LSCC London Super Comic Convention 2015 Review

Back in one piece from the London Super Comic Convention. Yet again, it had a great guest list, it was well organised, busy, varied and seven kinds of delightful, many thanks to George and all the LSCC team for looking after me. I like LSCC, everyone seems to have a good time, it's more about the comics and artists instead of TV and Film guests, and the staff brought me free water. I'm easily pleased really, some other cons leave me to dehydrate, LSCC kept me watered and I got to chat to Neal Adams. I was happy.

I travelled up with John Watson, I'm sure his blog post about the event will include blatant exaggerations on the poor quality of my driving, but the fact remains we arrived there safe after only 8 short hours of solid driving. This was a great opportunity to chat about projects, which we actually did for a while before the task of navigating central London took over all our energy.

We'd booked into the Ibis hotel this year, which is right next to the west entrance of the Excel centre. Unfortunately the Excel centre is 5.3 miles long (That is a fact. Don't check it.) and LSCC was being held near the east end of the centre. so walking the entire length of it carrying heavy boxes of prints, art and brochures was life threateningly difficult. Fortunately due to a personal regime of diet and exercise I was able to make it. John struggled but I carried the heavier stuff and jogged ahead of him clearing a path.

After setting up the table Saturday morning, the legendary artist Neal Adams came over and introduced himself and had a quick, friendly chat. I nearly passed out with joy. Neal Adams is an all time great, just being in the same country as him is pretty exciting, so having him come over and chat basically made the entire convention worthwhile. This was within the first ten minutes of getting there. LSCC is great. I mumbled something to Neal about how awesome he was, John bailed us out by asking a coherent question about when Adams worked with Lou Fine at Johnstone and Cushing.

I was at LSCC this year in an attempt to sell a few prints and to host a Jack Kirby panel. The panel was on the first day, so I had the morning to sell prints while John sat sketching and selling art. I'd done a portrait of Jack Kirby in the style of Shephard Fairey's Obama HOPE poster that I thought might look nice framed on the wall of a Kirby fans home. On the Saturday John did marginally better than me for sales, for every one of my prints, he sold about 40 sketches. That is to say that in total on Saturday he sold about 40 sketches, you do the math. It's possible I need to work on my selling technique. 

I did get distracted looking round, there was a particularly good selection of comic retailers selling cheap books and I find it very hard to resist buying old comics when they are cheap, despite the fact I already have a house full of them and a nasty habit of buying the same issue repeatedly.

The panel came round at 14:45, I'd called it "Return of the King" because Kirby was often called the "King of Comics" and I wanted to concentrate a bit on the recent upsurge in interest in Kirby due to the settlement between the Kirby Estate and Disney/Marvel and all the successful films being made that feature his characters. Also, I couldn't think of a better name than last year's "You Don't Know Jack" and a Lord of the Rings reference was the best I could manage. If you're not familiar with Jack Kirby, visit the Jack Kirby Museum website and you won't be sorry!

It was originally going to be just me in a smaller room, possibly one of the cupboards, but when Jonathan Ross, Tim Seeley and Dave Gibbons agreed to do it too we got bumped up to a large panel room and it was standing room only. It was actually a really great panel, a really good chat about the King of comics Jack Kirby by three very knowledgeable and articulate people and one overweight poet. I pretended everyone in the audience was there to see me though and so I had a great time. I expected Tim and Dave to know their stuff, and they did, but Jonathan Ross really held his own too, if you only think of him as a chat show host and general trouble causer, then you should know he has also written successful comicbooks and had some interesting opinions to contribute to the panel, it was a really, really good chat, I didn't really have to do a great deal, I just sat and enjoyed it, and I had a better seat than anyone else.

Dave Gibbons had a lovely story about why his “grail” Kirby piece is a story called Space Garbage, you'll have to find a video of the panel online to find out why. 

For the rest of the con people were coming up to me to say how great it was, and they were right, it was great, massive thanks to Dave, Tim and Jonathan for providing the quality content. There's some nice photos of the panel by Van Norris photography posted here.

