UK Web and Mini Comix Thing 2005

19 March 2004, The Octagon, Mile End Road, Stepney, London
Report and photos by: Marc Brownett

First thing! ANY wrong information found in here, please tell me so I can correct it. Basically my memory sucks and my research skills are weak because I’ve been writing this for four days now. By the way, if I took your photo and it’s not here, it’s only because it came out massively blurry and/or dark.

The night before

I was sure that I would have loads of time after work to print off some comics and business cards… BWAHAHAHA!
So in the end, after finally getting the desktop publishing down to a fine art, I started my print run, and after running out of black ink, I had to unitise my parents’ printer. Basically, by midnight, after a few tests, I had printed seven full copies of my twelve-page mini comic (selecting what I thought was a general feel of a3s). So much for reeling twenty copies off, ne? If I had left myself more time I could have mass-produced by photocopying the inner greyscale pages but I just didn’t think about it until too late. Photocopying often drops quality but at least I’d have more to give out, ah well, too late. Thanks for doing the stapling mum ^__^

The journey

I’d plotted the journey fine, the main problem was getting to Leeds early enough to catch a coach that would actually get me into London before 10am. The day was only made possible by my Dad being so ace and getting up at 5am with me to drive me to the coach station.
A VERY early coach catch from Leeds for £19.60, which I'd rather do than spend £70 for the train.

Leeds: 06:10am - London (Golders Green): 09:35am

The coach was packed by the second stop, in fact, somebody at the third stop trying to get on had to straight turn round and get back off. My GBA and music from Tizz (my PDA) kept me entertained until I felt sleepy again and crashed for the last hour and a half.

We arrived in London a little later than advertised and I stepped off the coach at 9:50am. A beautiful day with practically no clouds in the sky at all. I quickly asked for directions to the subway and brought a day-rider ticket. The ticket guy was impressed with the ninja headband around my left arm despite not knowing its anime/manga origins.

After a few tube trains, two re-directions (as said tubes were having *insert generic excuse about traffic lights or rails here*), and several bouts of paranoia, I finally made it to Mile End Road.
Despite being on the main road the university was on, I got completely lost for ages, even with directional help from random people (so what else is new?). Finally, after getting on university grounds, some nice Asian girl led me to the Great Hall where the event was being held. I was a tad late, with it being past 11am now (doors opened at 10am), but I was finally there. Man, it was hot in there. Why is it hot and sunny when I attend indoor events and raining when I'm doing stuff outside?

First trip round the hall

After taking in the scenery from the door, the first people I noticed were Kat and Dave from Two Sides Wide (ya just can’t miss Kat’s long funky pigtails). Hooray! They recognised me from Amecon! They had Ben (w00tage) and Migweld (TSW forum) with them who were also both top dudes to chat with. The TSW table was fully upgraded from the last time I saw them, printed comics, stickers, badges, kat-hats, w00tage caps, and a laptop with a slideshow screen saver of their strips. They were getting busy so I decided to get out their way and check out the other stalls. I had only just turned around to begin when I suddenly heard; “Naruto!”
There was some guy pointing at my Konoha forehead protector from his table, so I had to of course point back; “Yes!”
Moving closer I found it was Claude TC, the guy behind Reckless Youth, a mint web comic I was browsing the night before. Claude took a photo of me simply for wearing the armband and I later found it in his own report here. He was great to talk to and the first to take one of my a3s comics, I’m definitely linking him on the links page. I brought a convention special comic from him and then swiped a few freebie sweets and a one-page strip before moving on…

The report speeded up

I realize I’m gonna take forever on this so here’s the short version of what I got up to afterwards. With the limited time, I mostly tried to get around to the lesser-known people;

Brodie’s Law – I was stopped by David Bircham and Daley Osiyemi, who were selling issue 1-4 of their published comics along with signed posters. They also said there was rumour about Brodie’s Law becoming a movie.

Great Vagueness – Guy here was cool, grabbed a flyer from this table as I had a read a few pages the night before and slapped it on my favourites list. I soooo need to find more time to read all these comics.

The Girly Comic – Despite being mainly focused towards females readers (like that ever stopped me) I brought the first issue, curious as I’d read a bit about it online here and there.

