Accent UK will be at Saturday's Comiket.

Colin, myself and Gary Crutchley have a table at Saturday's Comiket festival in London. We're regulars of this great little Con now and always have a very enjoyable day, which starts as we discuss the future plans of Accent UK on the train down to London.
Do pop by the stall and say hello.
We'll have some sketches of WesterNoir by Gary to offer as well as our normal range of comics.

The Lakes International Comics Art Festival - A lot of rain but was it a washout ?

This was the first ever The Lakes International Comics Art Festival and promised to be an event like no other in the UK as it appeared to be taking over the whole town of Kendal for at least a weekend.

We booked early and so had a room in the Premier Inn, which was pretty central, and as we live in Cheshire it was only an hour and a half up the motorway on Friday night. So the logistics were OK and despite the one hour and a half being nearer two hours (not entirely due to my driving), my wife, daughter and I soon found ourselves in Kendal on a wet Friday evening.
Meeting up with Colin and Garen Ewing (of Rainbow Orchid fame) we all went off in search of food (and drink). Colin and Garen had arrived much earlier in the day and had already got the lay of the land, and pointed out the Clock Tower, where we'd be spending the next two days.

An enjoyable evening catching up with Garen and talking about all sorts, with Colin's wife Karen joining us after a much more tiring journey (due to weather and traffic).
Saturday then presented the challenge of getting the stock, which was in my car outside the Premier Inn, to the venue, which was too far away for any talk of carrying it there (well, Colin quickly stopped any thoughts I might have had). So we negotiated the one way system and parked my car in the Clock Tower car park (which was around the back). A token (which Colin had remembered to print off) displayed in my car gave us free parking for the two days. Result.
And pretty soon we were all set up and ready for the people to come in.

Yep, Stuart Gould, true to his word, arrived with our new banner, the WesterNoir one (drawn by Gary Crutchley, designed by Andy Bloor and coloured by Matt Soffe). It brought a lot of colour to our stall and really stood out well.

As we thought that the number of customers making it to Kendal might be low,, Colin and I allowed ourselves to take time out from behind the stall and attend some talks. Leaving my daughter Jemma to handle the stall when needed, she's an experienced hand now and does a great job.

Jemma at a quiet moment...

Colin went to Joe Sacco's talk and I caught Ed Brubaker's and Kurt Busiek's over the weekend. They were all very enjoyable and well worth the £6 entrance fee.

My wife, not a comic reader, enjoyed wandering around the town and taking in the atmosphere, as well as the Bryan Talbot art exhibition, which I was annoyed at myself for missing.

Another meal, this time at the Premier Inn as we were too tired to find anywhere that involved walking, and Saturday closed with us talking comics, much as it had started.

Sunday was pretty similar to Saturday, and strangely so were the sales. The sales figures for a slow Saturday equalled a pretty good Sunday (as Sunday's are usually much slower than Saturdays). So. My one concern for the event had been that Kendal was a little two small and difficult to get to, and that this would effect the number of people coming through the doors. Looking back, I guess this was partially true. There were a good number of attendees, more than I expected, but it didn't compare to the numbers of people hitting the bigger shows like Thought Bubble. Consequently sales were down on the larger events. But they weren't bad. And when we look back to the first Thought Bubble and our figures there, this event doubled it.
Was the event a washout from a sales perspective then ? Nope, not at all.
Was the event a success ? I think it was a big success. It had a good mix of creators, professional and non-professional, superhero and non-superhero. The events and the hall itself were very well managed (queues for signatures being channelled down side corridors rather than obstructing creator tables was a big success). The venue and parking etc were very good, the organisers allowed access to the kitchen so we could pop and get a coffee (and they even brought water around to us now and then).


Me, Garen and Colin catch up as the event winds down.

What did stun me was the way the whole town got in on the act. It wasn't just that they had banners up. Most of the shop windows had a comic themed display on show. Lots of locals popped in to support the show and even the staff at the Premier Inn were in super-hero costume.
Great stuff.
Great show.
We'll certainly be booking up for next year.

Accent UK will be at next weekend's Comic Art Festival in the Lakes.

Well, more 'next to the Lakes' than 'in the Lakes' I hope.

It's the first event and has a very impressive guest list, someone for everyone I think.
If you're in the area then it might be a pleasant change to walking up mountains, so do pop in and say 'hello'.

Thaddeus Mist reviewed.

There's a great review of Who On Earth Was Thaddeus Mist? over at www.geeksyndicate.co.uk.

Robots review.

There's a great review of our Robots anthology over at http://ap2hyc.com/?p=8175#comment-192.

Glasgow, comics and policewomen on horseback.

This was our first comic event in Glasgow, and only our second in Scotland, and we were really looking forward to it.

The MCM events are certainly getting better and better with a wonderful mix of fans of TV, Film, Computer Games, Manga characters and Comics.
The drive up the night before had been tough, 5 hours or more driving through rain and spray from lorries meant that I arrived pretty tired out and even now I'm not sure what we had for tea that night or where we had it.
Saturday morning though and my batteries were recharged and I was ready for anything.
A quick breakfast with Colin, his son Adam (putting in a very rare Comic Con appearance) and my daughter Jemma was followed with us putting all the stock into the back of Adam's car and then a quick drive to the venue.
It didn't seem that busy outside but there were certainly enough strangely dressed people to let us know that we were in the right place.

And as we're old hands at this now, we were set up in a matter of minutes.

Which was good as there were already people wandering around on the Early Bird tickets and unusually these people were getting as far as the Comic Villlage, we had a few sales before the doors had even opened.

The Comic Village was a good size, although a number of the tables were empty, and we found ourselves between Jim Stewart (of Gangaman fame) and a lady with Blue Hair (Destiny Blue) who was selling some beautiful and quite thoughtful prints of her artwork.

As is typical with Cons there were quiet moments but there were also times when we found ourselves a little overrun with customers buying our books. At one point I think I signed about 8 comics one after the other for 3 different customers.
We had the usual MCM Madness discount on our older anthology titles and as a result Western, Predators and Robots all sold very well.

There have been reports that there were 20,000 people at the event which seems an incredibly high number. It was very very busy though whatever the number and enough people passed through the Comic Village to make this our second most successful one day event ever, by one comic. It was a good job that Colin's son Adam...

and my daughter Jemma...

were on hand to help out.We certainly left with far fewer comics than we came with, which is always a good sign, and met a lot of new customers who will hopefully enjoy what they bought enough to come back for more at the next event.
The 'policewomen on horseback' mentioned in the title of this post appeared either side of Adam's car on the way back to the hotel after the event. With Jemma and I sat in the back of Adam's speedy little vehicle we were very surprised when, whilst we were stopped at lights, we found ourselves being peered at through the slightly dark windows by firstly two horses and then two policewomen. They were of course very polite and were checking that we had our seatbelts on, but it was a very odd moment in this day and age.
A good meal at a local Italian restaurant, where my wife met us after doing the Charles Rennie Macintosh tour and a couple of pints saw the end of a great day.
We'll certainly be making the trip up north again for the next Con.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by the table.

Glasgow MCM here we come...

Accent UK have a table at the MCM show in Glasgow next Saturday.
It's our first show in Glasgow and we're looking forward to it, the MCM shows are getting bigger and better and are certainly getting a good 'comic' zone going.

Do pop over and say 'Hi' if you're at the Con.
In other news, Missing : Have You Seen The Invisible Man ? is listed in September's Previews catalogue. Pop over to Strange Times to find out more.