“Dénouement…”

28th November, 2009 - Posted by Chris - No Comments

So, ThoughtBubble has come and gone and once again stated it’s case for being the best UK Comic Convention/Festival there is.

Whereas last year I was caught up in trying to get ‘Shiver’ officially accepted, wandering the aisles looking for anthologies to submit something to and didn’t actually get much time to taste the convention proper. This year I decided to go prepared with books to get signed by some of the confirmed guests and made three of the panels and having a thoroughly great time in the process.

I managed to meet some folks I’ve been speaking to online, but unfortunately missed some of the people I had wanted to catch up with due to having to head for the train home at 5pm.

Firstly the Insomnia stand was there in full force and frequently was a source of bodies jamming together as people stopped and gawped at the wares on show.

During a period of being stranded down one of the narrow aisles I got talking to Matthew Craig and impressed by how easy he was to talk to I bought a few of his Hondle mini-comics. If you see Matthew at any future cons please stop by and give his stuff a look, he’s a super nice guy.

I stopped by and spoke to Terry Martin from Murky Depths, excited to find out when Mike Carey would be along to sign on their table. On my way up to Leeds to the train I had chance to read the latest Murky Depths (#10) which contains a writing competition where the challenge is to finish a story that Mike Carey started. It’s a difficult one but I think I’m going to give it a go.

I got comics signed by Andi Watson, Mike Carey and Sean Phillips but avoided the other larger lines that clogged up the end of the hall.

Panel wise I hit the following :

‘FROM PAPER TO DIGITAL’, ‘DO ZOMBIES READ COMIC BOOKS’ and ‘MARVEL COMICS, HOW TO WORK FOR US MASTECLASS’. I won’t review these panels there are plenty of blogs already posted about most of them, I will say that I really enjoyed the ‘How to break into marvel’ style panel that was hosted by Stephen Wacker (Spiderman Editor). I wasn’t expecting any secret backdoor or such and rather than being a master class it was just and opportunity for aspiring creators to ask him questions about working for Marvel. The takeaway for it from the writing side is that they only look at published worked, if they like what you’ve done then they may approach you to pitch them. Till then it’s just about busting your ass and getting your work seen.

Good panel none-the-less though.

I can’t end this bit on ThoughtBubble without mentioning Sam Johnson (Geek Girl Creator and former SPI competitor) who I spent a lot of time chatting too at the convention. He has a desire and eagerness that I need to try and get myself. A discipline to sitting down and making the story happen.

This regular, longer, more precise blog posting is a first step to that.
*FINGERS CROSSED*

Cheers,
Chris