Belfast MCM.

Just back from another fabulous Con in Belfast.
This is a Con we never expect to make money on, the cost of flight and lodgings etc always mean we'd have to sell more books than we can possibly get into our 23kg luggage allowance, but we have such a good time it's always a Con we try to get to.
This year we nearly missed it as our friends, Steve Tanner and Paul Birch were organising a Con in Birmingham, but that fell through and we jumped at the chance to go back.
Arriving early Friday morning we took our time getting to the venue, spending the morning in the city, made easier by Colin's decision to hire a car this year.

We've got setting up the table down to a fine art, made even easier due to the reduced stock and lack of banners and other props. Gary Erskine was there already and had already planned out the weekend, which saw us that night sitting in a pub with a troop of 2000AD fans, most of whom were also involved in a Cosplay group (dressing up as Star Wars characters in the main I think). I know I'm getting old when I struggle to hear what is being said to me due to the noise... errr ... sorry .. music, but I was amazed to find many of the group were IT professionals and of a similar age.
A very enjoyable night that ended up with us chatting with Glenn Fabry and offering to chauffeur him to and from the event over the weekend. It's strange when you meet someone whose work you have admired over the years. You worry that you won't like him and that that would somehow make you see his work differently from then on. This was not the case with Glenn though, he's a really nice bloke and fun to be with.

Hopefully this is some kind of salute, acknowledging
quality and not them showing us where the door is.

Saturday saw good sales, and by mid day I'd sold out of all the copies of the WesterNoir Trades that I've taken. They are quite big books and I had to balance numbers of these with the other comics, a copy of the trade taking up the same weight as 5 other books.
This didn't trouble a number of people though as they still bought copies of issues 5, 6 and 7, saying that they'd order the trade through the post.

Colin would often wander off, I spotted him at one point
chatting to Gary Erskine at the other end of the
Comic Village.

Saturday night we caught up with Gary Erskine and Jenika Ioffreda for tea and chat, which is becoming a bit of a nice habit.
Sunday morning it was great to see a few customers who bought the trade on the Saturday rush over to the stall on Sunday to get the rest. We had one of our busiest Sunday mornings ever I think.

Meow.

Sunday was as busy as Saturday and it felt to me that the whole event had a better attendance and more energy than last year's.

I caught Moon artist Steve Penfold admiring his own work....

All in all we had a great time.

Colin hadn't noticed his passenger...

Monday morning, following the fire alarm going off twice in the Premier Inn, was a slow start but we made it into the city again to find the Ulster Museum closed and The MAC art gallery changing all of its exhibits, so we went shopping and tracked down The Comic Guys great new store.

Yep, a really nice weekend. We'll be back.

Lisburn MCM - The New Venue.

We'd been to the Belfast MCM event since it started, which is two years now, and we booked this without realizing that it was no longer in the outskirts of Belfast but actually had moved to the sight of the old Maze Prison in Lisburn. The new Eikon centre.
OK, so this was a risk.
Would people travel all the way to Lisburn to buy comics and take part in an event that was clustered with a number of others in the local area ?
We'd not been confronted with the old 'How many comics can we take within the luggage allowance; for a long time and the last time there had been three in the group, this time it was just me and Colin.
We did the best we could and at the airport both suitcases came in just below the weight allowance.
All good so far then.
Colin, as always, had planned how we'd get to the venue and we'd decided to go straight there on the Friday, offload our stock and then walk to the hotel and check in. On paper it was only a 3 mile walk, and with the bags being comic free it didn't look too much of a problem.
So.
Plane from Manchester to Belfast.
Bus from airport to Belfast City Centre.
Train from Belfast City Centre to Lisburn Station.
Taxi from the train station to the venue.
All seemed straight forward enough.
And it was, until we reached Lisburn Station, which had no eager rank of Taxis waiting to ferry us on our way.
Not a big thing and something I had thought might be the case. So, dragging our suitcases (good job they come with wheels these days) we set off looking for a taxi service.
We passed one that had closed down but eventually found one, and the 40 minute wait was spend in the pub next door, where we chatted to some very friendly locals, once we clarified that we were not in fact 'comics' but a couple of blokes who made 'comic books', it's a recurring problem and I've no idea why people look at me and think 'comedian'.

I was taking this photo so I would have their
phone number when I noticed the handy pub next door.

The taxi took us to the venue, which we discovered was the sight of the old Maze prison and we also discovered that the venue, as nice as it was, was sat on its own in the middle of a large expanse of waste land. With no trains, bus stops or helipads (for special visitors).
This didn't bode well.
Still, we decided that we were here now and might as well make the most of it.
We also noted on the way in that the local roads were very narrow, surrounded on either side by hedges and no footpaths. We would have to get a taxi to and from the venue every day.
Saturday then saw us set up nice and early and wonder if anybody would find the venue, let alone find us.

