February 20 & 21, 2016
Excel, London
Back from this year's London Super
Comic Convention – LSCC 2016.
LSCC is one of the good ones. One of the few remaining comiccons that isn't dominated by film and TV
stars. It's about comics and comic creators, and it's run by people
who know comics and love comics, so the guest list always has a good
selection of UK and International artists and writers. Its in it's
fifth year now so maintaining the wow factor is a challenge, but with such headline guests as Brian Bolland, Frank Cho, Marv Wolfman, Mike
Zeck and internationally acclaimed poet, writer and artist Russell
Payne, they didn't do so bad. It's also about cosplay, so you have to
be able to cope with standing in-between a gun toting psychopath and
a zombie in the Gents, but you get that sometimes in London anyway.
I had a carefully orchestrated
multi-stage plan for the weekend, but as usual it all went wrong
before the con even started. Unusually though, none of it was my
doing, all fails were perpetrated by Marvel and DC cover artist and
professional non-driver John Watson. I generally give John a lift to
LSCC, but this year he was getting the train down from a family
holiday on Scotland on the Friday, I was going down on the Saturday
morning and taking some of his stuff, and I was bringing him home on
the Sunday. John realised on Friday that half the stuff he needed to
take was still locked in his studio, so he had to get a train from
northern Scotland to York, then to Poulton on Friday night, to pick
up his forgotten folders and then we both set off super early (I got
up at 2:45am, which is more of a bed-time than a get-up-time)
Saturday morning to still get to LSCC before it started.
I was happy to bail John out though and
I'm sure his blog will be full of praise and thanks for my kindness,
interspersed with nice comments about how talented I am. The drive
down was a useful opportunity to chat about the book we are writing
together, it's John's first novel so I'm showing him the ropes,
trying to teach him essential writing skills such as procrastination
and work avoidance, but he's a slow learner and keeps writing stuff
down and producing chapters.
Astonishing, we got there in plenty of
time, managed to park for free on set up the table before even
earlybird ticket holders got in. The table was between JK Woodward
(really nice guy, with some great Trek/Dr Who art, especially an
image of Spock and Tom Baker dreaming of Jelly babies - check
out his blog) and Chicago based artist Jill
Thompson, who was lovely and has done all sorts including drawing
Sandman and creating Scary Godmother and who had her young niece sat
next to her painting. LSCC often arrange the Artist Alley in
alphabetical order, there's a theory that this is to prevent Ian
Churchill from borrowing John Watson's clothes.
Stage 2 of the plan was to meet up and
share a table with Barry Kitson. This also failed. Barry didn't
manage to get to the con until 3pm, so I spent most of the day
explaining to people that I wasn't Barry and that Barry wasn't there
yet. Barry has a lot of fans and we heard the words “Where's
Barry?” so many times we considered doing a series of books on it.
When he did arrive, the helper who met Barry at the door didn't
recognise him. Not recognising Barry Kitson at a comiccon is a bit
like not recognising Mary Berry at a Cake Convention, but it got
cleared up and he got straight into painting some gorgeous
watercolours. I've been a fan of Barry's work since I was a teenager,
a few hours of Barry Kitson is still better than 3 full days of most
other artists, so I'm not complaining.
Even better, after the arrival of Barry, my daughter
Chloe also arrived. She lives in London, so I was staying at hers
that evening and it was a lovely opportunity to spend a bit of
dad/daughter time wandering round the con. I haven't quite adjusted
to her being an adult and kept trying to buy her Disney Princess
merchandise, but she eventually convinced me that she no longer has
any need for Lego Ariel earrings or a Tinkerbell Pop Funko and we
went out for an evening meal at Canary Wharf instead. I stayed over at Chloe's flat in Northwest London and had an emotional reunion with her chinchilla Coco.
Meanwhile......John went
back with Barry to his house in Norwich.
Norwich is 120 miles away. I expected
John and Barry might get chatting about art and be a bit late the
next day so stage 3 of the plan was to get to the con early on Sunday
to man the table for them for a couple of hours while they drove down
form Norwich. This also failed. Barry had deadlines to meet and
wasn't coming, so John got dropped at Cambridge to catch a train to
LSCC. Turns out that trains from Cambridge to London are only very
slightly quicker than walking.
So Sunday was a lot more people asking
“Where's Barry?” followed by “Where's John?” and "Then who are you?". When John
finally got to a part of the country that had a mobile phone mast, I
was able to keep his legions of fans updated with helpful text
messages like-
“Sat on a train, It isn't moving.”
“Sell everything.”
and my favourite text, that I read out
to an eager crowd of people waiting for news-
“Should be there at 12.”
Useful considering I received the text
at 1:30pm.
Had a great time sketching for people
though, which is much easier when John isn't there because he tends
to hide my pens to stop me showing him up with my superior art. I did
a little sign offering to “draw anything” which was possibly a
mistake as people began to take it too literally, the high point
being a request to draw Nicholas Parsons attacking Jim Bowen with a
dart. I rose to the challenge. It may actually have been my best work
to date. (Thanks to Mick for sending the photos!)
I also did Rapunzel, Han Solo vs Starlord, Deadpool fighting Wolverine, Bane, Penguin and a lot of Batgirls for some reason.
I also did Rapunzel, Han Solo vs Starlord, Deadpool fighting Wolverine, Bane, Penguin and a lot of Batgirls for some reason.
A man came by a couple of times to
invite me to the Barbados comic convention, this seemed a little too
good to be true. I eagerly await his email. I possibly should have
mentioned that I don't have a passport. I sold prints, did sketches and I got some work too, so a worthwhile trip. I was also
offered some comic cover work by a publshing company, but I have a
strong suspicion this is because they thought I was Barry Kitson,
Other honourable mentions to -
Gary Frank, who I had a chat with about
Jack Kirby and must pressgang into a Kirby panel in the future.
TomTricks
who could create just about anything people asked for out of a
few stretchy balloons. Available now for children's paties.
George Gechev of GGComics
who managed to enthusiastically tell me about his new comic despite
my best efforts to escape. George uses dark red writing on a black
business card and a font so tiny that his website address can only be
read with an electron microscope. One out of ten for the card, ten
out of ten for enthusiasm though, hope he does well.
..and that elusive enigma Barry Kitson
whose latest volume of Empire
can be read online at Thrillbent.
Many thanks to the organisers George, John and Imran for
doing such a great job once again. If you want to read an even more
wildly inaccurate review filled with such gems as -
“Russ has also apologised for being an egotistical nightmare “
and
“Yet, this time, I knew, I was the idiot. It wasn't Russ, it was me.”
Then don't miss John Watson's account
on his blog here!