Earth Bound – Zoe Stead had an impressive portfolio out containing art of a future comic along with loads of Earth Bound stuff. I seem to have misplaced the cool badge I swapped for one of my a3s comics. Doh! She and her boyfriend also suggested I sign up to Drunk Duck and make a mirror comic site. (Hmm, another little chocolate to see me through the day.)

Square Eyed Stories – Run by two brothers, I got to chat with Arthur Goodman and brought two of his Favourite Crayon comics. David was missing at the time but I checked out his doody art in the Bahala Na! comics.

Bandit and Karyu – Both great artists, I had to buy the ultra cute Kyosuke print (little purple haired lad with kitten - see photos) from Karyu, and despite being filled with “male X male anthro action” (not that I knew at the time) I brought both of Bandit’s Red Moon and White Whiskers comics and a sample comic of her next story.

Weebl & Bob – Probably the biggest name there. A large crowd permanently surrounded their table as fans brought posters and DVDs… and gave Weebl pie… he like pie. The only chance I got getting near the table was to take a photo of TSW Kat hugging Weebl. I need to buy me the DVD me thinks now, heh.

Little Gamers – As with Weebl & Bob, these guys are web comic gods and, like, from Sweden. Now that makes my travel troubles look like nothing. Yet another protection field of fans surrounded this table too so I wound up continuing to do another circuit of the hall.

Low Born – Had a chat with these guys and swapped one of my comics for one of theirs and then brought a second from them. Full of random little stories including pirates and, um… chickens.

Local Girl – Caroline is cool, I first heard about her from the 24 Minute comic mailing list. She had the most amusing stickers based on her comics too.

The Goldfish Bowl – Wes, Joff, and Darren are ace. A great sense of humour and comics between them, they wound up going as far as adding more signs to their other signs to sell comics even offering mini jaffa cakes to anyone buying (see photos). I grabbed me their free CD full of strips and art and brought their first collected issue. (Hee, more chocs to keep me strong!)

Bunny – Lem was another of the artists attending I particularly wanted to meet. I think his comic is simple in a way but really great, plus after finding his comic for the first time I soooo wanted to do a crossover strip with my Lapin. I found Lem and Stargazer on a fairly empty table (they were really good to talk to, see the photos section), they had sold out of all their comics by 12:15 and were taking orders to send to people. I of course had to order, they’re really nice quality prints too.

Goth Boy – I met Willie Hewes who also does Amaranth, (I loved the paint brushes keeping her hair back) and had a chat with her as I was looking through her web comic archives the night before. Got a Goth Boy comic and next time I’m after more, sooo wish I brought more money.

Housd – Now these guys were on my level, same crazy mannerisms, sense of humour, and way of talking/selling their wares that Ven and I have. They were a right laugh, how could I not buy random stuff from them? If I had spare cash I would have brought more from them actually because I really like their comic. I wound up with two issues of their media/comic review magazines by the title of The Genghis, issue 5 of Housd (yay!), and two very random mini comics (Aquabus and Rusty Nugget’s ABC of Rock Concerts).

The Life of an Artist - So I’m flicking through Aaron "Smurf" Murphy’s portfolio, recognising Monosense Girl from the night of surfing before and then bump into a funky drawing of two characters and a huge (cute) cow. This very picture was the one I got first comment on his Deviant Art space, mentioning this he straight blinks a few times and says; “That was you? You’re… Dante Kimachi?” I thought him remembering my handle there was cool and I ended up chatting with him for ages, buying a collective comic (Brute and Beastley) with some of his work in but unable to afford the mighty cow artwork. By pure coincidence we ending up on the same first couple of tube trains heading back, thankfully he has a better sense of direction than me.

Bollox - Eddie Bowley, what a geezer. Just looking at the set-up and quotes upon his table (see photos) I had to buy some of his stuff. Well, actually all I could afford was the quite impressive complete works CD. One of his drawing styles looks very much like the style I used to have (big eyes and nose, very 2D). He had a book on his table for people to draw their own characters in for him to do in his own style in special comics later. I drew a3s Marc and noticed Kat from TSW drew her character in there too. I’m up for his St George Day British Webcomic Piss-up after being invited.

