On Saturday I went to Thought Bubble 2012, the Leeds Comic Art Festival. First stop was the White Cloth Gallery, to see the beautiful Olly Moss posters made for Mondo (which only go on sale in terribly limited runs). While I did get to see Olly himself later, the door to the gallery was locked, with no-one in sight. Dang. The Mondo exhibition runs until December 2nd, so I may go back and try again.
After buying some snacks from the nearest supermarket (loaded into the bags I brought to fill with merch), it was off to the Royal Armouries hall for the main floor. Cosplayers were plentiful: Finn, Jake and Fionna from Adventure Time, a Silver Surfer, a blue Halo Spartan, several Loki’s (Lokii?) and numerous Harley Quinns. Burton-era Batman was also striding around.
After checking in with People I Know, I sidled up to Mookeo‘s table, where I chatted with a young guy over an awesome poster he’d just bought. After he wandered off, I was informed that the fellow was my buddy John “Final Boss Fight” Gotobed’s brother! Bear in mind that they both live in London…
…there was also a girl I hadn’t seen for about 6 years helping man the CraftJam stand, some guy from my work among the crowds, and one more friend recruiting for the Bruising Banditas Roller Derby team. Small world!
As planned in my last post, I got to meet Scott C.. His queue took a while to conquer, but was not as ridiculously lengthy as the one for Kate Beaton, who I only got to see from afar. Scott signed my book and said my Happy Couple fanart was “awesome”!
He had a whole bunch of limited run prints, and I only had enough money left for one – in the end I went for The Right Key (even if I did repeatedly call those rabbits “pigs” in front of him).
Robert Llewellyn was in attendance: While he was promoting his new science fiction novel News From Gardenia, he’s best known in the UK as Kryten from Red Dwarf. Got autographs for me and my Bandita pal!
I passed Lee Garbett‘s table a couple of times: A really nice guy, but no-one queuing to see him. All he had on the table were some comic pencils that i’m not sure were for sale. They were, however, pretty incredible, as he’s drawn for Marvel comics!
Everybody there was friendly, attendees and stand-runners alike. Everyone was “please”, “thank-you”, “‘scuse me”, forming and abiding by queues as British people are wont to do.
Overall, neat. Went last year, will go again next year.
There’s several artists I haven’t mentioned above, but hear this: I’ve got just enough blue paint left for one last hyperlink. That leads to a Flickr image of the day’s haul, each piece tagged with who it came from!
