A good weekend at the Lakes!

My thanks to Julie Tait, Carole Tait, Sandra Wood, and the whole team for organising The Lakes International Comic Art Festival last weekend. It was a pleasure to be a guest again at such a well organised and diverse event. As always at such shows it's great to meet the readers, catch up with old friends, and meet new people too. Thanks to John Freeman, Marc Jackson, Davey Jones, Jim Stewart, Eli Winter, Steve MacManus, Rian Hughes, John McShane, Pete Renshaw, Jeremy Briggs, Hunt Emerson and Jane, Tony Bennett, Tim Pilcher, John and Sandra of Metaphrog, Emma Vieceli, Steve McGarry, Brad Brooks, Emmeline Pidgen, Andrew Jolly, Peter Doherty, Graham Dury, Simon Thorp, Charlie Adlard, Bryan Talbot, Steve White, and many more for being good company, even though I only saw some of you briefly. Hope you all enjoyed the weekend too.

I didn't get a chance to take many photos but here's a few...

Even the Clocktower looked good, despite the scaffolding, thanks to the huge banner promoting the show!

Kendal is a very picturesque town. The hotel I stayed in is a converted 18th Century tannery. (Far more comfortable inside than the exterior would suggest!) 

My thanks to everyone who attended my Comics Gold talk (a whirlwind presentation on the history of UK comics). Special thanks to John Freeman for co-hosting it.

The talks and interviews mostly took place at the Brewery Arts Centre (shown at the top of this post) with exhibitors a short distance down the road at the Clock Tower. (This photo was taken towards the end of the event when things were quietening down.)

Saturday evening gave us a chance to relax with live entertainment, including the band Blue Harvest at popular town centre pub Ruskins...

I missed most of the panels but on Sunday I did catch the prolific artist Steve McGarry giving a fascinating and entertaining talk on the history of football comics.

By 4pm on Sunday I had to dash off to catch my train home but I'd had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend! No doubt more in-depth reviews of LICAF will be appearing online soon so look out for them! (In fact, this one over at the Page 45 site is pretty comprehensive:
http://www.page45.com/world/2017/10/page-45-comic-graphic-novel-reviews-october-2017-week-three-lakes-festival-special/ )

All photos in this report ©2017 Lew Stringer.

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The next event I'll be at will be Loughborough Comic-Con, this coming Sunday, 22nd October, at Loughborough Leisure Centre. See you there!