Black List Press – A webcomic collective who caught my attention a couple of times. Swiping a few flyers I found Robert Goforth does Fish Institution and Matthew Evans does Lame Frame. I had a chat with James Turner of Beaver & Steve as I’d been checking his comic out previously, tis amusing stuff and I had to ask if he really did base Steve on Bub from Bubble Bobble, heh. Then I mostly ended up chatting with John Aggs of Daedalus Blue, a cool dude who brought my last a3s comic (see photos). I also brought an artist book pack form Antonia Russell-Clark who was sitting next to him. A random little collection of items in different designs and so on. My pack ended up containing a very bizarre (and slightly scary) comic (called Pickles) in a funky self-made mini book, along with several sticky notes giving me helpful reminders (such as limestone is not edible), two Japanese stick-style coasters and a sushi fridge magnet.

Scary Go Round - John Allison looked lonely in the corner of the hall… til people flocked to him and brought all his books.

Dark – My last official stall visit of the day was to Anna and Karen’s (lovely girls). I was down to a mere 30p and was unable to buy any comics from them, so Karen drew me a picture of a samurai boy and took the last of my money.

Event photos

The crowded hall	Packed init?	Black List Press	John & Ant big-up a3s	The man behind the Bollox	The table of Bollox
Brodie’s Law	Lem signing bunny comics	Lem & Stargazer sold out	The girls of Dark	Lone man at The Goldfish Bowl	How to then draw attention
The Goth Boy table	The standard pose of Housd	Karyu & Bandit	Low Born crew	Kat huggles Weebl	TSW multi-player battles

Video

Me doing a slow 360 spin of the packed hall

The 24-Minute Comic

Ade Brown was the main man behind this fund raising plot.
Basically twenty-four of us (though some worked in small teams) had to come up with a single page of a comic based on one of the given twenty-four rhythms (each an hour of the day in the story) using the character of J1P the alien (from a previous project) along with a random object to be included within the panels. My sheet had page six of the twenty-four highlighted with the rhythm; “The hours fly by when you’re content, already there’s morning spent”.
As the only information given was that J1P worked in an office full of humans, I drew a four panel shot of him at a computer messing around, surfing for alien porn, and playing solitaire before falling to sleep. I didn’t get time to ink his angry boss in the background of the final panel, so he came out as a light bunch of speckles. However I included my random object (a silhouette of a tree) into a picture frame in the background along with a clock telling the time between noon and 1pm. It’s not worthy of scanning and putting up here though.
I was very shaky throughout drawing it, as I knew it would be collected with the others to be printed off and sold that day. I was drawing alongside TSW Kat in the next room and she blitzed through it with ease and confidence (despite her random object being a vibrator… she worked it in as a rumbling control pad).
Anyway, I was proud that I was one of the contributors along with all the pros. If I wasn’t skint at the time, I would have brought more than one copy too.

Web comic panel

The second panel at 2.30pm was the only one I attented. It focused on webcomics in general, with Kat and Dave (Two Sides Wide), Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (e-merl.com), Lem (Bunny), John Allison (Scary Go Round), Madsen (Littlegamers), Weebl (Weebl & Bob) on the panel fielding queries.

The panel mostly discussed web communities and fans, merchandising, the amount of hits their sites receive, the pros and cons of creating comics online, and that the sound system was pants. General stuff really, the same stuff I’ve been trying to write a small essay on actually.
At one point, after working up the nerve, I basically asked the panel how they controlled time and space to actually get around to creating comics weekly if not daily.
Yes! It was I! Marc of a3s! Ok I’m done now.
I just checked Little Gamers and they did strip based on Madsen’s actual reply to my question.
Semi-fame! Semi-fame! Well, ok, none at all actually.
There was much agreement with Weebl that any more new Megaman sprite comics must be banned.
I also swapped URLs with a one half of DingBobik Comics afterwards.

The end

The place was packing up at 16:00, giving me time to travel back to Golders Green, grab some actual food, and then catch the coach and bus home.
It was a good day ^__^

Then I woke up early again to get to York and battle in full armour at the monthly SCA meet.