Comiket, Pearly Kings and Nosferatu.

It was a strange trip down to London on Saturday for the winter Comiket. After a typical train journey (in that it arrived 15 mins late) we encountered a Pearly King at the Underground Station (which made more sense when we found out that it was The Lord Mayor's Show), who appeared to be being stalked by Nosferatu, which was not so easy to explain. Colin and I decided to keep well out of it, it never ends well for bystanders when titans clash.

We arrived with time for a coffee before setting up the table and being ready for the customers to start to enter the building.
It was a very slow start, and although the doors had opened at 10am, by 2pm we had sold less than 10 books. I must confess to being a little concerned that my joints would have to undergo yet more damage as we lugged all of our stock back up north.
But things picked up, and by 5pm we had sold almost as many books as we did in the Spring event. My joints we safe... for a bit longer anyway.
There was a little incident concerning Robots, which you can read about over on my Strange Times blog...
It was great to meet up with Olivier & Anders of Cinebook, ’J-P’ of London Horror Comics, Camlia & Taylor from Orbital Comics, Dave O’Connell, Andy from Broken Frontier, and Becky Bagley who created Tick, and provided a pin-up for Robot Shorts.
The Comica guys had put a lot of effort into yet another great event. I think the number of customers were down a little and I know some stalls suffered due to this. Clashing with the Lord Mayor's Show didn't help, and a friend of Accent UK, Matt Boyce, had struggled across London by bus adding about an hour to his journey. I'm tempted to write to Boris Johnson to see if he can't move next year's Lord Mayor's Show, but may have better luck suggesting that the organisers move the Winter Comiket instead.
All in all it was hard work but rewarding and as Colin and I sat back on the train home and discussed the future of Accent UK, we both agreed that it certainly included more Comikets.
Thanks to Megan Donnolley, Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury and all their helpers for another event like no other.