Festivals and fears

Last Saturday was the first outing of the Dessinators at a UK comic fair since CECAF last November. Sean and I did make it to Angouleme, but we seem to have spent the last six months in hibernation. Takeover 2015, the Alternative Press and London Radical Bookfair cross-over in Bermondsey, was a welcome distraction from the disappointment of the election and ended up being a good day despite the delayed-delivery-of-tables fiasco. So great to catch up with my table mates and see some familiar faces again.

I managed to produce a new mini comic for the event, as well as collecting my copy of A little Bit of Undigested Potato bad dream anthology from the lovely Keara Stewart. As well as organising a second event, Sean has found time to put together another excellent new tome – check out Tracks in Orbital or Gosh. A date for your diary is June 6th : make your way to Crouch End for CECAF 2 and all kinds of comic goodness! Expect to see the likes of Sally Anne Hickman, Danny Noble, Julia Scheele, Breakdown Press, Paul Rainey, Andy Oliver and many many more...

Angouleme again

Another sojourn in the capital of comics.

Cliodnah minds the store.

Mezzo draws to LC Ulmer's blues

Heavenly Crumb Sandwich

Keep on trucking

Tower of pen power

Heading home For more and much better pictures CLICK HERE to Sean Azzopardi's site.

CECAF is NOW

Tomorrow the very first CECAF will be taking place in Crouch End from 11am to 6pm. The brilliant Sean Azzopardi has assembled a bunch of comic creators to stage an event and cheer us all up in these dark wintry days. Such talents as Gary Northfield, Gareth Brookes, Oliver Lambden, Paul Rainey, Sally Anne Hickman will be joining Sean and myself along with many others. Check out the website or CECAF'S facebook page and find out who else will be there and how to get there. Oh and it's FREE. Do pop down – we'd love to see you.

Pics from Angouleme

Having recovered from my aprés con lurgy, here are the few non blurry photos worth posting.

Dutch posters were too covered in glue to steal

Sally Anne engages with the customers

Old friends

A big plate of vegetables at Le Terminus

Hugo holds forth

It's over for another year

Sean's got it all on camera

Loitering with intent

Just in case it wasn't clear enough

What we will do

This time next week...

Springfest

Spring is here at last. At least I think so. Saturday I will be joining my fellow Dessinators Sally Anne and Sean at a table at Comiket, this time relocated to Central St Martins behind King's Cross. For more information about exhibitors click HERE through to the page Liz Lunney has cleverly set up on facebook.

Dessinators are go

It's been a while – I won't go in to the events of the last few months, suffice to say, Angouleme is upon us, and we are once again heading to foreign parts to spread the word of the London comics. We are now The Dessinators, a name which I believe will stick. Sean, Sally Ann, Dan, Oliver and I will be manning the table as usual. This year we will be flanked by none other than Paul Gravett, Peter Stanbury and the Comica Festival gang on one side, and the lovely Italians of Passenger Press on the other. Come and pay us all a visit in the Alternative Press tent. I have been preparing for the trip, as my kitchen bears witness.

Winter over

The 'look inside' feature is now up and running on my book in the AMAZON kindle store, so here's hoping sneak peaks might boost my sales.
I forgot to mention this review Rob Clough posted last month of the minicomics I sent him.
I have arisen from my winter torpor and got back to work on my contribution for Ink+Paper while gearing myself up for Comica — less than two weeks away now...


Seems like forever since Angouleme.

So much more I forgot to mention

In December, Nick and I had our very own Christmas outing at the Royal Festival Hall where we caught John Waters' Christmas show which was hoot, and prompted me to book tickets for a family night out for my birthday to see Henry Rollins doing his amazing two-and-a-half-hours-without-drawing-breath feat of holding an audience spellbound. The man has matured like a fine tattooed wine into a rich, well rounded and full bodied (still super-fit) vintage.

Angouleme talks also included a very entertaining Eddie Campbell/Paul Gravett interface, which ended bizarrely with the trailer for an as yet not-made TV sitcom starring Eddie as himself, and I did manage to get a seat at the Menu and Pakito Bolino RAW talk, but had to excuse myself half-way through due to a mystery virus that swept through our group. Chance sightings included Menu (again), Lewis Trondheim, Joe Sacco and Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, one of the joys of the festival being the almost rubbing shoulders with so many of one's heroes.
The sense of camaraderie with all our fellow brits, from Paul and Peter, to Dan Berry, Ellen and Steven, Gary and Lauren, Tony Bennett, the Orbitals Camilla, Simon, and Tom and many more, extends to those from further afield, catching up with old faces (hey Abbie and Xavier!) and meeting new ones like our excellent table neighbours, Tom Scioli and Chris Fitzer from Adhouse Books, and even to Jessy and the gang on the other side (pics above by Oliver Lambden, see more here).

This is me with the wonderful Kivi Larmola and Sanna Karvonen whom I met in Angouleme last week ( pic by Sean Azzopardi, check out his report).