amazing unicomics!
Wow, Britain has a new annual comics convention, and boy, are those Unicomics organiser team people NICE! I’ve never been so well treated at a comics convention, with an big, organised, friendly team in matching shirts, a green room with free refreshments for exhibitors, not to mention the fun, eager kids stopping by to say hi.
Here’s an 8-year-old comics artist named Simon who’d made some remarkable war comics (look out for that dude in five years or so, publishers! Click on the pic or here to see a larger version of his page):
And I got to meet two of the best friends of our DFC comic, Patrick and Ben Bastow, who’d come all the way to Hatfield from Peterborough. It’s the best feeling ever to meet people who really love our work, their visit totally made my day. (Those are Gary Northfield and Dave Shelton in the background.) Another one with his original DFC poster (even signed by David Fickling!) and Dave Shelton with the first book in the DFC Library (DFCLibrary on Twitter), Good Dog, Bad Dog.
Here’s the yellow and super-fabulous Team Unicomics. Thanks, University of Hertfordshire, St Albans Children’s Book Group, Laydeez Do Comics and everyone on the crew!
I didn’t get any photos of the big monsters & aliens workshop I did (the room was packed!) but here’s a look at our panel discussion, Creating Comics for Kids, chaired by Douglas Noble. (Thanks, Douglas!)
Here’s Douglas, and Gary Northfield summoning the ghost of his Viking mouse:
And one of Dave Shelton’s marvellous sketchbook drawings. He keeps a great blog of his amazing doodles on his blog, Have you been out today?.
Some of my fave comics peeps, Joe Decie (joedecie) and Curtis and Terrorist goodies (or baddies?) by Oliver Lamden. Also great to see Francesca Cassavetti, Al Maceachern, Paul Fryer and other fab indie comics guys.
Lovely bag by Marc Ellerby of Ellerbisms, and Cliodhna Lyons (ztoical) and Vampire Freestyle:
Judge Dredd and Melody Lee (who studied illustration at Kingston):
Jan Wheatley (one of the speakers at the Laydeez Do Comics events), and a Unicon organiser who had me draw her killer mushrooms, then had Gary Erskine draw them with Dan Dare (who would’ve thought?):
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Dave Shelton doing some last-minute Powerpoint fiddling for our panel talk, and Claude T.C. ryclaude‘s customary tortured photo face:
Another glimpse of our table, with Dave, Gary and our Stitch and Bitch London studio mate Lauren O’Farrell. Thanks for all your help, Lauren and Stuart! We had some limited-edition back issues of the original DFC for sale that I think we’ll bring to London’s MCM Expo on 29 & 30 May. (We were selling them for £2 that day, but you can buy a complete set of 43 for £40 plus £11.50 post&packing if you let us know, or contact thedfccomic at googlemail dot com. Great for collectors and possibly libraries, if they want to start up a cosy comics reading corner.)
West comics on sale; I’d recently seen fan art by Warwick Johnson Cadwell so I was glad to spot the books by Andrew Cheverton and Tim Keable:
And one more of Simon, because his drawings really were rather wonderful:
Also, a big thanks to Melanie McGilloway for the great review on Library Mice of You Can’t Eat a Princess!. Morris the Mankiest Monster and You Can’t Eat a Princess! were good sellers, thanks to everyone who picked one up from me or the bookseller at Unicomics!
Further updates, add @UniComicsFest and watch #unicomics on Twitter.
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