Manchester MCM ... a WonderCon.

Well I thought I'd do this report a little differently.
Colin has written his usual very thorough report over on his blog, which talks about how well we did as well as all the people we met and chatted with, so I thought I'd make this a more personal report than my normal effort and talk about those things that I loved about this show.

1 -The Accent UK table.
Seeing the Accent UK table laid out all neat and tidy with our wide variety of books proudly displayed for all to see.

Colin and me ... ready for two days of comics.

Over the last 10 years or so, yes it's been that long, Colin and I have been involved in the creation of a good number of comic books and have worked with a number of very talented people. Some professional, some amateur, some confident, some doubting their abilities, some fresh from college and some looking for something outside of their careers.
They all have one thing in common, they have all been chosen to be in our books, be it as writer, artist, letterer or designer and they all have talent (whether they see it in themselves or not).
And the results of their, and our, efforts always make me smile with pride.
2 - Seeing all those creative costumes. 
I'm a fan of the home made outfits that some of the people wear to these events. Obviously created over many hours, you can just see and feel the passion for the costume in the way it is worn, each person also play acting the character they've chosen.

Is it hot out there ?

My favourite at this Con was this one. I presume it's Mr. Freeze, and it looked completely hand made, right down to the fans inside that stopped the wearer from expiring due to the heat trapped in the helmet. Wonderful.
Also of note was the person wandering around as Thanos, at least I hope it was someone dressed up...

Thanos ain't afraid of no Gator Boys ...

... well, he seemed happy enough to strike a pose, Infinity Gauntlet and all.
3. The Customers.
Nothing makes me happier than someone returning to our stall to pick up more of our books, having read one or some of them already at a previous Convention. We had a number of people who stopped to pick up later issues of WesterNoir and one lady, having bought Strange Times and Robot Shorts on the Saturday, returned on Sunday to pick up anything else I had similar work in. I pointed out the anthology titles and she picked them all up. You can't get better feedback than that, and it's that sort of feedback that makes it all worthwhile.

The row of tables next to ours.

4. Meeting co-creators and comic friends.
It's the only time you tend to see your comic creating friends. Steve Tanner was at his stall (Timebomb Comics) for the entire weekend, but we managed to have tea with him Saturday night, and catch up on future projects.
I'm fortunate in that I meet up with co-creator/co-writer and artist on WesterNoir Gary Crutchley fairly often as he doesn't live too far from me, but it's great to have him helping behind the stall. He's very passionate about our books and it's also great for him to see the way that people are responding to his work. His sketches certainly tempted a good number of people to buy all 4 issues of WesterNoir.

Gary and me enjoying interest in WesterNoir.

You can read Gary's report on his blog.
5. Steampunk.
I love those costumes.

so stylish...

...they spark off so many ideas for stories...

6. Seeing old work friends again.
A good friend, Claire, from my days at Co-op IT popped in on Sunday with her eldest daughter Izzy, her sister Tamsyn and her nephew Lukas. They wanted to see what this MCM thing was all about. It was great seeing the kids discovering MCM Madness for the first time. They seemed to have a great time and I know that Claire was amazed by it all.

Lukas, strange furry creature with antlers and wings and Izzy.

7. See the Accent UK table at the end of the show.
It's always great to see that some of the titles have sold out (we can only bring so many to a show) and even better when we realise that we are taking far fewer boxes of comics home than we arrived with.

All that was left after two great days of comics.

A great weekend.

Glasgow Comic Con... a great weekend.

Last weekend saw Accent UK making their way to Glasgow for our very first attendance at the Glasgow Comic Convention, organised by local independent comic publisher Black Hearted Press.
We've been to an MCM event in Glasgow and had a great time at that, selling what was then a record number of comic books, and as the numbers at the Glasgow Comic Con couldn't hope to match those of an MCM event, we set our expectations lower.

Set in one of the buildings that make up the Centre For Contemporary Arts we found ourselves in a great position at the bottom of the stairs that people had to take if they were going to see more of the event, which was split over a number of levels and buildings.

We set up about an hour before doors opened and were expecting the typical slow start but found ourselves selling to people almost from the time that outset.

