ReadCon 2013

Now I've never really been into manga or Anime that much. I've had friends who have tried to get me into various series but nothing ever really took my fancy. But this year I've started to pick up some small press manga at different conventions. I started off with a few books from the Red Garden Artist Group (so if you wanna blame somebody.....) and some other bits and pieces here and there and enjoyed every single one. So when I found out that there was a manga and anime convention in my own town I thought "well why the hell not?" and mosied on over to check it out.
ReadCon is organised by the Reading University Anime Society (www.readingunianime.webs.com/) and is, without doubt, the tiniest  convention  I've ever been to. Yet the talent on show was huge. There were only about ten tables there and maybe only four of those were home to small pressers. But that was okay as they were really cool people, happy to chat not only about their manga but also about making comics. I picked up The Elemals by Josh Clarke (www.JoshClarkeDraws.deviantart.com). I love this guys stuff; it's like someone has taken the cells from an animated movie and made a comic book out of them. It's really a funny book too. I also picked up Crankrats by Katherine Ellis (www.sio64.deviantart.com). It's an amazing amalgam of manga, anime and steam punk and I can't believe she's only been at this comics creating game a couple of years. Manga retailer Frank was there, who, along with his Red Garden Artists Group, is becoming a familiar face on the convention circuit.
Even though it was a small convention it got real busy real quick; so I hope it was successful enough for the organisers to put it on again next year.

   

Those Pages

Don't know why but these were cut off of  one of my previous posts. These are the pages that I picked up at LFCC 2013.

A page of art from Marvel comics series "The Twelve", by Chris Weston.

A page from an issue of What If? by Bryan Hitch.

LONDON FILM AND COMIC CON 2013

Well this was an improvement on last years con. So much more comics related stuff this time. Somebody finally got it - it's the London Film and Comic Con. The panels/talks areas still need improving and the organisers could still make more of an effort to make things a little less confusing in terms of layout and scheduling of events. LFCC is one of the bigger events of the year and yet there is still no convention programme to pick up on the door.

Anyway, I usually go to conventions to pick up small press comics and cool original art, and LFCC certainly delivered on those. I picked up Bearlands #2 from the gang at www.subversivecomics.com,
volume 2 of Rob Curetons hilarious Orful Comics (www.orfulcomics.co.uk), the rather demented Frogman #1 (www.deadcanarycoimcs.com), the stunningly beautiful Only Me Tiny by Jing X. Hu (www.pinkjellyo.deviantart.com) and another cool sketchbook by Huy Truong (www.huy-truong.deviantart.com).

I was also really pleased with the art purchases that I made. One page from The Twelve by Chris Weston and one page by Bryan Hitch featuring the X-Men. I love both of these pages so much. There's so much detail in the Weston page and it's also a really fun piece. One of the many reasons I like the Hitch page is that all the lettering is there on the page. Not only that but there's also bits of zip-a-tone pasted to the board, plus white out    

Teddy Scare Bear Takes On LSCC!

Made my first trip to the London Super Comic-Con yesterday and had an amazingly good time. Picked up sooooo many small press books and sketch books (my wallet says "ouch!" btw.) and purchased a lovely piece of  V For Vendetta art by Dave Stokes. Seek him out whenever he is at a Con, you will definitely find something cool to buy. Managed to get a look at so much fantastic art: it was a real privilege to be able to hold pages by David mack, Mahmud Asrar, Simone Bianchi, John Byrne, Brian Hitch and Jack Kirby! Gosh, some of those Kirby pages were huge!  Oh I seriously need to win the lottery by next years show! I didn't see a David Mack page that went for less than a grand! And i didn't even bother to ask how much those Kirby pages were.

Also, I handed out some copies of "The Nightmare Bear", the collected edition of my Teddy Scare Bear mini-comics. They seemed to find their way into some interesting hands......   

Hey! Isn't this guy supposed to be dead? Well it hasn't stopped
Nightcrawler from checking out his new favourite comic! 

Your friendly neighborhood Spider Man taking a break from saving
the world so he can catch up on his Teddy Scare Bear reading!

The Dynamic Duo investigating a copy of The Nightmare Bear! 

Psylocke, Phoenix and the Scarlet Witch can't get
enough of the Nightmare Bear!

Those spangly shorts made my camera go all blurry!
Zatanna and The Black Canary clearly impressed
by my tales of teddy terror!

Cheetara! From Thundercats! Holy Shit!! And
she's a fan of The Nightmare Bear, too.

Holy smokes! How cool is this? V by Dave Stokes.

The rather talented Tsao Wei was giving out these lovely
skecth prints. 

Some of the swag I picked up at the LSCC

Yet more swag.

Still more swag.

    

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.              

LONDON FILM AND COMIC CON

I've always wanted to go to the San Diego Comic Con, even though I know I would probably hate it (too many people, too hot, moan moan whinge whinge). Still, all that comic book awesome-ness all in one place, plus the glamour and the spectacle that comes with the Film and TV side can be pretty alluring. Personally I like a con to be fairly low-key and entirely comics based. For me BICS is the best con experience; busy but not too busy, good venue, great guests, lots of small press comics and fun and interesting panels. However, going to the same type of con all the time can start to get a little boring. Luckily the UK seems to be catching up with staging big multi-media conventions, bringing a bit more variety and some new faces to comic cons. This year I decided to check out a couple of cons that I'd never been to before (I've already posted about Kapow!)  so this past weekend I had a look at the London Film and Comic Con.

I've seen this con described as the UK's version of SDCC and I can see now why people would make the comparison. It's huge! And quite confusing. I found it quite difficult to keep track of where things were, what stages the comics panels were on or what they were about.   Although there's a big difference in the Film & TV element. With SDCC it's all about new and upcoming product. With LFCC it's all about nostalgia and recapturing past glories. I've never been that bothered about autographs or having my picture taken with someone who was in a film for 5 minutes back in 1975 so the Film part of LFCC  wasn't that relevant to me. No, I was more interested in the Comic part. And what a small part that was!  I thought that, as the con was called London Film And Comic Con, there would be loads of  small pressers, loads of artists doing sketches and panels etc. But, from what I could make out, it was all quite marginal. According to the website LFCC 2012 featured an expanded comics zone! Really? wow, what was it like before? 

It wasn't all bad though. I still picked up some comics from some new faces; Jericho by Fwah Storm and Reload Comics (www.reloadcomics.com) and Bearlands by Biggs + Bakki (www.subversivecomics.com) . I enjoyed both of them so much you can expect to see some fan art up here very soon. I found someone selling some original John Byrne Doom Patrol art for £230. a page. I'm a big Byrne fan and he was one of the first artists whose work I began to seek out and follow. And he's still got it. Just check out some of the commission work he has posted on his website (www.byrnerobotics.com). Anyway, I spent most of the time walking around the convention floor trying to convince myself to purchase at least one page. I eventually decided against it, believing that I might find better pages at a similar price on the web (ridiculous!). Needless to say I am kicking myself  right now. Still it was nice to be able to see those pages close up. Maybe next time.....

As well as finding a few gems in various back issue bins I also managed to find copies of the old  1970s Spider Man live action TV show and the 1994 Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie! So, despite my initial disappointment I still came away with some pretty cool swag. LFCC certainly offered a different con experience to what I am used and that's what this was all about anyway. Would I go again? Probably, yeah. It's still a fun and exciting atmosphere and all those Cosplayers are a sight to behold.   But I would like to see more in the way of comics panels, and clearer information on when and where they take place.