Me and a Moomintroll.

Proud moment.

I'm the one on the right.

Gosh!

I'm so out of touch that I had no idea about this: http://www.goshlondon.com/move/

I'll definitely be there on the 30th to bid farewell to the old shop (and meet Alan Moore).

The new place sounds like it'll be just grand.

Magnificent Mart

MART!

Wasn't really in the mood for the stinkfest at the start of the day. I was knackered, it was pissing with rain outside and I've just got heavily into this online pinball game.

Still, I am nothing if not dedicated to tat, so off I trudged to meet Mr Bishop at the bus stop. There we boarded a 476 where we found this chap...

11.30am and unconscious. The smell of vodka hung about him. It was impossible to wake him up. We told the bus driver who stopped the bus and called an ambulance. This annoyed one lady who was more bothered about the fact that her bus journey had been affected than the welfare of this poor sod. Yay London! What a cuntwitch.

Anyways we made the mart. Given the weather we thought it would be empty and grim. Not so!

It was one of those marts where they open up the back room and fill it with British tat - and it was heaving. The busiest mart I've been to for some time. Not only that, it was LOADED with treasure.

First stall BOOM! I complete my run of Teen Titans for £2 and pick up the first few issues of Alien Legion for pennies. Mr Bishop scores a silver age Captain America for 50p. Further in more bargains to be found. Plus beauty.

Oh yes, real beauty...

Shrines to 60s tat!

Shrink wrapped 80s wank mags (under the counter, if you please)

Blurred British Annual stall - trust me it looked lovely

Batwomen

Original fucking Ezquerra 80s Strontium Dog pages - obviously the robber selling them wanted hundreds of pounds. But still they were lovely.

THAI HORROR FILM POSTERS!!!!

THAI HORROR FILM POSTER MAN!!!

He kindly agreed to hold my favourite poster on his amazing stall (Evil Dead II) up for me

What a nice man. What an incredible stall!

WHAT AN AMAZING FUCKING MART!

I bought heaps and heaps of good cheap rubbish. Even managed to score some reasonably cheap Heroclix off the notorious Heroclix robber.

All the dealers seemed to be doing pretty well. Absurdly high priced near mint silver age key issue man was there. I saw him sell five comics to one bloke for £1,100. "Shall I charge it to the usual account, sir?"

EC comics man held court. Krypton comics man smashed out his 25p boxes of filth. All was good.

In amongst the man throng, I caught up with LLC chum Tam, and then went for post mart drinks with Mr Bishop, Dex and special guest star Bruce - who had come all the way from Hitchin just to load up on 25p issues of Captain America. What a man!

The now traditional window seat was a fine place to compare our water-damaged, creased and torn treasures and to watch the dealers loading their boxes back into their vans. One of them dropped a box in a puddle, picked it up, wiped off a now wet copy of Valiant and shoved it back in the van.

Truly, the best mart for years. Huzzah!

Brief Kapow thoughts

There's not much left to say about Kapow. I'm very late to the after show party and you've probably read all you need to about the convention already. Still, here are a few thoughts...

The general vibe I get from those who attended was good. It wasn't perfect, but then I only say that because it wasn't quite what I wanted. Selfish git, eh? I would have liked to see less movie fluff and more comics. I'd have ditched all the video game nonsense and replaced it with 25p boxes of tat, and I wouldn't have let some of the shite awful indy creators past the front door. No offence to indy creators, I love a good independent comic me, but there weren't many good independent comics on show. Far too much floorspace was taken up by sixth form standard bilge -IMO. What about those jokers at the end of artist alley selling dog rough sketches of aliens for a fiver?! If you bought one of those you want incinerating. So yeah, fuck them off next year and either get some decent indy creators OR replace them with more purveyors of old tat.

