Megacon was Mega...

Last weekend we attended the Megacon event in Carlisle. It was my first time in the city and so I decided to take Friday off and make a long family weekend of it. What a great little city. Always a big plus to me are cities or towns with decent bookshops and Carlisle has some great book shops, top of the list being the Bookcase which had rooms and rooms of old books on a number of levels covering every subject you could come up with. A hurried hour was spent in there, and it wasn't nearly long enough.

Saturday morning Jemma and I set up the table, amidst the usual hustle and bustle that accompanies such events.
We got to meet Mal Earl, who has done some impressive concept design work for the 'Who On Earth Is Thaddeus Mist ?' book, and also Conor Boyle, who is doing (or has done) the majority of the artwork, and it really is very very good. Owen Johnson was busy as one of the event organisers and for a first event it really was very well organised. I guess, having attended a number of events in his time, Owen knew what worked and what didn't.  This event certainly worked.
It had the same diversity of stalls seen somewhere like KAPOW, the heart of events like Caption (which was sadly on the same weekend) and was the size of Comiket. It pulled all of these elements together really successfully.

People get ready for the Accent UK panel

During what was to turn out to be a pretty busy day sales-wise, Colin and I were pulled away from the stall, which Jemma then covered for us, to sit on an Accent UK Panel, along with Owen, Connor and writer Max Deacon. We talked about all sorts but did manage to cover why we do this comic thing, how others can do it and what new books we all had coming up.

The Accent UK Panel

It seemed to be pretty well attended and from follow up chats at the stall it seemd to be pretty well received as well. Sat in the middle of the hall with stalls on a higher level all around us, it really had a great feeling of being an integral part of the event, whereas these types of panels are usually held in rooms somewhere away from the main halls.

Stacey Whittle asks the tough 'Why no more anthologies ?' question

When we remembered we also gave out some 'teaser' posters for 'Who On Earth Was Thaddeus Mist ?' drawn and designed by Mal Earl.

Dave looking through Conor's wonderful Thaddeus Mist pages.

I got the rest signed by all the creators present for future prizes and purchased a couple of Conor's excellent pages from the book. I've seen a lot of the book now and it really is going to be one of our best yet. I can't wait to see this on the table at Leed's Thought Bubble.

Two pages of original Conor Boyle art and the teaser poster.

We had a great day, sold well (sales were about the same as other one day events, which was really good for a first time) and met a lot of people we hadn't met before (both creators, podcasters (nice to meet Stacey Whittle of Small Press Big Mouth fame) and readers)... can't wait for next year.