Saturday saw us not at Manchester's MCM but at the Central Library in St. Helens.
It's been a bit a repeating theme of the year for us, this clashing of event dates. We had committed to the St. Helens event before we got any confirmation from MCM though and so it was to St. Helens and not into Manchester that we set off on Saturday morning.
Tom-Tom and Col-Col permitting.

It was our first event of this type. We'd presented as the sadly missed Borders before, but we've never really been put infront of 16 kids and been set the task of explaining how to make comics and from there get them to have a go. But there we were, having done plenty of preparation and having sounded out my daughter Jemma, who was the average age for the day, we were in fact pretty confident we could pull it off. And we did, I think. Keeping to a 3 panel story we had all of them thumbnailing, panelling, penciling, colouring, inking and lettering their efforts. And for those who had finished we had them designing super-hero costumes. All of the fids were very attentive, all the styles and stories were very different, and a good reflection on the industry as a whole, and all of teh efforts were very impressive. We had a great day.

A big 'Thank You' to the staff at the Central Library in St. Helens for treating us so well, and to the kids for making the event so enjoyable. We'll be doing more of these in the future I'm sure.

In other news, my old laptop has died, formal ceremonies take place next week, and so I've had to set everything up on a new one. Not a problem from a 'files' perspective as they're all on external disks, but it has caused a problem for the wesbite, as I'm having trouble getting CuteFTP to talk to the web provider. I'm working on it, and am now using their support services, but it has resulted in no website updates for a few weeks, which includes Strange Times. Apologies for that.

It's a good job we now have this blog ... and I'm therefore provided with another way to communicate, along with emails of course.

Accent UK goes digital...

Well, it's happened.
Something that I've been looking to do for a year or so now, and through a new independent comics app available through iTunes you can now download Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man?
The Lush Comics app for the iPad can be found by either browsing http://lushcomics.com/ipad, which will redirect you to the app, or by just searching for "Lush Comics" in the iTunes App Store. The iPad version is "Lush Comics HD" as opposed to the iPhone version, simply called "Lush Comics".
Justin, who created the app etc, is a keen supporter of Independent Comics and created this app as he saw a gap in the market and wanted to allow us to have a presence in the digital world that didn't find us hidden amongst the countless X-Men titles.
It is our intention to put our entire back catalogue up there over the coming weeks. If you're a contributor to one of our anthologies can you please give me your permission to use your work for this purpose. As is the case with the paper versions, there will be no actual payment for this, any funds will be put into future anthologies, but we will keep the price very low, to encourage as many people as possible to see your work. If you don't provide permission then we'll keep your contribution off of the app, not a problem, just let me know.
It'd be great to see more UK comics up on iTunes, if you would like me to connect you with Justin then let me know.

July's PREVIEWS...

Well, sad to say that Diamond again failed to list PREDATORS in the latest issue of PREVIEWS. It's nothing personal, they've just gone through some changes in personel in the USA and it appears that the transition has resulted in UK books being overlooked, again. It's not just AccentUK books that have suffered apparently.
Diamond UK have been very apologetic, and have promised the do everything that they can to get the book listed in the next PREVIEWS, so look out for it in August's edition.
Because of the delay, we've decided to print ahead of Diamond numbers, so that we can make sure the book can be launched at this years Thought Bubble event in Leeds, and Andy is just making a few very minor adjustments (perfectionist that he is) before sending the files off to the printers this week (or early next).