I bought a fair amount of old comics BUT, I have to say, in the main there were not many bargains to be had on the vintage stalls. Same old problem, I'm afraid - the sellers seem to be in denial over ebay. NEWSFLASH: thumbing through your Overstreet guide, deciding you have a NM copy and then slapping an extra few quid on top of the guide price isn't good enough any more. If you want to sell your water damaged copy of Giant Size X-Men #1 then you're going to have to quote a sensible price! I'm sure the stalls peddling the high price silver age tat sold some of those comics on their wall, but only to mugs. I am not paying you £270 for a comic that I can get for half as much on ebay! You have to adjust or you WILL die! Sorry. I don't want to see you die, I am just telling you the truth.

Right, moans out the way - the good...

The people. I had such a nice time meeting comic chums. Really. I even announced this after a couple of beers, at which point Little Ad said I was just sucking dick! Well, Little Ad - not so sir! The people (including Little Ad) were the undoubted highlight of the weekend for me. From Dexter and John, who schlepped the floors with me, to Dave who tore up the cosplay and provided plenty of laughs in the pub. It was spiffing to spend so much time with like minded folk. I got to meet Pete Kirkham, have a chat with Mike Leader, a bit of a yarn with Mr Salmond. Marvellous. It really was very pleasant. Then there were the brief but - for me anyway -enjoyable chats with creators. Shaky Kane - what a lovely fellah. He spent ten minutes apologising for the fact that the free sketch he was doing for me was shit. It wasn't shit and even if it was, it was fucking free! Chris Weston - politely breaking off from some proper work to pose for a snap and chatting happily about The Twelve with me (nearly finished, apparently). A 10am chat with Leinil Yu in a kebab shop. Nerdgasmic stuff. And what about the cosplayers? I saw a lot of this bunch in action because I spent a good proportion of the con following Dave around. Didn't talk to them, but enjoyed watching them doing their thing and got a little bit of an insight into the politics at work within their community. Some good soap opera there, for sure. Lesbian cosplay grooming FTW! Plus - Domino, PHWOAR!

Venue. Great place. Lovely and bright. Big high ceiling with natural light. Rooms for the panels (I only went to two) were spacious and air conditioned. Plus Upper Street is great for restaurants and pubs AND it's really handy for my house, which is obviously the most important factor.

Anyway, yes. Next year - bring it on! More cosplayers. More tat. Less video game and film shit. Reasonable prices. There's a chance HMV might go bust, so at least we won't have their wank stall. Tell that strange lot with the electric guitars and their rip off of Detroit Metal City to piss off, too. Or not. Whatever. I'll be back. The fact that it wasn't perfect doesn't matter. It's a comic convention! That's what I care about. It's in London. Tickets were fairly priced and those involved clearly put a lot of work into organising it.

Overall I give it a 7.5 out of 10. Really enjoyable weekend.

Kapow! Day Two

Leinil Yu enjoying a kebab at 10am.

Sad Beast.

Bored Spidey.

Cosplayers getting ready for cosplay contest.

Posers.

Chris Weston.

Dave and Lady Deadpool.

The winner!

Dave won best cosplayer award for Kapow! 2011!

Amazing!

What a great weekend. Report when I have time (few days)

Kapow! Day One

Good craic. Off to day two now. Here are the snaps I took of day one. Mostly Dave. Obv.

Queuing. 9.30am. Robot and guide.

Inside.

Dave breaking the punters in.

Bane buys a round.

Someone's wank fantasy (mine).

Great minds.

Lex Luthor AKA Little Ad on the angry juice. Shortly afterwards he was threatening people for laughing at cosplayers. Behind the smile, Mike Leader is crying.

Why so serious?

Kapow!

It's this weekend, people.

Details of all the panels HERE.

I'm not that fussed by any of that. Sorry. The Mills and O'Neill thing might be worth a look.

I do want to get a few sketches from artists. Wonder if Mike McMahon and Dave Gibbons will be doing them. How much you think McMahon would charge me for a sketch of Dredd dragging Mean Machine from a chain tied to a Lawmaster?

Speaking of sketches - what size sketchbook do I need for one of these things?

Other than the sketches, I'm really hoping there are some 25p boxes of rotting tat for me to go through.

If not I will be sad.

