AccentUK Thought Bubbles on Thought Bubble.

Well the Accent UK reports on Thought Bubble 14 are now up on the creator's blogs.
Pop over see what Colin, Gary and I thought about our last Convention of 2014.
Now we'll have to work out our schedule for 2015... we'll trade Helsinki for Copenhagen, so we can catch up with some old friends but will alternate and get back to Helsinki in 2016, apart from that and two Conventions already contacted, we've a lot of planning to do.

Thought Bubble 2014.

Accent UK have a table at next weekend's Thought Bubble event in Leeds... and this year our table neighbour is none other than Andy Bloor, co-creator of The Wolfmen and the bloke who designs our books, with his new self published Midnight Man. I can't wait to get a copy of that book.

We'll be launching two new books ourselves at the event ... pop over to Strange Times for details of what they might be...

Thought Bubble is always a good event to end the Convention year on, do pop over and say 'Hi' if you're there.

London MCM reports.

Accent UK had a great two and a half days at the London MCM Convention last weekend.

You can read Colin's report on his blog and mine over on Strange Times.

There Can Be Only One
report.

London MCM... here we come.

Accent UK have a table is the MCM Event in London next weekend.
Well, actually it starts on the Friday and Colin and his son Scott will be setting up and manning the stall on Friday. I'll be travelling down with my daughter Jemma on Saturday (very early) to join them.
As always, if you're at the Con then do pop over and say 'Hi'.

Helsinki Comic Festival reports.

Well, Accent UK are back from the latest Comic Festival in Helsinki.

You can read my report over on  www.strangestoftimes.blogspot.co.uk, Gary's over on www.gcrutchley.blogspot.co.uk/ and Colin's by Vulcan mind meld :o)

Helsinki Comic Festival

Accent UK have a table at this year's Helsinki Comic Festival ... which takes place this weekend ... you can find details over at www.sarjakuvafestivaalit.fi/in-english. Be sure to say hello if you're at the Festival.

Manchester MCM...

... our reviews of a truly great event can be found over at Gary Crutchley's blog, Dave West's blog and Colin Mathieson's blog ... in short though it was awesome.

Also you'll find a great review of the first three WesterNoir books over at www.geeksyndicate.co.uk.

Glasgow Comic Con Report

A quick 'Thank You' to everyone who stopped at our stall at last weekend's Glasgow Comic Con... we had a great time and are looking forward to the next one already.
For a fuller report please pop over to my Strange Times blog...

MCM Belfast report.

There's a report of our days at the Belfast MCM event over on strangestoftimes.blogspot.co.uk and also Accent UK get a mention over on the report at downthetubes.net.
A great event.

Next stop... Belfast MCM.

Next weekend we'll be at the MCM Event in Belfast. Our first trip to the event, be sure to pop over to the table and say hello if you're passing.

Our most successful Convention yet...

Well, we'd hope for a really good convention and that's just what we got.

The last London MCM we attended was a year or so ago. We'd always done OK at these events but the cost of getting down to London from Manchester, and staying in a hotel, always meant that we lost out financially. So, despite having a great time we'd decided to try other Cons, closer to home.

Recent MCM events though, apart from the Birmingham show where we didn't do great, had tempted us into trying London again and so there we were at 10am, stood behind our stall, wondering how we'd do.
The MCM events are really quite amazing. A real spectacle, made so by the thousands of fans dressed up like their favourite characters, and there were all sorts represented.

My personal favourite was this Dan Dare. Amazing detail and great to see that the old heroes haven't been forgotten.
The problem with the MCM events from a 'selling comics' perspective is that a huge percentage of the people who come are coming just for that. They're not really interested in seeing any comics, they're just there to dress up and be photographed.
The good thing about the MCM events from a 'selling comics' perspective though is that the small percentage who are looking for comics still make for a pretty big number of potential customers.

The thing that struck me however as I had a quick wander, leaving Colin to man the stall, was that we had a serious amount of competition. There were rows and rows of talented people looking to sell some very nice looking books and art prints.
I remember hoping that the people who visited the Comic Village brought plenty of money with them.
By the time I got back to the Accent UK tables I found that it looked like they had, as Colin had already sold a good number of comics.
I took my turn, allowing Colin to pop off and see if he could find 'his hard to find' Cyborg figurine...