Of course there were plenty of quiet times, and the show had a number of talks and events scattered throughout the day, but on the whole it did feel as busy as the MCM events, I think due to the fact that at this event everybody walking around was looking to buy comics and talk to comic creators.
It was great to catch up with John Reppion and Leah Moore, who we haven't had time to talk to for a very long time. We even chatted over a beer which was nice.
We also spent some time chatting to Hannah Berry, it was nice to be at a smaller convention and actually be able to find people quite easily without having to fight your way through a sea of Cosplayers. Cosplayers were present of course, just in smaller numbers. There was a great Captain Black, showing my age again...
I was surprised to see that Accent UK were attending a Portfolio Review session in the afternoon and I found myself sat at a table talking to people about their artwork. And pretty impressive it was too, with a whole range of styles and subject matter. What did strike me in general though was that a lot of the artists were keen to demonstrate their versatility, at the expense (in my opinion) of developing their own distinctive style.

At the end of the day we found to our surprise that we'd done very well and that the show was already a success from our perspective.
That night, after having tea with the families, Colin and I attending a Convention Event, beers and burgers but had the posher title of 'Cocktail & Burger', but we settled for just the beer as we'd already filled up on pizza. We spent and enjoyable evening meeting new creators and catching up with Owen Johnson, who appears to be pretty busy these days with two new books out.

The Sunday was pretty similar to the Saturday really in that we were pretty busy. We sold a good number of books, people came back to pick up more books having read and enjoyed what they'd bought the day before and we spent the day talking comics and enjoying ourselves.

As the event closed we found that we had sold out of some of the titles we'd taken, sold a good number of our new WesterNoir ongoing series and also a good number of our Wolfmen books.
We will certainly be going back next year.

The Belfast MCM

And that image of Mrs Brown on this year's, and the first, MCM Belfast event pretty much sums up everything that I'm about to say.

We arrived on Friday, the plan being to spend the morning wandering around Belfast and the afternoon taking our stock to the event location, setting up the table and working out travel arrangements for the next two days. First thing though had to be to take in some of the local ambience ... in the shape of a pint of Guinness. We took a number of opportunities to do this over the long weekend, and the pints went down very nicely indeed.

I love Art Deco buildings and Belfast certainly had plenty scattered around the city. As we wandered the streets I realised that I really liked this city. It had everything compressed into a relatively small space,  and some great murals dotted around.

So, after an enjoyable morning we set off for the King's Hall Pavilion, which is where the event was taking place. We scoped out the bus route, any bus that had a letter following the number 9, but weighed down by suitcases full of comics as well as hand luggage, we did the sensible thing and took a taxi, which wasn't expensive as it turned out.

I must confess to being a little disappointed that the event didn't take place in the actual King's Hall, which sadly is unsafe and condemned, but instead took place in a pavilion around the back, but we pretty quickly found ourselves in a large hall full of the usual scenes and sounds as people went about the business of getting their stock ready.
It didn't take us long to get the stall ready...

...which felt a little bare without the usual banners, and soon we were sat on a 9a bus heading back into the city centre.
The next trick was finding out where to eat, should we sample what a young lady had told us earlier in the day was in fact 'the best burger in town' or try something else ? Could we actually find the place again anyway ?

Well, we managed to find it but on closer inspection of the small print found that it didn't serve alcohol.
So we headed off and found a nice restaurant in the basement of a building that did a great burger and sold Guinness. Was it anywhere near as good as the best burger in town ? Who could say and how could you prove it anyway ?
Saturday saw us get the bus to the venue and we started to get that MCM buzz. There were a few Cosplayers wandering the streets and sitting on the bus. Nothing like the numbers that you get in Manchester or London, but I'm sure that'll change in future events.
The queue was forming and again it wasn't the size of other MCM events but as the first of its kind in Belfast it was a good size and encouraging for the days to come.
It was good to see Jenika Ioffreda setting up opposite us...

..

...and no surprise as Jenika must be the hardest working independent creator in the UK and always seems to do twice as many Cons as we do.
The day started in a leisurely way, with a few sales in the first hour and then things picked up.