But I am looking forward to seeing my comic chums! Let me know if you're coming and we'll have a drink! If enough people are up for it, we could even go for a curry on Saturday night.

Baaaaaaane!

Big Dave F has been posting pictures of himself dressed as Bane on Facebook...

What can you say?

He's going to Kapow in this costume.

I fucking love Dave.

MART!

Good God, has it really been seven months since I hit up a Royal National Stinkathon?

Ridiculous. I am ashamed.

Sadly, yesterday's affair was a bit of a let down on the comic buying front. I blame the noticeable decrease in 25p boxes. Mr Krypton, the cock who normally rules the 25p roost, had ditched his cheap tat completely, replacing it with one of his famous "50% off silver age sales." Lots of mylar. Not much value. It was ever thus. Bah!

I loitered at Heroclix man's stall for a bit, but his Man-Toy prices have hit absolutely insane levels. As pretty as it was I wasn't going to give him £15 for his Surtur figure - it's £3 on ebay you robbing little gimp! And what about those issues of Kick-Ass he had pinned up behind him?! £20 for number #1, tenner for the others? Is he melting his Heroclix down and smoking them? If anyone bought those they should be burned on the huge pile of money that they can clearly afford to set fire to!

I should have bought the 2000AD #1 that was going on one stall for £35, but I balked and bottled it at the decisive moment. It was a decent copy, and £35 was a fair price, but my days of paying £35 for a comic are behind me for the moment.

So what did I buy? Nothing much. An old 2000AD I needed for £1.75. A couple of Marvel Handbooks which I probably already have, a Captain America issue featuring MODOM for 40p and one of the three remaining issues of the original Iron Man Armor Wars that I'm missing for 50p. That's it.

No matter, for Mr Bishop was on hand to brighten my day with a stack of 2000AD doubles that he didn't need. For those that don't know he recently scored the first 300 issues for NOTHING on Freecycle. Ridiculous. Also in attendance were LLC readers Tam and Dex. We had a nice yarn about comics in the shitty pub next door, procuring a window seat from where we watched King Stinker rifling through the bins for food, and various miserable dealers packing up box after box of unsold tat into their comic vans. Heroclix man had the nicest motor. No surprise there.

Go to these events and read this comic!

Few quick plugs!

Friend of London Loves Comics, Lord Hurk is one of several artists who currently has work on show at Orbital Comics as part of their Kaleidoscope exhibition. Details HERE.

Tom Pearce has requested a plug for the upcoming Pencil It! event at Westminster Library. It's on March 25th. Details HERE you'll have to do a bit of scrolling to get to them. Is 'graphic novel supremo' an official title, by the way?

Mr Wheatley sent me a text. It said: "Axe Cop...Wow!"

Wow is right. Check out The Axe Cop HERE

Kapow!

Just bought a weekend pass tothe Kapow! comic con which takes place in London in April.

Could be terrible. I fear it'll be more about films and video games than comics, but I've never been to a proper comic con, so I'm quite excited.

Anyone fancy it?

Link HERE

NerDgasm Valentine's Special

I'm afraid I wasn't at my best last night. A couple of days on the sauce had left me rather fuzzy. Oh well, others were in fine form, witness this sensational MODOK sketch done by Mr Bishop (from memory). Marvellous.

Also, marvel at what happens to a flump when you put it in water...

That water was clear before the flump went in. Scary stuff.

Mr Joe Ewens and chum, (I've forgotten his first name, sorry. My memory for names is even worse than my memory for Sinbad films), playing some Magic!

Sales and quizzes

Sacked off yesterday's mart to spend time with the family. Not that the stinkers who roam the carpets of the Royal National aren't family of a sort, you understand, but sometimes a man must put his wife and child before Doom Patrol and Heroclix.

Mr Bishop was in attendance though, and he tells me there were bargains to be had in the 25p boxes where he picked up all four issues of Flex Mentallo for £1. Top score.

I will definitely pencil in next month for some mart(yr)dom. Been too long.

Oh, how I yearn for the smell of old comics and unwashed collectors!

