Blog

Bristol Comic Expo 2010

The weekend at the Bristol Comic Expo was probably the sunniest and loveliest weekend the UK's seen in a good long while. It makes complete sense to then book into a hotel and go and hang around with a large group of comic book fans, geeks, writers, artists, industry folk, disdaining the lure of the warm weather.

The Ramada hotel hosted the main trade hall, signing room, artists and talks/panel room. We stayed over at the Mercure hotel (a 3 minute walk away) where on the 5th floor they hosted the smaller independent presses, more artists and writers as well as traders. They also had the hallway turned into a games arcade with various games on the go for the Wii, DS and DSLite consoles.

Having checked in bright and early after a very early start we headed off to the Ramada where we quickly caught up with Joel Meadows who runs Tripwire magazine, John from Forbidden Planet and various others. We nosed around the traders hall, I lost my head and bought a wedge of graphic novels on pure impulse, including the extra super duper comic Turf by Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards. We introduced ourselves to some of the traders we knew and got chatting to the guys from Full Circle Comics where the very talented Simon Bisley had his set-up.

Importantly to me was the buzz in the traders hall. The enthusiasm for the events of the coming day was palpable. What struck me too was how large everyone's loot bags were. If you've never been to an event like this, you clearly won't know what I'm talking about but usually there are impressively large backpacks being carted around to hold bought loot.

The 2000AD table

The 2000AD stall was ace, as usual. All those pretty Dredds and Nikolai's and Durham Reds really make my hands itch. But we were heading off to have lunch with Mike Carey and Joel Meadows so we meandered our way through a luxuriously warm day and tucked into a variety of grills from Spyglass on King Street.

Back at the Ramada (after storing our loot back at our hotel) we sat in on the big talk on The Losers panel. Jock and Andy Diggle were genuinely smart and entertaining and very keen to point out to everyone present that they actually had nothing to do with The Losers movie. Well, not officially, at least. They had the opportunity to head over to the studio to meet the cast and hang around there for a bit. Both Andy and Jock had everyone in stitches as they admitted to being taken aback by how well everyone was getting along when they got there. I suspect they thought there was going to be diva antics going on but instead they had Zoe Saldana waving at them and coming over to chat to them. Or maybe they were just blown away by Zoe's obvious hotness? They gave us their talk about how The Losers came to be, the input from Will Dennis and the processes they went through to get the story shaped. It was an entertaining hour to sit in on as most of the audience knew Jock and Andy so the dialogue flowed smoothly and there was good banter. The talk ended with the boys decamping to the signing room next door.

Jock and Andy Diggle

I stayed behind to sit in on the DC talk hosted by Bob Wayne, the Vice President of Sales over at DC Comics. With him he had Paul Cornell, Lee Garbett, David Hine, Jesus Saiz and Ramon Bachs. After some kerfuffling with the laptop and projector, a disc got inserted and Bob could continue with his talk, showcasing some of the upcoming titles from DC for the next few months. As the pictures came up, he gave a brief talk about the character, writer or artist. Paul Cornell is the new kid, so his enthusiasm was very funny. I think he had to remind himself mentally to "sit still, no bouncing."

The DC panel was the final panel of the day. There were drinks to be had in the bar and everything became a bit blurry until the next morning where a lot of pale and shaky people staggered into the hotel's breakfasting room. A lot of food was devoured to stave off the inevitable hang-over pangs. Cleverly most of the panels only started at eleven on Sunday and although the traders hall was supposed to open at ten, at least over at the Mercure, the halls were still shut due to some exhibitors overdoing it a bit the night / morning / ten minutes before.

Due to other commitments later that day, we opted to leave at midday but made sure we got some further items signed and said our goodbyes to several people we met during our day and night there.

I've resolved to go again next year. I've also resolved to go better prepared and better read! I felt embarrassingly under-educated but to be honest comic fans are better behaved than I expected and few laughed in my face at inane questions, and some were quite gracious answering them. Next year I'm looking forward to doing interviews on the day and maybe doing on the spot reporting too. Hopefully you'll stick around for those.

Written by Liz de Jager

http://www.myfavouritebooks.blogspot.com

Liz de Jager discovered her love for words through reading westerns as a small child. She graduated to fantasy, sci-fi, horror in school. Subsequently she met a biker who introduced her to D&D, action movies, superheroes and comics and somehow, has never been the same since.