Comica

I haven’t been to any cons for a couple of years for various reasons - but I popped along to a small press day at the Comica today. I’d planned to go all week - and then found myself busy on the day and almost didn’t go, but then my new comics chum Bridgeen ordered me to go - and I’m so glad I did!
So nice to bump into old friends and familiar faces including good old Sina Shamsavari who contributed to the O Men anthology, plus comics royalty Paul Gravett who I gave some O Men to in the hopes that he will somehow magically think I am the future of comics and will do a South Bank documentary on me.
It was quite a small venue, but it seemed quite bustle-y and nice and relatively busy. These are some of my highlights...
- I was chuffed to bump into Selina and Jay from Factor Fiction press. These guys are two of the nicest people in small press comics and they've just put together a collection of their Girly Comic in a beautiful book which I was glad to get my hands on, finally.
- Met up with Paul Rainey whose work I absolutely adore. He's just released the latest issue of his hilarious comic, There's No Time Like the Present.
- Got my hands on the fourth issue of the Whores of Mensa, which has the most gorgeous cover (see above). It's an anthology by Ellen Lindner, who I'm unfamiliar with, Jeremy Dennis who has such an amazing style (and is a lady, despite the name) and Sacha Mardou, who I met at Bristol a couple of years back and who is so cool and quirky. She was going to contribute to my first O Men anthology but was too busy (getting married, and silly things like that).
- Also nice to bump into Sean Azzopardi and Oli Smith, both who contributed to the O Men 2.5 anthology.

- Also got my hands on John Allison's 4th Scary Go Round collection, which looks really nice.
- Of course, the problem with comic cons is that you really want to have a look at people's wares, but you don't want to upset people by approaching their stall and not buying anything - so there's a lot of things I'd liked to have looked at but didn't. This looks like a cool mag - I bought it online when I got home - Last Hours.
So it was a really nice day, but cons normally are. I'd gone in with 20 quid but ended up wanting to spend more - luckily (because there no cash machines nearby) i found an extra tenner deep in my wallet.