First it was New York and MoCCA and last weekend it was Bristol. Two weeks and two different continents of comic book fans. My head’s still spinning and there’s Kapow and MCM left to go.

It was my first time in Bristol. Having been to Cardiff earlier in the year I wondered how much crossover there might be between the two events. I saw some familiar faces. Trade was brisk enough.

The event was large and there was lots to see. Plenty of room for punters to stand and talk and for exhibitors to display their wares.

Weather is a double-edged sword when it comes to conventions: if it’s pissy and rain falls, people don’t want to go out of the house and if the sun’s out the last place the general public want to be is inside a passenger shed reading comics (well, all except the most hardcore fans).

That said, people seemed genuinely enthralled with their purchases. It’s a strange thing is conventions in that you don’t see comic buyers reacting the same way to purchases when they’re buying a comic in a shop.

What’s reassuring to see on both sides of the Atlantic is the appetite for NEW stuff. And when I say NEW, I don’t just mean newly published, I mean comic books that tackle subjects and which present world views that don’t really fit within the confines of the 3,000th spandex story.

***

Conventions are also where you make new connections. At Bristol this weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Rob Williams, creator of the nineties hit Cla$$war.

Cla$$war was a book that was published way ahead of its time and which predicated a lot of the themes explored in The Ultimates. It was published by Com.X and if you were in the know you would have picked it up. (note: a lovely deluxe edition has been released so go and pick it up if you can, well worth it)

For me, it was one of the books that prominently marked a change in mood in the way that superheroes would eventually be delivered; knowing, political and with a healthy dose of the ultra-violent.

Rob was kind enough to let me know he’d read a past issue of the London Horror Comic and had enjoyed it.

Weird and joyous little moments like these where people whose work you remember and admired and who then come and say they remember your book is one of the joys of working in the field of comics.

Bristol Comic Expo 2012

#1. Convenience – It was bloody cold this weekend. I had a cough and wasn’t up to much but could still get the latest releases. Nice.

#2. HD rocks – The books I downloaded were in a HD format. Colours looked vibrant as hell.

#3. Range – That is: range of new books wasn’t as complete as the comic book store. Also, if providers like Comixology want to really open comics up to people that might not be interested in Superman, they should really be ramping up the small press and indie section.

#4. Reading – Noticeable difference: I worked through the book as if I was consuming information on a web page: fast, transactional and with the impetus on running my finger across the screen to get to the next page. Not my usual comics reading experience where I take in info from several different panels, go back and try and absorb all information on the page before turning.

#5. Page Layout – Smaller more dense panel layouts slowed me down (a good thing). The nine panel layout worked well for Watchmen, but it also works better on a tablet in slowing you to take the time with each panel.

#6. Up selling – Get to the end of the book and you have a standard three-book recommendation. What’s another £1.99. Brilliant way to keep them hooked.

#7. Bonus content – Come on publishers, it’s 2012. I get a whole second disc loaded with special features when I buy a DVD, why are digital comics so light on extras? Interviews with the creators? Twitter accounts linked to the book to act as a hub for the community? You’re not just selling digital comics, you’re embedding an audience faster and more directly than you could through selling a book in a store.

#8. Form – Paper and ink is the technology used to deliver print comics but forms but of the object itself. Content and form are linked. Turning the page transforms the object. On an iPad there’s a layer of separation between the content and the form of delivery. An iPad doesn’t have a comic printed on its casing, it’s inside the iPad. Turn a page on the iPad and the iPad stays the same even though the page on the display changes.

#9 Price Point – Sorry, but if you’re not printing this on paper (and not very good paper judging from the current industry standard), then £10 should buy me like thirty books. Cloud storage longboxes should also preserve my collection for the future.

#10 Affiliate Marketing – Anyone that reviews a comic should be engaged as an affiliate partner by way of making a direct link available to download the digital comic.

#11 Previews App – Where is it? Where can I tell Previews/Diamond what apparel or books to order and which comic shop to deliver them to so that I can collect from them? Googlemaps mash-up listing all comic shops worldwide?

The store was Jim Hanley’s Universe, the one opposite the Empire State Building, and in my haul was a bunch of indie comics including Optic Nerve, Joe Matt’s Peepshow and a whole lot more.

The weekend opened my eyes to some great work and in part laid the foundation for me starting the London Horror Comic.
Flash-forward nine years to 2012 and I’m standing in Jim Hanley’s Universe once again, but this time with my book on the shelf.

Little moments like this make me realise just how long I’ve been on this journey of making comics. It was a nice touch point for my first convention abroad.

***

It’s always a little worrying when you do a new convention. In any new place, you wonder how you and your work will come across to the people that have paid the price of admission.

New York is a big place. You have to tilt your head back to touch your heels to take in the full height of the surrounding skyscrapers. Giant billboards lord over the population. Advertising is the church and the cash register is where you seek forgiveness. The coffee shops carry 28 different flavours of coffee.

It’s a demanding place.