...and it was pretty constant all day, the odd few minutes of activity followed by a few where it quietened down. The great thing about going to new events is that everybody you meet is new to Accent UK, and so everything on the table is new to them. The Wolfmen sold really well, as if it were just out, and did as well as WesterNoir, which is a new book. People were genuinely interested in who we were and what we were doing, and we sold a good number of books.
The closed and we'd already sold out of a few of the books we'd brought with us...

...and numbers were dangerously low on some of the others.
The evening was spent with a good friend of ours, Jeremy Briggs, who having been born in Belfast, knew where to eat and took us on a little tour afterwards.
If you're ever hungry in Belfast then I'd recommend the Red Panda in The Odyssey Centre, I struggled to eat it all and I'd missed lunch.
Jeremy then took us both on a walk around the old docks where The Titanic was built.

Model...not to scale ;o)

There's a museum that's dedicated to the ships that were built here..

...with the slogan concerning the Titanic being 'It was fine when it left here'.
Thanks then to Jeremy for a very enjoyable evening...

Jeremy and Colin share old nautical tales...

The next morning we couldn't face breakfast and so headed off to the event quite early, we wanted to do a stock take and re-arrange the table a bit. The buses were pretty prompt and within 30 minutes we were back in the hall.

Dave and Colin ... green.

We talked about what would make this a great Con for us, it had already tipped the number of sales that made it a good Con, and wondered if, as is typical at all events, the Sunday would see half the sales of Saturday.

Strangely Sunday was almost identical to Saturday, it saw a steady stream of people at the stall, some chatting, some buying but all interested in what we were about.
We had a couple of early customers who had bought a book from us on Saturday and wanted more, which is a really great feeling, and even some in Cosplay...

Death Note buys a copy of Thaddeus Mist...

Sunday was a great day.

Not much stock left at the end of the Con...

We sold out of a number of titles, and at the end of the day we'd sold pretty much as many books as we had on the Saturday.
It had been a great Con.
We'd met a lot of really nice people, some of whom had bought books and would hopefully come back for more next year.
Yep, there will be an MCM Belfast next year, and yep, Accent UK will have a table,
Cheers.

The Josiah Black figure...

So, whilst not working with Gary Crutchley on moving WesterNoir forward in comic book form, I've also been working on something to attract a little more attention to the Accent UK table at Conventions, and this is what I've managed to produce.

I've adapted him from a Lone Ranger figure from the recent movie...

...and whilst the hat and scarf came off pretty easily, the hair was another thing entirely...

...and involved a lot of cutting away with a hobby knife and then building up the 'interesting' hairstyle that Gary has decided for him. I also had to build up his nose a bit as the Lone Ranger in the movie had a very thin, fine, nose and Josiah, well let's just say he's not that fortunate...

...the fine grained milliput is quite easy to use but when everything is white it's hard to get a feel for how it's all shaping up, so I painted him at this point, with no beard or eyebrows.
There needed to be a little more hair on the left hand side of his head.

..so I added a little more milliput whilst I was giving him his eyebrows and beard.

...and also sorted out his nose a little more.
Then it was just a case of painting him again...

until I was happy...

...with how it all looked.

 ...and there you have him.

Josiah Black...
Now all I need to do is find a display case that fits... I'm not sure how sturdy his hair piece is and I wouldn't want it falling to pieces as a customer accidentally knocks the table at the first Con and the figure falls on his face.

Another great review of 'Missing : Have You Seen The Invisible Man ?'

...can be found over at curiosityofasocialmisfit.blogspot.co.uk.

Birmingham Memorabilia and MCM.

Accent UK had a stall at last month's Memorabilia and MCM event in Birmingham. These MCM events are typically pretty different to your typical Comic Conventions in that there's more Cosplay and Star signings and less Comic books, and certainly very few, if any, professional comic folk. But we enjoy them, for lots of reasons.

As they are typically not as busy as Comic Conventions, although sales can be as good, we get a chance to wander more and also talk more to our peers about the industry in general and each other's books and future specifically.
At this event I got to meet the voice that narrated Mr. Benn, Ray Brooks (and get this signed image)...

as well as THE voice of Marvin, the paranoid Android, from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Stephen Moore...

Pop over to the Accent UK blog for a full report of the event itself, we had a great two days and are looking forward to the next MCM, which is in London on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of May.