In the meantime, there are bargains to be had at Gosh! Valentine's Day marks the shop's 25th anniversary and to celebrate, Gosh! will be knocking 25% off all trades AND reducing the price on all the back issues in their basement to 25p! That's immense, chums. Don't miss it.

In fact, if you can bare to wait until Sunday, you can pick up some bargains at Gosh and then head over to the Pillars of Hercules in Soho where Big Dave F is hosting a special Valentine's edition of Nerdgasm. It promises to be a lovetastic event full of the usual questions about horror, sci-fi and comics. AND, given it's Valentine's, Dave might get his cock out or something.

Romance chums, it's all about the romance.

An invitation to The Comix Reader launch party

READ a new comics paper featuring industry giants like Hurk and Paul O'Connell!

FIND An excuse to drink!

MEET comic stars you never knew existed!

GET beaten up by angry comics-hating toughs at the bar!

More info on the Comix Reader HERE

An evening stroll

Can't walk past this place...

without whistling this...

The Brothers French

I love this photo.

Little Ad' and Big Dave in all their glory (Ad's dressed as Lex Luthor. Dave always looks like that).

Taken at Sunday's Halloween NerDgasm special, which was the most fantastic NerDgasm yet!

We won it.

On a tie break no less.

The other team didn't know their Mirkwood from their Fangorn.

They also had the temerity to question my assertion that Ro-Jaws had once been an ABC Warrior.

The fools.

I now have Creepshow II, Tomb of Dracula pants and Dario Argento's Demons.

Good times.

The Coming of NerDgasm 7!

Folks, it's been a while, but NerDgasm is back!

Yes, this Sunday at 7pm in The Pillars of Hercules, the Mighty Big Dave F will once again take the mic and bust some fresh quiz beats over your fat geek heads!

Want to know what it's all about? Then pick the bones out of this lot!

The strangest crossover of them all

From The Comica website: "Sunday 7 November brings the next Comica Comiket Independent Comics Fair, teaming up with the popular, long-running National Collectors Marketplace at the Royal National Hotel, Russell Square, and taking over the (Warren) Ellis Room from 12-5pm. A limited number of exhibitor tables will be available at affordable prices and there will be several special events and surprise guests throughout the afternoon."

Truly, this promises to be a titanic collision of two very different types of comics fan. I'll be lining up with King Stinker and his crew to smash those Phonogram lovin' gaylords to bits! BRING IT!

Thanks to Mike (Phonogram lovin' gaylord) Leader for alerting me to this extraordinary news.

Old man slags off youngsters for meeting up and reading comics/Ancient fanzines/An ad

Apparently it's Read Comics in Public Day.

What a load of old wank.

If you're into this kind of thing then there are a bunch of nerds meeting up to read their comics in The Crown, New Oxford Street, just round the corner from Gosh and Comicana. They'll be there at midday, thumbing their copies of Scott Pilgrim and looking stupid. Someone will probably beat them up.

Frankly I like to read my comics in private. I'm too old to be enjoying them and I know it, so why the fuck would I want to attract attention and ridicule by getting them out in public? I'm a 38-year-old man for fuck's sake, if I read Spider-Man in a pub, then I deserve to be laughed at.

I'm not sure why comics fans feel this desperate need to legitimise comic reading anyway. Honestly chums, let's keep this embarrassing secret to ourselves.

Just a stone's throw from The Crown is the Bloomsbury Street Oxfam bookshop. I was back in there the other day buying more decaying early 80s tat - some Avengers, some Defenders a bit of Power Man and Iron Fist. All overpriced at £1 a pop, but hey, by buying them I'm doing my bit for Pakistan, so it's all good. There are still a fair few comics left in there. Get yourselves down if you have the chance - maybe buy a water-damaged copy of X-Force to read in public, that'll impress the grown ups.

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UK Comics legend, Dez Skinn has posted a shitload of old fanzine images featuring hitherto unpublished art by the likes of Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, Frank Bellamy and even Jim Steranko! Best thing I've seen on the web for yonks, it's HERE

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The most horrible monster of all time...

