EMS!

BLACK WIDOW Vs THE ABSORBING
MAN! By Lee Townsend.

WONDER WOMAN
by Huy Truong



Raaaay!

This past weekend I once again attended a convention that i had not been to before, namely The Entertainment Media Show. Well, I say I hadn't been to it before; It is basically the London Film & Comic Con under a different name. It's the same organisers, same venue and a lot of the same exhibitors. And yet.....it seemed much smaller. Not just because not all of the venue space was used but also because the event drew a much smaller crowd than LFCC; which was surprising considering  some of the names attending (Matt Smith, the Red Dwarf crew, Mike Tyson (Mike Tyson!?)). There wasn't even that many cosplayers there to marvel at. It was all a bit of a weird one, this.

However, there were still some good things that EMS had to offer. Upon entering the show punters were greeted by the presence of a huge Stay Puft Marshmallow Man - a really cool photo opportunity if ever there was one. I was a bit miffed at the organisers decision to close off the balcony area as that would have provided for some great  shots of SPMM. As with LFCC the comics side of things were a bit sparse and there were not many exhibitors selling old or new comics, so I didn't get to waste a couple of hours rifling through longboxes searching for cool finds. I did pick up some cool Small Press comics, though. I picked up, read and enjoyed the first issue proper of Bearlands (www.subversivecomics.com). I also decided to give Bex book 1 and Trojan #0 (www.reapercomics.co.uk) a try. There's a nice mix of techniques in artist Hal Larens' work, photo manipulation, poser work, digital illustration, etc. It all sits together perfectly and isn't jarring at all. The only other small press comic that caught my eye was Tinpot Hobo (www.tinpothobo.com). Boy, this is a lovely book to look at. Really nice cartoony art and printed via ukomics (www.ukomics.co.uk) so it's a book with glossy paper stock and that raised ink feel to the line art. A very professional looking self published comic. My only problem with it is there's too much happening on each page, too many panels and too many word balloons. Jack Lawrence should give his superb art more room to breath.

One of my best buys of the convention was a page of art by the super talented Lee Townsend (www.leetownsendart.blogspot.com) . It's a really dynamic bit of action storytelling, showing The Black Widow laying the smackdown on The Absorbing Man! And it was only £45! I also picked up a rather lovely colour sketch of Wonder Woman by the equally talented (and all around nice guy) Huy Truong (www.huy-truong.deviant.com/). There's some really nice ink-work here, so fluid that I just can't tell for sure if it was done by pen or brush (brush-pen?).

But the highlight of the convention for me was getting to meet Chris Claremont. I read  a lot of Spider-man comics when I was a little kid but it was Claremont's run on the X-Men that really got me bitten by the comics bug. The guy was at the top of the industry for almost 20 years, and while the last 13 yrs has seen him and his characters replaced at Marvel by Bendis and The Avengers, the guy is still a legend. One of the benefits of EMS being so quiet was I got to have a proper 20mins conversation with the guy.  I have met Chis once before (he didn't remember, but that's OK - it was 20yrs ago!) and he was just as enthusiastic and passionate and articulate and generous as he was back then. We talked about the last time he worked with John Byrne at DC (Byrne insisted that there be no actual contact between the two!), the unused pitch for a new Excalibur series with Alan Davis from a few years ago and just about his thoughts on comics in general. I also tried to convince him to team up with Dan Slott on a She Hulk project. I had spoken to Dan earlier that day and he told me about all the story ideas he didn't get to use before leaving She Hulk for The Amazing Spider-Man (something about a character fighting for the right to teach the Marvel version of Creationism - involving the Celestials - in schools). I remembered that one of my favourite She Hulk stories was written By Chris and illustrated by Alan Davis in an issue of Avengers Spotlight so I thought I'd put the idea to him. Claremont? Slott? Davis? On a She Hulk project? I'd buy that.

All in all, not a bad first EMS for me. Not a great convention and not different enough from LFCC. Some more comic Industry guests and comics themed panels would make this worth attending again next year.