As some of you may know London Underground Comics has enjoyed over a year of successful selling at its weekly stall in Camden Lock Market, it has been open for over seventy days, selling over five thousand comics to the unsuspecting sightseers of London. And it’s been great.
But on the 20th of December, London Underground Comics packs it’s Camden knapsack and moves on to pastures new. Next year will see our core team continue to pioneer new methods of selling comics to the public; in the pipeline are film festivals, music gigs and art exhibitions, kids workshops and club nights.
Thought you’d seen it all? Think again. Because next year sees the start of even bigger, better and more stylish comics festivals at the same affordable price for artists that we have always championed. We’ll have live music, films and exhibitions in some of the sexiest venues in London, and to show you what we mean, I give you:
LONDON UNDERGROUND CHRISTMAS
On the 13th of December LUC will be taking over the Alphabet Bar in Oxford Circus. Heralding the start of a week long exhibition of comics and original art, this Christmas extravaganza starts at 12, goes on until past midnight and features a stylish ground floor, food serving bar and a basement gallery with a DJ booth, comfy couches and comics.
Free for the public, exhibitors will display their art on the walls and their comics on a giant communal table for just £3 per person. Bring your friends and family and come celebrate Christmas, comics style. London Underground Comics is dead, long live London Underground Comics
Coming very soon to the ICA in London is the Paul Gravett curated Comica 2008 festival.
Loads and loads of good things going on, see the website for details.
Particular interest in the Bruton household (although we're sadly not getting down there) would be these two:
DFC Panel: Comica 2008: Saturday 23rd November.
Comica Comiket - Saturday 22nd November
After the success of No Barcodes, with its beautiful atmosphere, universal profit making and footfall of over six hundred visitors we’ve decided to do… well pretty much the same again actually.As usual full details on the LUC website. & a video, of course there's a video. Which is where I stole the opening line about No Barcodes 2 and a DJ from.
Plus a couple of sexy bonuses:
# Last time we had twelve tables and fifty two exhibitors, this time we are spread over two areas, meaning we can ditch the tables that weren’t in prime positions. We now have ten tables in the original No Barcodes hall, and another five in the centre of the busy Market Hall next door, allowing us to accommodate more creators than ever before, and hopefully give people who asked for space after we were full before a chance to participate.
# DJ Laurence Powell from small press legends Modern Monstrosity (Tales From The Flat) will be entertaining us all day with his comics themed mixes in the middle of the main room.
Our good friends Alex Thomson, Jack Tomkins and Jon Hull recently completed their final piece for their film degrees at Manchester uni and they decided to make a short documentary all about Modern Monstrosity and The Camden Comics Stall. Give it a watch, it's bloody awesome, the soundtrack's amazing, it's only ten minutes long and it's viewable here: London Underground Comics MMU Degree Show Film.The film is a mashup of comic art / animation and documentary following Oliver and Lawrence of Tales From The Flat from bedroom to workdesk, into Camden Market to the fabled London Underground Comics stall and then going west to the hot and seaty Brisatol Comics Convention where you can weep bitter tears as Oliver fails to get that Eagle Award (again!). And there's even added Oli Smith (although I hear that's some kind of contractual thing with London Underground Comics - Oli always gets camera time).
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's.... London Underground Comics! - a short documentary which takes you into the weird and wonderful world of London's small press comic scene. The film focuses on a group of young comic creators who have been making big waves in the small press world. Their goal is to bring comics to the masses and armed with an arsenal of innovative material and using their stall in Camden Market as a base they start their bombardment on the general public. The film follows this team of gifted young people on their journey to the Eagle Awards in Bristol, where their comic 'Tales From The Flat' has been nominated for Best British Comic (Black & White). Will they get the recognition they so deserve? Will another bloody Manga snatch their trophy? Tune in to find out! London Underground Comics is a story about passion, dedication and a love for men in spandex.This seems like a perfect time for a quick reminder about letting me see your small press comics. We're not saying a review on the FPI blog or here will lead to fame and fortune, but it's nice to be able to shout loudly about the great stuff going on in the British Small Press right now. We're always looking for your stuff to review. What have you got to lose. Just get in touch.
Over to Sean:
At this size the picture just doesn't do this gorgeous wrap around cover justice. From Buffalo Roots by John Cei Douglasin an unnamed latin american country, a multinational corporation is being attacked by a group of locals determined to halt the voracious export of national resources. a militia has been elected to impose order on a fragile state of affairs by hunting down the insurgents - led by the elusive Jesus Pais...
into this walks Bernard Bridges, a photographer sent to capture the company's accomplishments for its advertisting department. before he knows what's going on, he finds himself dragged into the escalating situation, and faced with an irreconcilable conflict of interests...
Out soon? now?
Matthew's ditching the Overspill blog at the end of April, and seems to have deleted the archives already.
The latest show over at Resonance FM (through their weblog Panel Borders) is an Alan Moore special:
Enter Camden comics alternative. A stall that sells comics to people who are looking for something new and most of whom don’t realise non-spandex comics exist. With a regular turnover of different punters, a fantastic social atmosphere and with sale figures that mean, not only does it require no investment, but it also turns comics from an expensive hobby for people with spare cash kicking around to, at the bare minimum, a past-time that pays for itself. Why spend £80 on a table at a convention selling to the saturated market of people who came last year, when you can spend £2 on rent and sell ten to twenty copies each week as well as getting to spend time with fellow comics-creators.
I tout the stall as non-profit making cooperative, with me only taking the money from wares of my own (I kick myself every day for saying that I would do that), but it just goes to show what you can achieve without ANY investment whatsoever, and if we can do that, so can everybody else. We hope to lead by example and if I had a few grand kicking around I could have easily done something more spectacular (the world’s first small press comics shop- not far away now, mark my words), but would it have inspired as many people to come and join in?
Having broken the thousand comics sold mark a month ago, (that’s three months after opening for people counting), never having failed to make the rent, with deliveries of new stock at least twice a week and the idea of a permanent second table being kicked around as well as branching out to Spital Fields Market, it can’t get much better (oh did I mention ALAN FRICKING MOORE?!).So it seems that we have a new movement starting up. It's going to be really interesting to see how it all turns out. After all, we know what happened to the last lot of young bucks running a comics stall don't we?
