Friday, April 2, 2010

Hi-Ex Aftermath

Hi-Ex was, as you’re surely aware by now, the place to be last weekend.

Organised by artist Vicky Stonebridge and writer/editor Richmond Clements, Hi-Ex has gained a reputation for being one of the friendliest Comic Conventions in the land.

The Paper Jam Comics Collective had a table there for the first time, donated by Paul Scott of OmniVistaScope and Solar Wind fame. He couldn’t make it, we could. We will give him his table cloth back in the fullness of time.

As well as all five issues of OVS, our table consisted of the following:

We sold some of the above. It looked like this:

More importantly, we met some fantastic people, attended some excellent panels, drank some beer and contributed to the various jam comics going round the hotel bar in the evening. I've never seen so many comic fans and professionals in a single Chinese buffet before.

Mad props to everyone we met and all the good people selling their wares, especially to Dave Evans (Bolt01), titan of UK small press science fiction anthologies, who was selling bucketloads of Futurequake and Zarjaz to the 2000 AD-hungry crowd, many of whom had traveled across the Cursed Earth itself to attend.

The panels were all intimate, informal and good fun. Thanks to Stacey Whittle (Small Press Big Mouth) and Terry Martin (Murky Depths) for looking after our wares while the PJCC attended a few of the talks.

The panels we saw covered the Horror Genre in comics, a Charity Auction, the quite, quite mad Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Company, the enduring success of 2000AD and an audience with the Legend Cam Kennedy. There was a lot more, and the PJCC didn't get near the Judge Dredd Role Playing area, which we'd wanted to.

A weekend just wasn't enough to be honest. Thanks again to Vicky and Richmond. The days were just packed.

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