WesterNoir Tales

This weekend I'll be working on the Kickstarter for our collected WesterNoir Tales.

WesterNoir Tales is a collection of the tales in the three published Tales of WesterNoir, and includes some new tales and also things that we didn't find room for in the ongoing series.

The stories are all by Gary and/or myself but the art is from a lot of people we admire, and are friends, in the independent comic book scene.

Originally the printed tales were in greyscales but Gary and I have been colouring pages for a few months now, adding to some pages already coloured by Matt Soffe, and the book is now fully coloured and pretty much ready.

Here's the first view of the cover... by Gary Crutchley, coloured by Matt Soffe and designed by Andy Bloor, as always.

Well, that was EPIC

I really enjoy the Cons in Glasgow.

Jemma, my daughter, spent 4 years there doing her BA and I always enjoyed the city when visiting.

Steve and I have been to a few now, but this time we were forced to get an apartment in the city centre due to the ridiculously high priced hotel rooms. Turns out this worked out really well though as there were more food places to choose from and plenty of great little pubs. Also the trip in to the venue was only two stops on the train from the station that was only 10 minutes away from the apartment.

Yes, we'll be looking to do that again.

The two day event was busy for us on the Saturday and not so busy on the Sunday.

All in all we did pretty well though and were happy with the number of books we sold, the number of people we chatted to and the interest everyone showed in what we are doing. It was also great catching up with fellow creators.

I was particularly pleased that we sold some WesterNoir figures and badges.

It all helps 😀

I took this photo of Steve behind the banners
as I think it's kinder to everyone.

Had a great time and am looking forward to doing it all again in March.

EPIC Con in Glasgow

Steve and I are off up North on Friday for this weekend's ACME Con in Glasgow.

It's favourite of ours and one we look forward to.

Pop over and say 'Hi' if you're in the area.

WesterNoir TPB has a second printing.

 With a new cover...

and it looks great (thanks to Andy Bloor as always for pulling it together and making it look so professional).

For those of you who have been with us from the very beginning, yes, we've just to cover for from the very first black and white issue. I really love this cover and thought it deserved a chance to be seen again, and for a longer time.

To keep costs down we've not printed French Flaps on the Second Printing. This will make the first printings all the more special, and we will continue to have French Flaps on the covers of all first printed TPBs, the next one being the collected WesterNoir Tales, as we're now calling it.

This is also the first book to carry my new imprint West Words, although to be fair most of the words in the book are by Gary Crutchley.. hope he doesn't notice.

London Film and Comic Con

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since the Con now, and as tiring as it was I won't put the lateness of this post down to that entirely.

It was a two day event thais year, the Fridays of previous events just weren't worth the additional costs and thankfully to show organisers saw the logic in this.

Saturday was a bit quiet we found, and I think this was down to the hordes of people who had paid good money to meet Mel Gibson, for photos .. signings and who knows what else. These people buy the tickets had the knock on effect that not a lot of people interested on comics books were able, or willing, to face the queues.

We were in the smaller hall this years which pushed the comics up to the mezzanine level and whilst signage wasn't great, people did know that there was more to see upstairs. 

I focussed on WesterNoir (the poster with its back to the camera is the WesterNoir banner, letting people down below know that we were upstairs).

There was lots of interest in WesterNoir on the Sunday, comics, figures and the new badges, which was great and Sunday turned out to be a pretty good day.

LFCC is a very well organised and run show. 

The Mel Gibson factor was unexpected and there were many more signature hunters then I'd ever seen before but we still had an enjoyable weekend. 

Our table buddy this year was James Gray and we'll be inviting him back to join us next year, so he must have been ok 😀

Good fun at High Viz

Yesterday Steve, his daughter Sasha and I were at the High Viz event in Birmingham.

It's an event that I think has been going for quite a while, focussed on visual arts and mostly it seems art on buildings (is it still called Graffiti ?).

This year they were adding comics for the first time. 

To me it felt like a merging of the wonderful Portsmouth Con and the hard to get to Lakes event, in that it was very family oriented and spread across the town.

There were professional comic book people on display (Charlie Adlard, John Wagner and Hunt Emerson just to name a few) mixed in with independent comic creators (and a guys selling back issues who took cash off of me in exchange for some issues of EPIC).

I spent a lot of time chatting with Hunt Emerson, a legend of the UK Comic scene and also to a number of other creators whose work I respect. I was humbled to be asked to sign a lot of my old books and when chatting to another guy to be told how our work is respected.

A great day out. 

If you live in the Birmingham area then it's well worth a visit next year. I'll certainly go again if offered the chance.

Next weekend Steve and I will be at MaccPow (on the Saturday) and Bury Comic Con (on the Sunday). No peace for the wicked.

It was great to be back at Copenhagen Comic Con

It's been a few years since we've been to the Copenhagen Comic Con, 8 years in fact for me.

This year however my old partner in AccentUK, Colin, and I decided to go back. To catch up with our many friends over there, and see if they still remembered us :o)

This year we stayed as close to the central train station as we could, as the new venue for the event was out of town and would require us to use a train every day.

The Astoria hotel was originally built for train workers and whilst a little narrow it was exactly what we needed. Clean and safe. And the staff were very friendly and helpful.

The structure on the roof helped me locate it too.

It was a new venue, for the Con and for us, but we found it fairly easily (despite using the Metro which was undergoing engineering works that forced us to use a bus as well... reminded me of the UK). 

We found it well signposted though...

and the venue itself was well attended 

Admin was well managed and we were quickly in the hall with no hassle at all.

The Con was actually good fun, it was great to see that in Denmark the comic scene is very healthy with many comics (from the USA and Europe) having Danish translated versions. 

During and after the Con we met up with our good friend Arnie, who runs the great ArtBubble event later in the year, and he took us for a drink in the Comic Cafe (which has its own bar).

Colin and Arnie

After the event we also caught up with Soren, who used to own the Fantask comic shop. We had a very enjoyable afternoon and evening just chatting and actually found a pub that Soren had never been to before.

Colin and Soren

I really enjoyed the trip and am looking forward to returning next year.