I also had a great rap about "Jack Kirby" by Ills & DJ Johnny Juice to end the panel, but technical difficulties made it inaudible. You can check it out here though and you should, it's ace.

Saturday night was good fun, often the best part of comic convention is the evening, I ended up at the Aloft hotel bar chatting to people about Kirby and comics, one young man called Billy (not Danny as previously reported, sorry Billy!) had an enthusiasm for Kirby that very nearly restored my faith in the survival of future generations. Once we escaped the thumping music of the Aloft hotel bar, a few of us escaped to a quieter bar to play the “what sketch would you ask for?” from nominated artists, a game you can only play with people who really know their comic artists, and Mick, Rich, Biff, Nigel and Larry held their own despite some very obscure names being thrown in the pot.

After a sound night's sleep unhampered by anyone snoring, Sunday at LSCC was very enjoyable too, the last day is always better as retailers start to worry they might have to take all those heavy comic boxes home and begin to lower their prices. I stole a few minutes to pick up some gifts for my three daughters, it's always nice to take something home from a con, my only regret for this year at LSCC was that I didn't really get to chat to many other guests, but as I'm now a full time poet and artist, I have to take opportunities to make money where I can get them because I've chosen a career that is 400 years out of date and quite likely to lead to starvation.

Talking of starvation, all I had to eat on Sunday was half a polo mint and a Pain au chocolat from the Excel food court that cost £83 and was the size of a thimble, we did finally get a Subway at about 8pm when we picked up my daughter on the way home but by then I was nearly blind from hunger. I must take a packed lunch next time I do a comic convention.

So a great con, LSCC always manages to get just about everything spot on, looking forward to going next year. There's a blog post here by Andrew May about the panel, and there are some items online you can buy featuring the print I was selling at LSCC here. If anyone reading this spots an online video of the Kirby panel, can you send me a link? Thanks!

London Super Comic Convention 2015

One week to go to the London Super Comic Convention. I'll be sitting in Artists Alley next to John Watson on table A121 all weekend and I'm doing a Jack Kirby panel with Jonathan Ross, Dave Gibbons and Tim Seeley on the Saturday at 13:45. Come say hello, come to the panel, just don't ask any really difficult questions.....

2015 Comic Convention Appearances

I'll be a guest at the following comic conventions this year. If you're there, come and say hello. I sign and sketch for free, if you saw my sketches you'd know why. If you would like me as a guest at your convention, I'm probably not available for 2015 now, but it doesn't hurt to ask and I'll probably offer to come in 2016 instead.

London Super Comic Convention
14th & 15th March 2015
I'll be at a table in the Artists Alley all weekend and hosting a Jack Kirby panel.

London Film & Comic Convention
17th to 19th July 2015

NICE Comic Convention
Bedford Corn Exchange - Tickets on sale now.
19th & 20th September 2015

Nottingham Comic Convention
24th October 2015

I won't be able to attend the Blackpool Comic Convention on 12th September, I'll be at a friends wedding that day, but anyone not going to a wedding should check it out, it's the very first Blackpool one, go and support them.

List of Book and Literary festivals I'm attending this year to follow.

I'm also branching out and doing a local arts festival in early July, more details to follow on that too.

Life is a circus.....

So busy lately that my blog has suffered, apologies to both my readers, but no-one pays me for writing this, although I did make £1.34 in advertising revenue from the blog last month, woohoo!

To show I am doing something, here's an image I created for a client today -

Apparently they are gong to get metal signs made with this on. One for the clown fans I guess. I'm also writing, photoshopping and you can still see my recent comic lettering and finishing work on Comicartfans.

 I'll be appearing at a few comic conventions and literary festivals this year, details to follow. If you would like me to appear as a guest at your convention this year or next, get in touch via the contact form on the right.

Unintentional Haiku in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Who doesn't love a good haiku? Somehow anything seems that much more profound and meaningful when it’s in the form of a haiku.

A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry, which expressed in its simpler English form, is a short poem of three lines each with 5, 7 and 5 syllables in each line respectively. There is some disagreement about this, all to do with the difference between Japanese on and English syllables and the form should include some seasonal reference and also juxtaposition, but we are looking for unintentional haiku here, so let’s just concentrate on the syllables.

