It was a really upbeat, friendly event and a steady stream of attendees meant that we were busy all day. My thanks to the ever-enthusiastic Paul Trimble and his hard working team for organising it and for their fantastic hospitality. Lew Stringer, Laura Howell, Staz Johnson, Ian Edgington, Becky Cornwell,ĭan Cornwell, Hunt Emerson, John Royle, Anya Morozova, Phil Vaughan.īack home, tired but happy after a very enjoyable weekend in Northern Ireland for the Omagh Comic Fest at Strule Arts Centre. It's 40th anniversary issue is coming up next month and I'm currently drawing my latest Daft Dimension for it, which will be extra daft for the occasion. If Doctor Who is your thing, buy Doctor Who Magazine every four weeks. My Pup Parade strip is currently running in there and there's tons of work by other creators too. If you want to buy a comic for your kids, pick up the Beano every Wednesday. Again, a common practice from British publishers which dates back to the dawn of UK comics. Case in point, Toxic magazine, which dropped me at Christmas but I've recently discovered is now reprinting my (not so old) Team Toxic strips. Then there are the publishers who decide to cut costs by reprinting old strips. Remember the classic artists of yesteryear and how they were given less and less work as time went on? The style of comics have always evolved, and that's a natural thing and the right way to go, but sometimes it's forced and popular artists receive less work for no good reason. It's not always shared out evenly, but that has always been the case. There are lots of people working in the UK comics industry these days, but sadly less work for everyone.
This hasn't been a great year and essentials such as utility bills have to take priority. I need some more payments from mainstream comics to come through before I can splash out on another print run. It will be going to a third printing at some point, but not yet. I should point out that I've almost sold out of Combat Colin No.1, although I'll be bringing some to Nor-Con this weekend. Thanks again for supporting my self-published ventures. I've posted all the comic orders I had for this week, so those of you who ordered Combat Colin No.4 should have them tomorrow (or Saturday if the first class post is as slow as it sometimes is). For some it was their very first convention, so I'm pleased it gave them a good impression.
It was a very colourful event, with numerous cosplayers and props from film and TV on display, and everyone I spoke to was enjoying the weekend.
Indeed, the atmosphere of the whole show was upbeat anyway.ĭalek invasion! With actor Cara Theobold and Gladiator Wolf in the background.
It had a nice balance of actors and artists, and we were all treated equally, and positioned in the same area. This helped to give a good, positive vibe to the whole weekend. Multi-media events can sometimes give priority to the actors with comic guests shunted to a side hall (or, in one show I attended a few years ago, put in the foyer where visitors walked past us). It's not easy to run an event but they did a fantastic job. Organiser Mark Dean and his team worked hard all weekend to make sure all the guests were looked after and everything ran smoothly. The venue was the Norfolk Showground Arena, which was a 15 to 20 minute taxi ride from Norwich but a very good venue to hold a convention. I think this was the 9th year for the show, but it was the first time I've attended, and the first time I'd even been to Norwich. Trying a new comic con is always a bit of a gamble, especially one that takes a few hours to get to, but any doubts I might have had were soon put aside when Nor-Con proved to be a very pleasant conclusion to my run of cons this year.