... and continued to sell to a lot of new customers.
The anthologies were reduced, which is something we always do at the MCM events, attempting to draw in interest from people not traditionally comic book readers, and they sold really well. The one shots also did great, with strong interest in WesterNoir and Wolfmen in particular.
By the end of the day we'd sold more comics than we ever had in a single day, and were looking forward to a beer ... or two.
A nice evening with Sumyra and Darren of Lucky Target comics, Chris and my daughter Jemma where we enjoyed some Greek food, if not their music, and a few pints, and then we were heading off to get some rest and hopefully wake up refreshed for another successful day.
Typically we do less than half on Sunday what we did on Saturday.
Not so at the MCM events in seems.
We had another great day and as it ended we realised that this was our best Con to date. We sold out of a number of books, and must remember to bring more number 1's with us in future, and had only a few boxes to take back to the car.

We'd spent the entire two days, pretty much, meeting new people and hopefully making new Accent UK readers...
Thanks to all who visited the stall and spent some time chatting with us, we had a great time, and thanks to the organisers of the event, it just gets better and better.

Accent UK have a table at November's Thought Bubble.

Yep, we've just found out that we have a table at this year's Thought Bubble event in Leeds. Great news as this is a really good show.

Josiah Black figure.

I've modified a Lone Ranger figure, turning him into a very own Josiah Black for the Accent UK table at Comic Cons.
Pop over to http://www.strangestoftimes.blogspot.co.uk/ if you'd like to see how he turned out.

From Birmingham to Dundee.

Well, Comic convention season has started to get into full swing and a couple of weekends ago saw Accent UK at the Memorabilia MCM cross over event (sounds like something Marvel or DC would dream up). We'd done pretty well at the Glasgow and Manchester MCM events and so expectations were high that we'd do similar in Birmingham.

...although this was the first time we'd attended one that had combined MCM with the spectacle that is the Memorabilia will all of its stars signing photos for very long queues of fans.

...and assorted look-a-likes and cos-players.

Simon Cowell spots Wally and calls it in...

Colin and Scott had arrived on the Friday to set up the stall, so all Jemma and I had to do was turn up Saturday morning with copies of WesterNoir issue 4 and my little Robot Shorts and Strange Times books.
And we were all set...

Jemma check to see if it really is Colin's birthday
whilst Colin proudly shows off the present that Dave bought him.. kinda.

 ...but for what.
It was a slow two days, with few people venturing into 'Comic Village', which meant that we didn't hit the same figures as we had in either Manchester or Glasgow, in fact we sold about half as many books.
What we did though was take the opportunity to chat to a number of people in the industry about what Accent UK was doing and where we were trying to get to.
Are we a publisher first and foremost, or in fact creators who publisher our own books and some books by others ?
Looking at our stall, and talking to our books with customers we were definitely coming across as publishers and losing our identity a little bit as creators in our own right.

Chatting with Paul Birch, Steve Tanner (Timebomb Comics) and Stuart Gould, we decided to have a good hard look at what we were about over this coming year and maybe re-invent ourselves a little.

Dave, Stuart Gould and Colin.

All in all it was a really enjoyable Con. I managed to meet a couple of stars of a couple of my favourite programs growing up (pop over to Strange Times if you like to see who they are), Jemma got a couple of 'selfies' with some of her favourites, Colin took a photo of me in Stuart's hat (pop over to Momentofadventure.blogspot.co.uk if you want a laugh) and Scott bought some of those little big-headed-figures that are quite popular. And we did sell some comics and I think picked up some new Customers. So all in all pretty good.
This weekend Colin popped up to the Dundee Comic Expo, it's an opportunity for him to visit his son Adam and his family, who live nearby, and also sell some comics. You can check out how it all went over at Momentofadventure.blogspot.co.uk .

2014 Events Schedule Update.

Colin has been busily booking us into a number of shows for the year.
You can see what where at, and when, over on the top right of this page... it's looking to be a busy year already with a number of new events for us to go to.

Where On Earth Is The Thaddeus Mist Lego figure ?

Well, here he is...

It's taken a little while mainly as I've been hunting down a figure with a suitably impressive hat...
Check out the WesterNoir Book 4 figure over at strangestoftimes.blogspot.

DemonCon7 - to Maidstone and back again...