Our friendly neighbourhood organizer told us about the shuttle buses that had been laid on from Lisburn Station and also the reasons for the choice of venue, which all made some kind of sense.
But still we worried.
And then the doors opened and people came in.

Yes, people had managed to find the event.
It started to get fairly busy. Not London or Manchester busy, but there were enough people there to give it the usual MCM atmosphere. and we started to get people at the table interested in what we had and some who'd bought stuff from us last year and wanted more.

This SteamPunk lady had made her own costume
and her little top hat was wonderful.

We had a decent Saturday and agreed that if we did as well on Sunday (which was possible) then we'd have done OK.

Even Beauty and the Beast turned up.

We agreed to share a taxi back to the hotel with  Gary Erskine and also walked down into the village to meet up with Jenika Iofredda and Moonboy (as we call him) and find someplace to eat.
All of this was set against a backdrop of the Brexit vote and Ireland playing in the quarter finals of some European football championship.
Let's just say it was lively.
A really enjoyable meal where we were later joined by one of Gary's Cosplayer friends in a very safe atmosphere (I think the pub full of English fans watching the team lose would have been a little more... worrying), made for a great night. The walk back up the hill to the hotel clearing our heads a little.

Sunday was slower than Saturday but we did manage to sell about the same number of books in the end and so overall the Con was good enough for us to revisit next year.
The venue was a little far out but it turned out that made it easier to get to by car.
The shuttlebus were constantly moving people to and from the event and I think overall pretty successful.
The attendance felt about right.

Colin kept disappearing to play Jurassic Park...

We had a very enjoyable time and met some really nice people.
Yep, we'll be back.

MCM Belfast Comic Con.

This year's Belfast MCM was both our and the organiser's second event in Belfast.
We arrived with heavy bags on Friday, setting up that evening to save us from the normal Saturday morning convention rush, and pretty much everything went to plan. That's one of the good things about going somewhere you've been before, you know where everything is, how best to get there and you start to build a rapport with the event organisers.

We had set everything up in no time and then had the usual quick look around those other stalls that had also set up early. The first thing to strike us was that the Comic Village hadn't grown since last year, which was great for us as it meant less competition. The second was that,of the stalls already set up, very few were actually selling comics. Again great news for us, if it remained the case.

It was nice to wander back to the hotel with only hand luggage thrown over our backs, and even nicer that even these bags were free of comic books and therefore a lot lighter.
Saturday found us not suffering particularly from the Guinness we'd consumed the night before, and within minutes we were ready for action. The rain (which seems to be as typical of Belfast as it is of Manchester) wasn't putting people off as the queue we walked passed on the way into the venue was building nicely.

The Advance Ticket holders entered at it began to feel busy, and then the normal ticket holders surged in and it was really busy.

There were a lot more Cosplayers this year, and the atmosphere felt typical of the MCMs we've been to, everybody was there to have fun.
Saturday proved to be busy all day and we exceeded last year's Saturday total, which was great.

WesterNoir was out best selling title, with a number of readers taking up to offer to get a free Gary Crutchley sketch when purchasing all 5 issues. We had a number of customers return after last year's Con to buy more issues of the title, and I think being at the Con a second time gave them confidence that they'd be able to pick up future titles as we intend to return next year as well.

All titles sold pretty well though and by the end of the day a couple of them had sold out.
That's the problem when you can't drive to a Con. You have to make tough decisions on how many copies of each book you take, and no matter how carefully you plan one things is certain, you'll never get it right.
Sunday was much quieter however, which isn't usual for an MCM in our experience.
We still had some interesting and interested customers

but sales where much lower than Saturday's.
The highlight in terms of sales was the guy who rushed over to pick up issues 2 and 3 of WesterNoir, having picked up a copy of issue 1 on Saturday.
And then it was over.
Overall, we hadn't sold as many books as last year but we'd sold a good number and had a great time.
We will return.
The weekend didn;t end there though and at the airport we got chatting with Andrew Lee Potts (of Primeval fame). We talked TV, directing and comics. A thoroughly nice bloke who will be at the London MCM event promoting his new web series, Wireless, which he described to us as being 'like Knight Rider but where the car has been replaced by a very attractive woman'. I think I might need to check that out. If you'd like to do so too then you can find it at www.wirelessweb.london. 
A great weekend, looking forward to a repeat next year.

Belfast MCM here we come... and another great WesterNoir review.

This weekend we'll be at the MCM Belfast event, we had such an enjoyable time at the last Con we couldn't resist. Do pop over to the table for a chat if you're in the area.

Also, there's a great review of the first issue of Tales Of WesterNoir over at Down The Tubes.

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.