This weekend is the Birmingham Comics Show. I’m not going to the show itself partly because I’m not really into that stuff these days but also because I went to the launch last night and drank a bit too much. I wasn’t planning on doing so – it kinda crept up on me at the last minute – but I knew some old London friends would be there and I wanted to see godlike cartoonist Hunt Emerson playing with his band The Black Country Cats. Here’s a photo of him.
Woo!
Like I say, I’ve been out of the whole comics scene for a few years but back in the day I was a regular at these things. But somehow I’d managed to forget exactly what they’re like. In short, your standard comics fan likes nothing better than talking to other comics fans whilst drinking a lot of beer. And there were rather a lot of them crammed into the lovely but somewhat incongruous Bennetts bar. So as soon as Tom and myself entered we were suddenly hit by the desire to drink and drink lots. It’s very odd. In fact I’ve blogged about the phenomena before.
As expected there were many old faces to catch up with, too many to link to right now, and rather unexpectedly I bumped into a couple of old University chums who I hadn’t seen for far too long. “Little” James and Craig to be precise. And Craig greeting to me pretty much encapsulated the whole comics bubble nature of the thing.
“You look exactly the same, whereas I’m like Angel in Season Five.”
Which might not mean much to most but the fact that everybody in the bar would have gotten that reference immediately was, while a little tragic, rather heartwarming. Tom later broke up a heated argument by comparing the combatants to Reed Richards and Dr Doom. It was that kind of night.
Technically, not having a ticket for the event itself, I was there as “press” but to be honest it didn’t fit into the whole Birmingham creative scene thing. This was the traveling circus of Comics, suddenly coalescing at random venues in different cities every few months. The location might change but the population stays remarkably the same.
Sadly it all ended at 2am. Far too early really. 6am is the tradition. I’m going to tentatively pop along later tonight to see what’s up. Here’s hoping it doesn’t kill me.
Ah! That explains why several hours of no blogging!!
Can I just say that I have no idea what ‘Angel in Season Five’ means. A tele ref, obviously, but that’s as far as I can get. Not that I was there, but I quite easily could have been!
Matt: Kinda.
Garen: Yes, but it’s a nerd telly ref. The nerd part is what’s important.
I overheard some of the London contingent in Gosh on thursday planning their trip. Usual faces. Made me laugh. One well known British artist was saying “We’re going up tomorrow, about three. stright in the pub”. The comics really don’t come into it.