Kendal Comic Festival – October 19th 2013

While I never regret Moving to Cumbria, Sometimes I can’t help but see it’s flaws. One of them being the sheer lack of “events” that happen in the county. I’m not really a stranger to this anyway, having grown up in Newcastle, looking at my favourite band’s tour schedules year on year and seeing them completely miss out anything north of Birmingham would get me more and more angry with each snub to the north. But until I moved over here, I didn’t realise how lucky I actually was! Newcastle (and the rest of the north east) gets some great events, many of which I regularly attended, and then took for granted. This isn’t to say that Cumbria gets nothing, It gets some great events too, the Whitehaven festival is still one of the biggest of it’s kind in the country, and although smaller than Sunderland’s display, the air show at Windermere is a firm favourite with me. Usually though, these events are smaller, less popular than their southern counterparts.

So When I heard about Kendal hosting a comic festival my initial thoughts ran to a small church hall populated by 5 or 6 stands filled with Beano’s, Dandy’s and Ben Ten annuals. With a bunch of screaming kids and not a whole lot else.
So when I saw some advertising for the event and checked out the website, Oh how wrong was I! I immediately started to see names I recognised on the Guest list, names like John Wagner, Andy Diggle, Sean Phillips and the sheer number of events was astonishing! You could easily visit the festival for all three days, and be busy for the entire time.

Kendal it’s self is a lovely town (if you ignore the one way road system), With plenty of shopping, eateries and culture to soak up if you’ve had your fill of comics for the day (or have been dragged along to the festival unwillingly). Lots of shops joined in the fun, with a couple of empty units in the towns shopping centre hosting comic related family events, lots of window displays and general offers.

The Main events were held at the Brewery Arts centre, which has two screens, and most of the panels were being held in these screens.

Unfortunately, I could only attend on one day, So I chose saturday, as this was the day of the main 2000AD event (pictures near the bottom of the post). I had a great time, however, I nearly didn’t get there at all. The booking system on the website for the brewery arts centre is just awful. I’m sure if you are just booking a normal event, it would be perfectly fine. But the over complicated booking system for this event’s tickets nearly had me beat.. I could rant on about that for ages, but to be honest, you just wanna see photos of the event… so here they are:

Re-imagining the Classics – 12:15pm Kendal Comic Festival

This talk was hosted by Alex Fitch, and included Rob Davis, David Hine, I.N.J Culbard and Ilys. All of whom had taken (at least one) classic novel, and turned it into a graphic novel. The talk was really interesting and the artists talked about why they’d chosen their books, how they delt with influences from other media (for example did Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock influence Culbard when writing his books). Alex did a great job of keeping the conversation flowing, and there were a couple of interesting questions from the audience.

The Art of Sean Phillips – 2pm Kendal Comic Festival

I’ve always loved Sean Phillip’s art, so jumped at the chance to see him speaking about it. He talked about how he got into drawing for comics, which was a pretty fascinating and unique story in itself, and showed off a lot of artwork on the big screen. A really enjoyable talk. Sean was also promoting his new book “The art of Sean phillips”, which is released in November, and his exibition at the Brewery Arts Centre, which is on Display for free until sometime in November.

The Comics Clock Tower (open all day)

The Comics clock tower was where most of sellers were based. Set over two floors, and at least 4 large halls, there was an impressive amount of stands with some well known, and not so well known authors and publishers showing off their work. I love these kinds of events, where I can get a hold of some books I might not normally be able to get a hold of from my local sources (who am I kidding, that “local source” is generally amazon..).
There were a few books I picked up, and a couple I plan to now I’ve got the web addresses. Lots to be seen in here, and even had a few signings too.

2000AD An on earth Odyssey – 8:30pm Kendal Comic Festival

This was the main event that I came for. I was only recently introduced to 200AD if I’m honest, thanks largely to do with bordem, and being in HMV. I fancied watching a film, and “Dredd” ended up being that film. I was instantly hooked, went online and ordered a couple of books. No idea where to start I just dived in with the ones with the prettiest covers. Not looked back since.

A great talk, hosted by John Mcshane, who really knows how to hold an audience. Some great insights in the world of 2000AD and a great evenings entertainment. Pleased so say I got a Dredd book signed by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra too!

Thanks for reading this post about my day at the Kendal Comic Festival 2013, I hope you’ve enjoyed it, if you have, PLEASE leave a comment, share it on facebook, twitter or google+ and share it on any forums where people might find it interesting.

Thanks!

You can find out more about the event at the website: Kendal Comic Festival