Thought Bubble in Leeds was a barrel. I love seeing so many people excited about drawing and making things and getting dressed up and exuberant (we should all dress up all the time). Also exciting are the increasing number of awesome publishers selling amazing things there. There was still a small bitter cluster of (mostly) middle-aged white men who are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and are drowned out by more colourful and excited people (though they still make up quite a lot of the panels … what’s up with that?).
I’d spent the night before putting together a weird little comic for the con. Following a few odd conversations with Ester Vanhoutte (check her out) about the odd nature of Tintin, we both got itchy drawing fingers and decided that comics about Tintin’s im/mortality were just the sort of introspection-on-an-icon Thought Bubble needed. A friend offered to find somewhere to display them for us, and shortly after arriving in Leeds our comics were stuck up in a tunnel between the station and the festival. Awesome!
If you want to read them, we’re printing them out in a free little booklet instead of putting it all online. If you’d like a copy, just send me an email – chris fairless, at the hotmail.com
Arriving at the festival itself we turned shy and took refuge at the Phoenix Comic‘s doodling table, while we built up the courage to go and speak to the comickerati present. This resulted in a irritable bee comic:
Then we went exploring. Big shout outs to Lani Irving and Bethan Mure who are the nicest new friends and extremely talented artists to boot!
In the evening things meandered from one place to another, and ended up with a request for a friend’s portrait in full Victorian garb, shooting our prime minister with a blunderbuss made from a trombone. These things happen and you have to roll with them.
unnecessary, insufficient 