So haiku have rules that make them what they are, and anything that can be broken down into rules can be broken down into code. It was only a matter of time before some clever person thought of a way of putting computing and haiku together. Programmer, Google employee and one-time They Might Be Giants drummer Jonathan Feinberg has used a simple Python script to find accidental haikus in any piece of text, so you can cut and paste literally any text into it and it will do it’s very best to find a haiku in there for you. The clever little bit of code breaks down any lump of text and searches for sentences or groups of sentences where words fall in groups of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. The more text you put in, the greater the chance of it finding a haiku for you.

To demonstrate, if you paste in the entire text of the first Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy book by Douglas Adams into it, it will promptly find NINE accidental haiku including –

The man looked away.
Again a kind of sadness
seemed to cross his face.

Profound? You decide. Try pasting in any large chunk of text, it will find a meaningful moment you may have missed. Welcome to the wonderful world of the unintentional haiku.

Some Good Advice from Kurt Vonnegut

Have Jack Kirby's kids sold out?

Jack Kirby created more iconic characters before breakfast than anyone else did in their entire lifetime. Captain America, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, even Groot was originally one of his. He was treated shabbily by the people who continued to use characters. He died 20 years ago. His family tried to take legal action to regain the rights to the characters their father created that were now making billions of dollars for other people.

News broke a couple of days ago that this long running legal dispute between Jack Kirby's heirs and Marvel/Disney has finally been settled. The official line in a joint statement from the heirs and the Walt Disney Co subsidiary was -

“Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honouring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.”

Since then a few people have contacted me asking for comment, some have suggested the Kirby estate have sold out, that they should have taken it to the Supreme Court. Sure, it would have been interesting to see what happened, if they had won it would have had massive repercussions (see my earlierpost) so I can see how some people see this as a bittersweet end to the story.

Jim Sterenko said on twitter-

Glad the Kirby estate will benefit financially, but a positive Supreme Court decision would have affected all creators!

...and he's right of course, if this had gone all the way, it would have set a precedent and that's why some are lashing out at the decision as the wrong thing to do.

So should the Kirby estate have settled with Disney? Have Jack's kids sold out?

Since people have asked - here's my opinion - it's none of our business. Leave 'em alone! This is exactly what Jack would have wanted, for his family to benefit financially from his creations. It's well documented that providing for his family was incredibly important to him, this does that. Marvel making sure the Kirby kids get a slice of the pie is the right thing to do, should have happened years ago, shouldn't have required them to get the Supreme Court involved, shame they didn't manage it while Jack was alive, but this is probably the very nearest we will get to a happy ending. This settlement finally opens up the way for Marvel/Disney to give Jack Kirby's name more prominence. Let's all be happy for them and get on with the job of making sure Jack Kirby gets the recognition he deserves for creating so very many of today's most popular comic and film characters. Maybe we can see a CGI cameo from Jack in a Marvel movie? His name in really, really big letters in the opening credits? A bio-pic telling the remarkable story of Kirby's life? Kid's actually knowing that Jack Kirby created the characters they have on their t-shirts, lunch boxes and in their video games?

I hope Lisa, Neal, Susan and Barbara can now be left to celebrate their dad's work, enjoy their lives without wasting any more time on legal battles and have an absolute blast enjoying whatever the settlement was. They deserve it, they are entitled to it and let's repeat this for emphasis - it's what Jack would have wanted. 

The Jack Kirby Museum had this to say on the subject-

“The trustees of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center are delighted with the out-of-court settlement arrived at today“Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.” between the Kirby Family and Marvel/Disney. As an entity dedicated to promoting the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby, we view this as a day of vindication for Jack as an artist and writer of extraordinary talent who literally shaped an industry through the force of his imagination. Although Jack cannot be here to witness this historic moment, we know that, somewhere out there in the cosmos, he is smiling a humble smile of satisfaction at this long-awaited outcome.”

If you would like to know more about Jack Kirby, visit the Jack Kirby Museum website.