Today (for those of you who have missed my child-like excited chatterings over the last few weeks) was the day of “The Uk web comix thing.” And I should warn you… there will be a lot of links in this entry in an attempt to broaden horizons, name drop and above all support the illusion of professionalism.

So Friday after a grueling project finally had it’s deadline I crossed the mersey to spend the night with the RiCO and Mitch from Lifewaltz before heading down to London the next day at some ungodly hour. I had no idea there was a full 24 hours in a day! There’s only twelve on the clock! But there we were at 4am (groan) crammed into RiCO’s dad’s car and on our way to Nodnol.

Despite an arduous journey (that I was the only one to stay awake through save the driver) we made good time and arrived at the convention location at around nine. The thing itself didn’t start till ten so we just wandered about untill people started arriving. People such as the famous weebl who we helped carry in large amounts of T-shirts and such nonsense to be hurled at the general public.

We did a couple of rounds of the hall when it finally opened. The Little Gamers were flogging books and tricking weebl to sign them by opening the pages at the foreword he wrote. Zoe Stead of Earthbound was nice and offered us sweets in order to tempt us to part with our cash and buy her wares. Reckless Youth drew a picture for Rico and to save him paying for it I had to draw a picture of the guy back… though he seemed a bit of a dick, either that or it was still too early in the morning for all of us.

A very pushy guy from Brodies Law (who apparently gets comics printed in taiwanese sweat shops) seemed like he’d missed a calling as a timeshare salesman as he told us we needed to rise up as a nation and draw comics. Tucked away in a corner by the door we (eventually) found the creator of Scary Go Round, John Allison, who was possibly the nicest guy there despite the annoying habit (shared by a few of his peers) of saying he couldn’t actually draw. A similar story goes for the now legendary Lem who’s latest project is the downright genius “Bunny.” RiCO quite possibly made the day of Susan and Steve from 2 sides wide who both sqealed with delight when they realised that they had a reader who they hadn’t met before going back to flogging the infernal cat-hats that were slowly becoming the curse of The Thing.

Enough trying to make myself sound like I know lots of semi-celebs (though I do like to bask in their reflected glory where possible) The day itself was fun and also a good place to learn how to apply your trade if you’re going to try and make a webcomic or mini-comic. Apparently the UK industry is long overdue a revolution. There were certainly enough able bodied people there… aside from the fan club that materialised around weebl at about one o’clock everyone there seemed to have their own projects that were (for the most part) both witty, interesting and more than capable of becoming the creators main source of income.

A couple of panels were organised to have a bit of formal interaction to the day instead of the usual fanboy nonsense of “OMG I LOVE UR STRIP!!11one,” the second of which featuring Weebl, Madsen (LG), Lem, John Allison, [A guy who I can’t remember the name of since his strip’s been on hiatus of late] and Susan + Steven was entertaining and I for one was inspired to finally get my ongoing comic project off the ground…

for a preview you can go to this page but watch this space!

That’s me done for the night.. I’ve not slept for two days now so collapsing seems like an inviting proposition!

~G