show opened. Here's a few pix I took over the weekend. A Who's Who follows each set of photos...
1: Panini UK editors Simon Frith and Brady Webb had an impressive display of Panini Books and comics on their table. The biggest demand was for the first two volumes of Requiem by Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit.
2: V for Vendetta artist David Lloyd promoting his crime noir graphic novel Kickback, a fine all-new book that everyone should buy.
3: Mike Collins, artist on Doctor Who Magazine, working all weekend as usual providing sketches for a legion of fans.
4: Writer John Short, who wrote Rex and Robin Hoodie for Toxic, enjoying the sun on the short walk to the small press expo at the Mercure Hotel.
5: In the bar of the Ramada Hotel on Friday night it was a reunion of Marvel UK creators. Left to right: Mike Collins, Richard Starkings, Dave Hine, Ian Churchill, and Doug Braithwaite.
6: Artists Rob Davis and Faz Choudhury use their combined mental powers to prevent my camera flash from working.
7: Artist/writer Laura Howell with Smallzone's Shane Chebsey. Shane is also one of the organizers for the October event BICS.
8: Gee, they got a band! Mine Power Cosmic rock the house on the Saturday night.
9: Artist Phil Winslade swaps his pen for a guitar for the Mine Power Cosmic gig...
10: ...whilst on the drums it's Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard (that's the title of the comic Charlie works on, not his physical state by the way).
11: Creator of Elephantmen, Richard Starkings flew over from L.A. as a special guest. It was great to see Richard again, who had been my editor on Combat Colin 20 years ago and, more recently, my editor on Brickman Begins and the Brickman back-up series in Elephantmen.
12: The brilliant Mike Ploog (Werewolf by Night, Man Thing, and other classic 1970's Marvel monster books) sketching for fans.
13: Doug Braithwaite, superb artist on Justice and now Thor, was also busy all weekend sketching for fans.
14: Knockabout's publisher Tony Bennett with the latest issue of Dodgem Logic, Alan Moore's latest project. (I'll be taking a look at Dodgem Logic here soon.)
15: It's Kez and Luke out of The Adventures of Kez and Luke, produced by Toxic's sub-editor Luke Paton.
16: Those zany small-pressers! Tom McNally with the current issue of his comic Semiotic Cohesion.
17 and 18: Scenes around the dealers' room at the Expo.
Above: The legendary Pat Mills made a rare and flying visit to the Expo on Saturday to give a talk about his Requiem albums. Originally published in France, Panini UK have the license for the English language versions. Excellent gothic horror and well worth buying, Requiem won the Favourite European Comics category in the Eagle Awards in 2008. (My thanks to Commando / Spectacular Spider-Man writer Ferg Handley for sending me this photo of Pat.)
The team behind Comic Heroes magazine were apparently at the Expo but as issue one has sold out and they had no stock to bring! However there was a preview of the second issue's cover at the show. Amongst the contents of the next issue I've contributed a brief history of UK humour comics. Comic Heroes No.2 will be out in mid-June.
Thanks again to Mike Alwood and the other organizers for another brilliant Bristol Comic Expo. I hope you enjoyed it as much as the rest of us clearly did!
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The next UK comic event is the London MCM Expo this coming weekend. Unfortunately I'm unable to attend now for various reasons but I'm sure it'll be a great show!
D.C. Thomson's monthly reprint publication Classics from the Comics gets a facelift this week with a new logo, cover design, and new features. Sadly this means the end of Ken Harrison's covers (the only brand new artwork in the comic) but they've been replaced with a design which reflects the retro contents.
Within the 68 pages of issue 170 are a variety of classic strips including Ken Reid's Jonah, Bill Holroyd's Brassneck, Davy Law's Dennis the Menace, and a "new" reprint, The Space Kids, a 1976 adventure series from The Beezer drawn by Ron Smith.
Another new item this month is the debut of News and Views featuring readers letters and a plug for comic websites. There's also a feature on Desperate Dan, showcasing Dudley Watkins strips from the 1940's to the 1980's, although the 1975 one is a Sixties reprint.
With its brighter and better design, Classics from the Comics No.170 goes on sale this week, priced £2. Its distribution is poor though so if it's not available in your area you can subscribe at this link.
Fifty years ago this weekend, Fleetway Publications launched the first issue of a brand new comic that would give D.C. Thomson's Dandy and Beano a run for their money for four decades. Buster, Son of Andy Capp had arrived!
The new comic both gave a nod to the past (tabloid size) and heralded the future in that it was distinctively more modern looking and faster paced than the bygone days of Illustrated Chips and Comic Cuts. This was a bold new direction to immediately establish that Fleetway were going to be more contemporary than their predecessors Amalgamated Press.
As seen by the ad above, issue No.1 officially launched on Monday 23rd May 1960, although there were copies on sale two days earlier on Saturday 21st May. Buster (as it would be known, when the Andy Capp references were dropped a few months later) featured a good balance of both humour and adventure strips. The old A.P. practice of including text stories was not evident in this new venture. With the rise of Television, visual storytelling was the way to go.
The first issue was promoted in the Daily Mirror with a short article strategically placed beneath the Andy Capp strip on Saturday May 21st 1960. Here it is in context:
Advertisements for the new comic also appeared in the paper, (seen at the top of this posting) and this continued for issues two and three:
As fans of the comic will know, over the years Buster shrank its dimensions to the standard size (whilst increasing its page count) and gradually phased out its adventure strips to become part of the IPC Humour Group. In the course of its 40 years Buster absorbed many other titles, become an all full colour comic and, sadly, by the final issue in December 1999 had become all reprint. The comic that had begun a new direction for Fleetway in 1960 had become the last surviving title of the traditional IPC funnies. With no other comics of its type to merge into, and with sales falling, Buster simply ceased publication at the end of 1999.
I was fortunate enough to become one of Buster's many contributors in 1988 when Oink! merged into its pages, bringing in my Tom Thug and Pete and His Pimple strips. Tom Thug survived in Buster as all-new material until 1996 and as a reprint for the comic's final three years. It was always a very pleasant experience to work for the comic (and its editor Allen Cummings) and I'm very proud to be part of its history.
To celebrate the comic's 50th Anniversary, the Buster fan site is to feature interviews with Allen Cummings and the artists and writers who worked on the comic (including myself). The interviews should go live this weekend over at: http://www.bustercomic.co.uk/
Wouldn't it be great if there was a new UK adventure comic? A nice quirky crime story perhaps, set in the UK, by British creators, and published every month? Imagine such a comic, there just out of sight, in the corner of your eye.
Well, one such comic is real and has been coming out every month since April 2009 and, to my shame, I hadn't gotten around to plugging it properly on this blog until now. (Sorry lads!) Harker is it's name and it's written by Roger Gibson and drawn by Vince Danks. Issue 12 has just been published and there's also a graphic novel collection of the first six issues to buy under the title The Key of Solomon.
Both creators will have a table at this weekend's Bristol Comic Expo (May 22nd-23rd, Ramada Hotel Bristol) so if you're attending check it out.
...and if you're not attending, buy the comic anyway from their official website at Ariel Press:
http://www.arielpress.com/index.html
