Our first OxCon... well, THE first OxCon.

After the recent Bolton Con Colin and I were a little apprehensive about going to the our first Convention in Oxford.
Sure, the organizer Leonardo appeared to be doing a good job from email exchanges and the Facebook presence, but you just never know what these new Cons are going to look like until you get there.

We set off early, stopped off for breakfast at a motorway service station, got lost in Oxford, swapped Tom Tom for Google Maps, found the venue, offloaded where it looked like we shouldn't, parked the car (in an expensive car park) and were all set up in time for the start.

Oxford is a beautiful city and familiar in a Morse and Lewis way. It does feel like you are entering a different world somehow and conjures up those cities that you come across in many a Fantasy novel.
There were people milling around outside when we arrived but no real queue to talk of, despite all the tickets reportedly having been sold out, but that's normal in these types of Cons, where they are in the city centre and people tend to wander in and out all day.
So we weren't worried.
Much.

The interior of the venue was as impressive as the outside. Wood panels and paintings of famous people from as far back as George III (although his painting was mysteriously missing) or older (I didn't actually check all the dates though) and the table space was generous, as was the space between tables.
Yep, it all felt very relaxed.
There was even comic book themed music.

And it seemed that they'd even put up special signs for me.
The early pass ticket holders started to wander in and look around at the stalls.
Unlike Bolton the stalls were all much more closely linked to comic book and film, no Mr Fudge here then. We were next to our friends of TPUB with their great Twisted Dark books (look them up if you haven't already done so).
It was a slow start but around 12 the doors opened for the rest of the ticket holders and it got fairly busy.
We met some really interesting people and sold comics to Finance professors (thanks Dr. Noe), research post graduates and even...

At the end of Saturday we'd done pretty well. Not as well as at some of the more established shows but certainly very well for the first day of a brand new convention.
Sunday was pretty much the same really.
We didn't sell as much, which is typical for us at Conventions, but there were plenty of interested people and we really enjoyed the day.

My first ever photo-bomb... sorry Colin.

And as the day closed we agreed with all of the dealers we spoke to, that we'd had a really enjoyable convention and would certainly look to come back and repeat the experience next year.
Hats off then (especially if you hat is very big and very red) to all involved in organizing the event, it was a great little Con.