Ad from The Defenders #104, February 1982

Return to the mart!

So, the mart then. It's been a while since I went. I've missed it.

Arrived nice and early for my return to the fetid fray, largely because I was meeting Tam who had very kindly offered to donate me a full set of Paul Jenkins' run on Hellblazer. Top score. Thank you sir.

Anyway, picked up huge plasi bag of Hellblazer comics and watched as the early arrivals filed into The National. No fucking about for me as I headed straight for the 25p bins in search of gold. Didn't find any, but I did dig up plenty of nice tat, including Dazzler and Power Pack number ones, a bunch of Iron Man Armor Wars issues, a couple of very beat up silver age comics and a terrible issue of The Flash which features a villain called Ubermensch. Ubermensch is a sort of Hank Pymesque figure who knocks his missus about...

She leaves him for The Flash (yes really)...

so he injects himself with shitloads of steroids...

and dons a special suit to become a super-powered wife-beater...

On the way to The Flash's house he kills a horse...

and runs into a wall by mistake....

What an utter loon.

When he eventually gets into The Flash's gaffe, he's completely blown out his eyes smashing into stuff, but he still manages to grab his missus from Flash's bed and jumps out of the window; at which point The Flash delivers this immortal bit of dialogue...

I don't have the next issue. I don't want it. This is the perfect end to the story.

Apart from that I got the first three issues of Warlock, the 80s Fighting Fantasy magazine. I bought these as they were coming out and this was a purely nostalgic purchase for me. They were a bit pricey (£4 for number 1 and £3 for the other two) but they will keep me warm in my old age. Ah.

Afraid the speculator in me took over when I spotted this in mint condition for £2...

I know, it's worth fuck all, but I did see other stalls at the mart knocking it out for a tenner, and you can sometimes get a fiver for it on ebay, so errm, you know.

For the same price I also scored issue #12 of Super-Villain Team-Up. I've gone on at length about my love of this series. Although I own the reprints, issue #12 is the one where Doctor Doom fights Red Skull and his flying Nazi cock gun on the moon...

and this was a beautiful cents edition for £2! So I had to have it.

From there I scored four very tatty copies of early 2000AD issues and wandered around idly looking at freaks before my eyes fell on the day's big prize - a complete run of the 1980s DC Who's Who + the updates for £11! Not in the best of nick, but what a treat - 31 issues of encyclopedic goodness. Less scholarly than the Marvel equivalent (which I also love) but even crazier and suffused with a sort of disco colored light that gives them a trippy camp vibe. Magical stuff.

I remember reading Who's Who as a lad and loving the entry for War Wheel. Obviously it was the first entry I flipped to in my newly acquired set. Still a thing of glory, so it is. I was going to write about its wonderfulness, but someone has already beaten me to it and frankly there's no way I can do better than this.

Genius.

So happy was I to have found that War Wheel entry after all these years that I wittered on a lot about it to John, Tam and Nell in the shit pub outside The Royal National. They listened politely. We had a nice chat. Good times.

Later on, as John and I finished our last drink and watched the depressed dealers packing longboxes of unsold tat into their vans, King Stinker (who I have mentioned before at the end of this mart report) loped into the pub. His T-shirt was stained yellow by months worth of sweat and he was hauling a heavy sports bag of comics behind him like a ball and chain. As he moved from table to table drinking the dregs of leftover pints and eating bits of food from long since abandoned plates, it became clear just what a terrible state he was in - utterly mad, mired in squalor, a deranged tramp. I felt momentarily awful for taking his photo all those months ago. Let's face it, I've taken the piss out of this tragic fellah. Not nice. Not nice at all.

As I was experiencing this rush of guilt, two lads got up from their table and started snapping pics of him. They laughed and I felt even worse.The guilt didn't last. See, I'm still a cuntish teenager at heart, so I'll go on taking photos of him and the rest of the oddballs who attend this strange get together. I really am fascinated by them. Morbidly so. They'll be gone soon. The marts will be gone soon. Someone has to record them in all their stinking glory. Might as well be me.