So, there I was at 6.30am on a cold February morning, sat in my Ford Focus, in a bus stop layby, somewhere in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, waiting for Gary Crutchley. As I sat there thinking about the long drive ahead it occurred to me that maybe the bus stop that Gary had meant to meet at was the one that I'd passed a few hundred meters back up the road.
I decided to text Gary, just to let him know where I actually was, on the off chance that I had somehow managed to stop in the wrong place.
Which of course I had.
And so at around 6.45am with Gary sat beside me riding shotgun, we left Newcastle-Under-Lyme and hit the M6.
We began chatting straight away, well it was more like we picked up where we had left off the last time we had got together, and started talking about WesterNoir.
By the time we reached the M1 we had plotted up to about issue 20.
By the time we reached the M25 we had gone back and tweaked a few things. Enriched a few situations and fleshed out some of the rules that constrained what we were creating.
At around 10.40am, we stopped off for breakfast in a Service Station somewhere just off the M25, I love a nice Full English Cooked Breakfast, Gary turning his nose up at it as it wasn't too healthy decided instead to have pretty much the same thing, but in a roll. I deduce the the bread must have some fat-absorption-conversion property that I'd never been made aware of.
During the journey, conversation had roamed from books to film through comics and onto comic companies. It always helps a journey go faster, well, seem faster when you have someone to talk to, and so it was that 3 and a half hours later, but seeming like only an hour, we left the motorways behind and found ourselves in Maidstone.
For once, we actually found the venue pretty easily, maybe it was because we used Tom-Tom and not Col-Col, who can say. Maybe it was just that Maidstone really isn't that big. We even managed to park the car not too far away.
Of course it was far enough when you have to make a couple of trips lugging boxes but, with Gary still talking about the need for Accent UK to buy a trolley, we soon found ourselves set up in the Royal Star Arcade. It was all pretty hectic at first with people setting up shop as potential customers wandered around us, potential customers that is, that consisted of a troop of Storm Troopers, Darth Vader and various other Star Wars characters.

 We sold only one book in the first hour and had that feeling that it was going to be one of those days. Both Gary and I made a quick dash to pick up a hard cover copy of It Came ! by Dan Boultwood (he had a very small pile of copies and we didn't want to miss out).
And then we got back to find our stall getting a little busy. And it pretty much stayed busy for the whole day.
All books sold in pretty good numbers but WesterNoir sold most copies, and true to form Stuart Gould of UK Comics, our printer, turned up with a box of Issue 4. And great it is too. The best seller for us was actually our sketch pack editions, where we bundle all 4 issues of WesterNoir in a bag and then the customer persuades me to part with one of Gary's great little original sketches.

Gary was more than happy to tell the customers
just how good WesterNoir is...

A nice moment occurred when one of our customers, having just bought both of The Wolfmen books, told us how her ex-boyfriend had left her and taken all of her comics and CDs with him, amongst which was her treasured copy of The Man Of Glass. What else could we do but give her a replacement copy. We couldn't help with the CD collection though, she didn't look the type to be interested in Pink Floyd.
I did make a trip out from behind the stall to top up the Car Parking ticket, and one to get a few drinks but that was pretty much it, the rest of the day we had a constant flow of customers or people wanting to chat. It was a really enjoyable day.

A Cyberman stopped by to pick up a copy of Robots,
I didn't have the nerve to tell him he wasn't in it.

Graham Beadle knows how to run a great little con, and I hope it stays just the size it is and keeps the atmosphere it had on Sunday.
For those who picked up WesterNoir Issues 1 and 2, on the promise that Graham was going to stock the books in his Grinning Demon store, he took 4 copies of Issues 3 and 4, so if you liked Issues 1 and 2 then I wouldn't wait too long before getting him to put them aside for you.

First Convention of the Year - DemonCon7.

We've a table at this year's DemonCon event in Maidstone, on Sunday.

and mostly through the hard work of Gary Crutchley, we'll be launching Book 4 of WesterNoir at the event... and if I can get things sorted, we might even be raffling a page of his artwork.

That's if I can bear to part with it ...
Gary will be with us signing books and generally enthusing about the whole WesterNoir story, which gets more and more interesting every time we meet up.
It'd be great to see you if you're in the area.

The 2014 Event season starts...

..with the DemonCon7 event in Maidstone, Kent on the 16th February.
We've been wanting to make it to this event for a year or so now but it's always either clashed with something we'd already booked, or been the week before or after. This time we put it to the top of the list. We are aiming to launch issue 4 of WesterNoir at this event, and all is on track to see this happen. Pop over to Strange Times blog to see the cover development for Issue 4 and Gary's blog to see the first three pages.
..we've also book a table at the MCM event in Birmingham on the 22nd and 23rd of March.
It's looking like it's going to be another busy year.