Day Of The Dead

A day of torrential rain in London yesterday. I decided it was perfect weather for a family outing to a museum, the British Museum to be precise and their Day of the Dead special. Lots of Mexican music, dancing, dressing up and scary masks. Woohoo!

Sadly, thousands of other people also thought that the event sounded like fun - cue a hideous crush as the hordes fought to get good vantage points for the mariachi bands and brightly paited floats. It really was an uncomfortable and chaotic squeeze. Here a mustachioed skeleton collides with an unsuspecting lady...

Luckily I was on hand to record the moment of impact for posterity.

Anyway, long story short it was a bit shit. The boy seemed to enjoy looking at all the people, but laughter quickly turned to tears as he soaked himself falling in a huge puddle outside the museum. A fine day to forget to pack a spare outfit. No matter, his mum was more than happy to accompany him to Baby Gap in search of new trousers, leaving me free to make the short, soggy trip to the comic mart at The Royal National. WOOT!

The appalling weather made for a sparsely attended event, which was a shame for the dealers, but good news for those of us who did make the effort. It was nice and easy to get to the comics, not too many hard-to-move stinkers in front of the long boxes, no stampedes for the 25p single issues etc. Smashing.

I headed straight for the backroom where the British comic dealers had gathered, spreading out their issues of Hotspur, Battle, Warlord, Victor and Commando on fold-out tables, each one a splendid riot of faded colour. Magical stuff. First stop, this stall...

2000AD heaven, baby! Hundreds of issues going right back to prog 40, all in excellent condition, and all priced at £1 a piece with discounts for bulk buys. I picked up 23 issues, took a £3 discount and left the blue altar of happiness a satisfied man.

Had a chat with fellow shopper Mike Leader, who was buying some nice cheap EC reprints, before heading for the main room where I snagged two more 2000AD progs, including #38 for 50p!

From there, a quick squizz at Heroclix man's stall, but nothing really called out to me, (not at the prices he was charging anyway), so on to Krypton Komics's bargain buckets where I snagged a badly beaten up copy of Locas, the Love and Rockets omnibus. It's got no dust jacket and has a huge dent in the bottom, but at £4.95 for 700 pages of comics that normally retails at £36, I still reckon it was a bargain.

I was about to leave Mr Krypton and start my traditional hunt for cheap Wolfman and Perez Titans comics, when I spied this atrocity...

£1? It had to be bought, if only to compare Lord Hurk's unofficial Minder comic with the "Authorised Edition". Having done so, I can confirm that both are excellent reads but that Hurk does a much better Arthur Daly than the uncredited artist from the annual...

That's the worst drawing of George Cole I've ever seen - and, as a collector of George Cole portraits, I can tell you that I've seen thousands. Can't knock his Dennis Waterman though.

After buying that, there really was nowhere left to go. Did in fact manage to find a couple of cheap New Teen Titans issues (5 and 9 at £1.50 a pop, for any weirdos who actually give a fuck) but with that monster copy of Locas and all those 2000ADs already threatening to tear a hole in my soggy nerd sack, I felt it best to make an exit.

Paused briefly to marvel at the return of the long box of X-Men Annual 10...

...before making my way back to normality.

A fine mart. A fine haul. Good times!