Thought Bubble 2011 Megablog, GO!!!

I’m going to have to accept that I’m not very good at blogging. I’m especially bad at blogging my convention experiences. If I hadn’t deleted it, you could look at the one I did for Glasgow. It ended on a cliffhanger!

With that in mind, I’m going to try to do a coherent and comprehensive report about Thought Bubble.

Thought Bubble is a comic convention that takes place in Leeds every November, organised by Lisa and Clark and their great team. It’s linked to Travelling Man somehow. Yes, I am not the most knowledgeable about Thought Bubble’s organisation. Except that it is exemplary. Indeed, the people behind Thought Bubble make this the easiest convention to enjoy for their exhibitors and attendees.

Before I attended Thought Bubble 2009, I had heard of comic conventions. They were things that happened in a place called America. Or other places far away. They were things that people with houses and cars went to. Not me. They were impossible things. But by November 2009 I had written a few comic strips and I was friends with a number of comic creators. Comic creators who were heading to Thought Bubble. Wait… Normal English people can go to these things? And there’s one happening in Leeds? We used to go there for day trips!

After attending Thought Bubble 2009, I became even more entwined in this comic book world. I started listening to podcasts, hanging out with podcasters and became friends with even more comic creators. I also started Jack and Daniel’s Comic Book Workshops, while developing three comic book projects.

I launched those three comic books at Thought Bubble 2010. One of those comics was Sugar Glider issue 1, which went on to be a huge success (relatively, speaking) and helped me to get even deeper into the comic book world.

(I recently spent over an hour opening a bank account because I spend so much of my time giving back story - looks like we’ve finally reached the opening titles)

Thought Bubble 2011 was always going to be very important for me. It represented my 1-year comic book publishing anniversary for one. On top of that, the convention would include the very last outing of Jack and Daniel’s Comic Book Workshops, as well as the launches of Sugar Glider Stories 2 and my new comic book Halcyon and Tenderfoot and the business behind it, Art Heroes. My love of Thought Bubble means that I put a lot of stock into the convention every year. This year that kind of backfired. Staying up most of the nights in the week leading to the show worrying about whether or not we were going to get everything ready meant that I was ill most of the weekend. Not contagious ill. Just stupid nervous ill.

Despite my inability to eat and subsequent spacey demeanour, Thought Bubble 2011 was my favourite convention so far.

Jack and Daniel’s Comic Book Workshops’ last outing was lovely. I was very lucky to have known and worked alongside Jack Fallows for the last few years. We’ve both learned a lot about comics and facilitating sessions through working together, and this workshop was a fantastic last hurrah.

More children and young people than could fit around the one table, were squeezed around the table making comics. The kids designed superheroes, ninjas (a lot of ninja cats), robot animals and every other type of character a wonderful young mind could come up with. They drew comic strips about those characters, as well as boy geniuses, robots and more cats.

At one point Jack turned to me and said, “They’re doing what we’ve always been trying to get people to do at our workshops.” And Jack was right. These young people had clearly been surrounded by comics, had swum in seas of comics and could instinctively utilise the conventions of the medium in their own work. A marvellous send-off!

On the comic book sales side of things, I shifted more copies this weekend than at any other convention in the last year. In fact, I think that I sold more than at the last three conventions PUT TOGETHER!

The great thing about publishing a multi-part story like Sugar Glider is the fact you get the same people returning for more! And I’m not saying that that’s the best part because you get more money from the same people, it’s good because the returning customers are saying, “I really like this comic you’re doing. I like it so much, I want to read more of it.”

The last year has seen a lot of work go into Sugar Glider - not just from me, but also from the artist and co-creator, Gary Bainbridge, as well as all of contributors to Sugar Glider Stories. There are also a load of comic readers and reviewers who have done their bit to support the comic and spread the word about it. If the comics themselves hadn’t already done so, then the sales we made at Thought Bubble validated all that hard work.

But things weren’t just ending or peaking for me at Thought Bubble, the convention also marked the official launch of Art Heroes - the partnership I have set up with Lee Robinson. I’ve blogged about Art Heroes before so I won’t go into too much detail, but - for me - this was the most important part of the weekend (business-wise, anyway). As well as talking to people about the workshops and comics that Art Heroes has been set-up to create, we also launched Halcyon and Tenderfoot issue 0 - a teaser comic for the first Art Heroes comic book series.

I was very happy to be able to tell readers of Sugar Glider what they could expect from Halcyon and Tenderfoot comics. It went a little something like this:

“You know how Sugar Glider is firmly routed in real-world Newcastle? This new comic is set in a completely fictional city. You might have noticed that there’s a reason for absolutely everything in Sugar Glider… I don’t even know why they have superpowers in the new comic. And I don’t care! But it will still have all of the things I’m interested in writing about: finding your place in the world, living up to expectations, tough family relationships… Everything like that!”

I love Sugar Glider (I make no secret about that) but the differences between SG and Halcyon and Tenderfoot are what makes this new comic so exciting to work on. And (potential) readers seemed really excited about the new series too!

Away from the workshops and the comics, I had an excellent time with friends, old and new. This is secretly why everyone goes to comic conventions. If we just wanted to buy/sell comics we’d visit/run the local comic shop.

Again, I have to praise Lisa and Clark for the excellent organisation of the convention floor. The block of tables I was situated in contained most of my very best friends - people associated with the Paper Jam Comics Collective and others I had been raving about for the last year or so. There were a few on our row I had never seen before (or maybe I just didn’t remember them - I am awful for that) but it was lovely company for the weekend. Of course, I had Lily and Lee working on the Art Heroes table too!

As a stroke of luck, the Unseen Shadows team were right opposite me, giving me a chance to catch up with Cy Dethan and Nic Wilkinson, joke-feud with Barry Nugent, and meet Dan Thompson and Steve Penfold for the first time (out of character, anyway).

I never made it to the Saturday night party due to the butterflies raging war in my stomach and the lost sleep catching up on me (and I had been desperately looking forward to it since last year), but I still managed to speak to most of the people I had intended to.

I spoke to all of the Sugar Glider Stories 2 creators in attendance and thanked them personally for their involvement. Lily was very good to hunt them out at the start of the show and deliver their complimentary copies of the comic too.

I was most looking forward to meeting Gavin Mitchell for the first time. Gavin created four amazing pages of art for Sugar Glider Stories 2 and we’ve had a great time chatting and joking over the internet since we started on that journey. And now that SGS2 is all wrapped up, we’re developing a pitch to take around publishers next year.

I’m very happy to announce that Mr Mitchell (aka @bobgoblynn) is exactly the same in person as he is online. Something that can’t be said as often as you would hope about internet friends. I’m sure many people are sad to realise that every nasty thing I say online is joke, for instance!

Gavin also won the 2000AD X-Factor-style award for best artist with a semi-fashionable haircut!

At this point, I’d love to mention everyone who I spoke to at the convention. But that would take far too long and I’d miss people out so I’ll just say that if I spoke to you, it was amazing and leave you with a few new discoveries to check out: Biz Horne and Team Girl Comic’s Gill Hatcher.

See you at Canny Comic Con!