| Walls
and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows
05-27-06
The middle of
May saw the annual Bristol Comic Expo. Since 2004 it has been put
on by Mike Allwood, from Bristol comic shop Area 51, and Dave Morris.
I went down on the Friday to set up as I had a few trade paperbacks
and DVDs to sell. This year the American guest list was very impressive:
Roy Thomas, Arthur Suydam, Tommy Lee Edwards, Howard Chaykin and
Geoff Johns. Walter Simonson was due to come but he had to cancel
due to ill health and hopefully he’ll be there next year.
I drove down which took hours because I chose to go the scenic route.
Rather than give you a blow-by-blow rundown of the weekend which
would be pretty tedious, here are my highlights of Bristol International
Comic Expo 2006 (a very enjoyable weekend):
- Getting to
catch up with loads of people I only see once a year like Duncan
Fegredo and his lovely wife Diana, Sean Phillips, Charlie Adlard,
Mike Collins, Andy Winter (who I see more than once a year), Tommy
Lee Edwards, Adrian Brown, Steve Yeowell, Mike Allwood, Ian Edgington,
Dave Morris, Mark Buckingham, Mike Carey, Bryan Talbot,Tim Seelig
and his girlfriend Layla and loads of other people I can’t
even remember.
- I also got
to hang out with Leon and Baz from Redeye, published by Engine
Comics. They’re both really funny blokes and we had two
insane but very funny evenings.
- Hanging
out with my mate Dave Baillie who always manages to lift any occasion
he’s at.
- Getting
to meet Howard Chaykin at last even though I’d met him for
split seconds at San Diego and Wonder Con in San Francisco.
- The Studio
Space panel on the Sunday with Howard Chaykin, Tommy Lee Edwards
and Duncan Fegredo, which was co-hosted by Gary Marshall, my former
partner in TRIPWIRE, who is co-editing the Studio Space book with
me. Even though Duncan is always reticent about doing panels,
he did very well on it and although the attendance was a little
sparse (by Sunday afternoon a lot of people are heading home),
the chemistry of the three made for a really interesting (hopefully)
and entertaining panel. Gary started the ball rolling because
I’d had about five hours kip, so I needed some time to get
into the swing of things.
- Finding
out from a couple of people that TRIPWIRE, the comic magazine
that I edited and designed for eleven years, is still missed,
which was really gratifying and made me decide to bring it back.
So expect it in a different format next year.
- Unusually
this year’s Eagle Awards were apparently worth seeing. As
a rule I miss them out. and go out for Indian instead. This year
we couldn’t all get into the Indian so some of us went for
a very nice Chinese instead. But I hear that Dez Skinn, editor
of Comics International, made some rather inopportune remarks
about Judge Dredd Megazine while presenting an award, which seemed
rather a silly thing to do. But I missed it all so I can’t
really comment about it.
So Bristol was
a fun weekend and what almost as much fun was the drive back to
London on the Monday. Myself and Dave Baillie stopped off at Bradford-on-Avon,
a very pretty town near Bath where a friend of mine, Jasper and
his wife and daughters, have moved to. After a very pleasant lunch,
we moved on and drove to the Vale of the White Horse in Uffington,
Oxfordshire where we saw the White Horse, a Neolithic chalk drawing
on the hillside that’s supposed to date back to 1000BC. It
was windy and dramatic and a really fun cap to the weekend.
Apologies for
such a long and rambling entry but there’s a lot to pack in.
I just have to plug an event that’s happening in London: Random
House's Chip Kidd, a brilliant and talented graphic designer, is
talking at the Royal Geographic Society in South Kensington on Wednesday
June 14 2006. The talk kicks off at 7pm and you can find out more
about it by emailing lectures@dandad.co.uk or calling 0207 840 1127.
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