It’s a Bristol Comic Expo special this week, and with James having already done his thing over at CBR, it’s left to yours truly to provide a recap of our weekend. Of course, despite being able to namedrop here and there, we’re hardly Rich Johnston (although we do know him, as well), so don’t expect too much in the way of insider revelations in what is really more of a diary entry than anything else. But come this way for some truly fascinating tales of story pitching competitions, hypothetical scenarios on Earth-Dave, lost bags, appalling town planning systems – and even some comics…

Knowing that for the first time we were staying the full weekend, we were able to be a bit more leisurely on the trip across from London, as we wouldn’t be having to squeeze all of our stall-hunting into only a couple of hours or so. Nevertheless, it was disappointing to get somewhat held up on the way in, largely thanks to finding the slowest route into the city centre – an A-road with traffic lights every fifty yards or so rather than just coming in on the motorway – which wouldn’t, sadly, be our last experience of being held up by road layouts in Bristol. We therefore arrived a bit later than planned, and so missed the DC Universe panel – though I haven’t seen reports elsewhere that have mentioned anything in the way of BIG NEWS, and DC were quite light on creator presence this year (more on that later), so we can’t have missed too much.

Heading straight for the main hall, our first stopoff was to catch up with Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie – sharing their stall this year with artist Marc Ellerby. A quick flick through some of Marc’s work yielded enough nerdy music references (Weezer, Ben Folds and the like) to make it seem worth checking out – so James picked up a couple of his self-published works, while I went for the first trade of Oni’s Love The Way You Love, written by Jamie S. Rich. I’m not usually one for forking out chunks of my Expo budget on trades (especially so early in the day) – but the book had enough of a Scott Pilgrim-ish feel to it that I couldn’t help but give it a go, a gamble that paid off as I really quite enjoyed it. Expect a bit more coverage of Marc and his work at some point in the future here on CD.

We got in a bit of browsing time – James showing remarkable restraint in not buying a single Jeffrey Brown book from the Top Shelf stand – before heading over to the Ramada for some hot panel action. It has to be said that at this point, and glancing over the programme, something felt slightly lower-key about this year’s con than previous years that we’ve attended. While of course the usual Brit suspects were present and correct – Dave Gibbons everywhere you look as usual, David Lloyd on the Forbidden Planet table, plus the likes Bryan Talbot (who drew a quite marvellous little rat sketch in my Tale of One Bad Rat), Mark Buckingham, d’Israeli, Barry Kitson and so on – there seemed a disappointing lack of A-list US talent. It was great that Karen Berger had made the trip, and Walt and Louise Simonson were great value, but there didn’t seem to be anybody whose current work was at the forefront of the market, which is a shame. It might just be my imagination, too, but things even felt quieter in the main hall (where I was also disappointed not to find the legendary Gilbert Shelton). It’s hardly surprising that the Expo is now playing up the Manga side of things a bit more, and I also wonder if the advent of the Birmingham show hasn’t spread attendees a bit more thinly.

Not that there wasn’t plenty to enjoy, of course. On that first afternoon, we caught bits and bobs of a few different panels – including Dave Gibbons talking to Lee “Budgie” Barnett about various topics (most notably the Watchmen movie), the Vertigo panel (which led to the interesting news of a new Jamie Delano Hellblazer one-shot, drawn by rising Brit star Jock), and a few minutes of Paul Cornell, Alan Davis and co. talking about Captain Britain. But the real event of Saturday was Barnett and Gibbons’ Hypotheticals panel. For those not familiar with the concept, a number of industry pros are given “hypothetical” scenarios based on the comics news of the last year, and asked how they would hypothetically react to them. Given that the line between fantasy and reality frequently gets blurred, we of course can’t report back on any of the off-the-record responses – but the panel was tremendously good fun. The Simonsons were great value (Walt in particular lending a brash, loud, jokey American counterpoint to the Britishness of the other panellists), while manga artist Emma Vieceli drew plenty of laughs as the “absolutely terrified” one. One surprise was Kieron Gillen actually taking things pretty seriously, and giving some genuinely un-cynical replies (as you can probably imagine, we were pleased to see him fight the corner of comics reviewers in the face of general hostility from the rest of the pros), while Berger also offered the intriguing perspective of someone in her position of power. And despite a sore throat, Gibbons was of course on top form as the event’s host, fluffing writer Barnett’s jokes at every available opportunity.