And then there’s me with my comic books and an English accent most people might suspect of being a put on.
At times like this this, it’s reassuring to remember why I produce comics: to tell the stories I want in the way I want to tell ‘em.

My mission when I go to a comics convention? To find some like-minded cats who dig what I’m about and who I can provide a few chuckles and chills for.

If your mission veers too far from the above ethic, you won’t fully enjoy the show.

***

The most startling thing about MoCCA was its size. The small press scene is a fully matured one. High-quality books covering a range of subjects by hundreds of people with an audience size comparable to a mainstream comic book show here.

I definitely think that the UK scene is on its way there. It may take a couple of years, but the talent is here and with more and more people discovering indie books we’re not too far off.

London Horror Comic at MoCCA 2012

Just finished MoCCA 2012 for the day and all I can say is: “Wow. Huge.”

Fuller write-up coming later on as off to get lunch but here’s a pic to be getting on with.

4 West 33rd Street (just after 5th Avenue, opposite the Empire State Building)

London Horror Comic now at Jim Hanley's Universe

Previews here: http://londonhorrorcomic.com/issues/issue4.html

London Horror Comic now at Time Machine Comics

2. Must discern what MiTrom is. Sounds like a robot from Buck Rogers or Marvel limited series from the ’80s.And by limited, I do in fact mean shit.

3. Staples office supply store and FedEx stores here are things of beauty. FedEx photocopying and printing open 24/7 and Staples at seven. Plus, they sell every possible form of stationery I usually have to go running across three different stores to get.

4. The above aside, I had to explain what A4, A3, etc sizes were to the shop assistants just like the metric system in Pulp Fiction.

5. When you order a “small” pizza here, they do in fact mean Galactus-sized large! I worry if I ordering ‘large’ Pizzas are actually people claim to have seen UFOs this side of the pond.

6. Got a ticket for “Death of a Salesman” with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield. Spider-man meets Arthur Miller!!!

7. Snooty guy at box office reminded me not to be late because, unlike the movies, which is all he presumed I’ve been to up until today, they don’t allow late admission. Replied nonchalantly “Quite so.” Lesson: for all the tweed you wear box office guy, don’t try and out-snoot a guy from England. It’s practically a compulsory GCSE here.

8. Starbucks here have seven or eight boards of choices. Jeez, I just want something warm and liquidy!

9. My hotel room is like the one rented by the Terminator in the film “The Terminator”. Or like the one in Taxi Driver. This rocks!

Dude New York 2012

10. According to local news, the US and not Germany, have in fact been supporting a failing euro through a garage sale being held in Poughkeepsie.

Below is the “virgin” art without the masthead and slightly more visibility of aforementioned strippers’ *ahem* costumes.

London Horror Comic FrightFest #10 Magazine Cover

First up was The Thing (1982) and its prequel. I reviewed the prequel when it was out a few months ago, but watching it back to back with the original does reveal a few new insights.

The first, and something I praised the prequel for in my original review, was its ability to recreate the same wild imagination of monster scenes that the original did. The mix between prosthetics and CGI was balanced to produce creatures that were effective.

It’s a shame though that being the prequel or remake of something is the only time modern horror films feel they have the license to push the boundaries in effects and creatures. It’s like some studio exec is sitting watching the rushes going; “Yeah, don’t make it too OTT, otherwise people won’t believe there’s a mad axe murderer on the loose.”

I like the Final Destination films for this very reason, and while the merits of the SAW films are in question, at least they make an attempt at showing you something you haven’t seen before.

From the “making-of documentary” of the prequel, the guiding principle behind the films was to provide a logical explanation of the events that were hinted at in John Carpenter’s version. It’s a mistake, since the audience don’t come looking for explanations but entertainment.

Next up was Lucio Fulci’s Lizard in a Woman’s Skin which I caught down the Prince Charles as part of a Cigarette Burns screen. This thriller produces its fair of share of laughs (unintentionally), the biggest being when the police chief asks that every man in London with red hair be rounded up because they could be a suspect.

Aside from the kitsch laughs, the film does have a fierceness of eye. The chase scenes are genuinely terrifying and the film’s dream-like sequences are bold and unlike anything you’re likely to see in modern films.

Again, how many horror films do you see nowadays are all too willing to show graphic violence, but bail when it comes to showing an elaborate or overblown dream sequence?

Speaking of dreams, I’m halfway through re-watching the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks again. Here’s a franchise that knew how to keep things full blown mental. For the first time in ages I was reminded how inventive some of the scenes in the film are.

When it came to a New Nightmare, Craven breathed new life into the franchise by blending the real world into that of the film—truly meta. New Nightmare was scarier than the rest of the films in the way it keeps you off balance until the very end. In this way, it wasn’t bound to the tradition of the films that had come before it. Here’s Freddy, but in a context you haven’t seen him before.

The net result of all of this is that horror films should be allowed to be horror films: dream-like, inventive, mad and bold, without the restraint of what’s come before it.