Bristol Comicon

I have been hanging out in a train shed looking at art -not a bad way to spend a day. I actually went to meet my lovely publisher as I have finished my six page preview and I took the first four hand bound copies (sewn on the train in green yarn) to give to him and the writer of the script I am drawing, Lawrence Rider. 

The convention was guarded by three storm troopers and a baby, and it was sunny and great. 

The very first person I spoke to for any length of time was an incredibly nice man - Sydney Jordan who drew the classic science fiction - Jeff Hawke for the Daily Express in the sixties. Interestingly he had left his original job as an aeronautical engineer to become a cartoonist. He was very kind indeed and encouraging! I will read his work with interest as it is so tightly drafted it's as though his training as an engineer actually prepared him for communicating what was a new imaginative frontier, made real with men on the moon for the first time, it was no coincidence then that all of his strips were about astronauts and aliens. 

I caught up with the Comic Book Alliance posse, GM Jordan, Kalie Stanton my peer and a writer called Jasper Bark whose website speaks for itself. I saw Andrew Wildman who was selling his book Frontier with the writer Jason Cobley. I met an interesting artist whose portfolio is over at the Welsh El Doro. I stood and stared as Roger Langridge casually produced an incredible sketch, he resides at Hotel Fred. And Lastly I met Simon Bisley, who I think might have made me laugh quite a lot not least because of a small gun he was wielding. It was actually about 1cm long and he was quoting something about a colt 45. It was funny, I forget, he liked my preview, seems to know a lot about Vikings. That made me happy.

It was a good day, I was a bit nervous showing my work for the first time but I needn't have been. I'll post it online tomorrow for you to see it too.