Hitting the road to first check into our hotel on the outskirts, we discovered that Bristol is home to the worst piece of city centre planning outside of Birmingham (you know when you’re stuck in a one-way system, to the extent that you basically feel like you’re on rails, and you can see where you want to go, but you just can’t get there? That’s Bristol in a nutshell), but finally found some food close to the convention and made our way back to the hotel bar. It quickly became apparent that, while we hadn’t really planned to do so (after last year, we certainly never planned to fork out for the dinner again), the only real way to spend the next couple of hours was going to be to sit and watch the Eagle Awards. As it happened, the ceremony was somewhat less drawn out and shambolic than last year – helped by a host (some guy from The Smoking Room) who was actually interested in the subject matter, proclaiming himself to be a massive comics geek. It’s a shame he wasn’t hugely funny, but you can’t have everything. Likewise, the victor-announcing Powerpoint presentation looked a bit classier this year, despite the continued insistence on using Comic Sans (seriously, a comics industry bash makes use of the font that Microsoft basically created to take the piss out of comics). Once again, Phonogram woz robbed by The Walking Dead for best b/w American comic (McKelvie stoically pointing out, “Oh no, a comic that outsells ours six to one beat us in a popular vote”), and a real surprise was Hellboy beating All-Star Superman and Captain America to best US colour comic. That said, the biggest laughter/applause of the night was reserved for Gibbons, winning “Best Letterer” and proud of the fact that “after thirty years in the business, someone’s finally noticed I can spell”.

Now joined by a badly-delayed-by-trains Julian Hazeldine, we’d been hoping to grab some interview time in and around the bar afterwards, but when it became apparent that all of our potential subjects were otherwise engaged (Gillen involved in a particularly long and involved fanzine interview at one point), we instead hung around for a bit (spending far too long having an enjoyably animated discussion with Ellerby about music) before heading back to the hotel to grab some valuable sleep before Sunday.

Sunday morning we were out nice and early in order to try and make as much of the day as possible. A wholly more successful root through the back issue bins saw yours truly walk away with a fantastic stack of twenty comics for a quid, a while James was also able to finally bestow upon X-Force #1 its true worth (five pence). A minor “oh crap, where’s my bag gone?” incident on James’ part interrupted proceedings briefly, while Julian spent far too much on toys in a short space of time and demanded that we get him out of there as quickly as possible. And I became completely dazzled by a page of original Roy of the Rovers art from 1982 (featuring Alf Ramsay as manager, Roy Race in a coma, and Melchester notching up a record 14-0 victory) on sale at a stupendously cheap £35, but somehow managed to get distracted while going away to think about it, and totally forgot to go back for it. If anyone knows who the chap was selling original art from British comics (he sounded Midlands-ish), and how I might be able to get in touch with him, please let me know! We had just enough time for a quick “sequel” interview with Gillen/McKelvie (although, of course, it was wind-him-up-and-let-him-go time for Kieron – the full interview will be posted here on CD when I’ve had a chance to transcribe everything!), and a thumb war in which I was roundly defeated by the erstwhile videogames journalist, before heading back over to the Ramada to collar Captain Britain and Doctor Who scribe Paul Cornell in the bar. A thoroughly lovely, open and talkative chap, Paul was happy to have us pointing microphones at him even as he ate his lunch, and the finished interview will be part of the long-awaited Noise to Signal relaunch, coming soon. I’d also just like to take this opportunity (even though he probably won’t be reading this) to wish Paul well after his recent accident, and say how glad I am that he and his wife escaped relatively unscathed.

After interviewing Paul, meanwhile, came (for me, anyway) pretty much the highlight of the weekend – if not one of the major highlights of my comics fandom as a whole to this point, probably just below meeting Alan Moore. Since about the middle of the preceding week, I’d been umming and aahing about entering the Panini “X-Factor” (er, named after the TV show, not the comic!) competition, in which contestants were invited to get up and spend two minutes pitching story ideas to the editor, writer and artist of The Spectacular Spider-Man, a UK-based newsagent title featuring original material aimed at a slightly younger audience (sort of a UK version of the Marvel Adventures titles, if you like). The winning story was to be turned into an 11-page story by the Panini team, and published in a future issue of Spectacular. The main reason I’d wondered about entering was that I figured it was probably aimed at kids – but I had come up with what I felt was a pretty decent idea, and so when I discovered on the day of the competition that pretty much all the entrants were grown men (most even older than me), I felt less bad about throwing my hat into the ring. And a worthwhile endeavour it turned out to be, because amazingly, I somehow won the blasted thing. So my story, “The Spectacular Spider-Boy”, will be featured in an issue of the title some time early next year, and I’ll officially kind of sort of be a comics writer (well, “co-writer”. Well, “plotter”. But hey, that’s all Keith Giffen did on Justice League International).

It was a great way to end the weekend (traffic issues on the way back up the M4 notwithstanding), and we were able to look back and reflect on a successful first “full weekend” at Bristol. Next time out, the plan will surely be to actually try and get rooms at the Ramada instead of way out of town, to try and catch a few more of the panels, and to continue making friends with all manner of talented and excellent individuals. Plus, of course, there’s still Birmingham to come in October – not to mention the fact that, who knows, before too long we could be down there trying to hawk our own material (but more of that at a later date. Much, much later)…