As a warm up for the Leeds-based Thought Bubble comics festival, Mark Johnson gives us his Thought Bubble diary of the view from the floor last year. Mark works at OK Comics, among other things. Apparently last year this meant trying to pass himself off as two men to help man the Leeds comic shop’s convention table. Read on for some of the highs and lows of the UK’s premier comics convention…
5:30am: That’s the sound of my alarm going off.
6:33am: Get picked up by two men and a van. 6:30am.The path of a professional nerd is not always an easy one. Want to die just a little bit.
6:48am: See what OK Comics looks like at 6:48am. It’s much the same as it looks at 6:48pm, but it hurts more. Move 80 boxes of comics. Comics don’t sound heavy, but a box containing 350 of them is actually outrageously hard on your shoulders.
7:13am: Thinly veil a big old moan beneath a gobsmackingly weak joke.
7:31am: Arrive at Royal Armouries, get access to our table. Move 80 boxes. Again. Begin setting up. The hall is full of people badly in need of coffee and piles of comic boxes.
8:31am: Realise that eight full-size tables is a LOT for two men to watch. Jared, the manager of OK Comics and one of my best friends, assures me it will be fine. Can’t decide whether the grin on his face is optimistic or satanic. Change t-shirt for one that’s been sweated in less. (After two shows, you start to learn.)
9:40am: The main hall’s starting to take shape. Comics and comics and comics and comics! There are dealers with stacks of back issues, stalls put out by shops with more current stock, t-shirts, badges, anime stands, the obligatory figurines and, most impressively, a massive turnout of small press creators showing off their self-funded, often self-printed comics. There’s a buzz in the air now and a quick peek through the door shows a line snaking well out into the scrotum-assaulting chill of the morning. A girl in the world’s smallest anime cosplay outfit is regretting her outfit decision.
10:00am: The doors open, time dissolves. The hall quickly fills with nerds of every size, shape and colour. Many of them are dressed like Batman villains and manga characters with giant swords and zombies with tenuous links to videogames. More than I’d ever have guessed, actually. I work in a comic shop most weekends and I had no idea there were this many people in the Leeds area willing to brave November and puzzled looks to dress like they’ve escaped from a Zack Snyder movie. The secret, I think, is that Thought Bubble is reaching attendees from well beyond Leeds’ boundaries.
11:18am: It’s already 11:18am! We’re stationed right next to the front door, so we’ve been serving a speedy, steady (sometimes not-so-steady) stream of customers from the moment people started pouring in. Thought Bubble isn’t like regular comics retail. Moments to stop and chat come few and far between and familiar faces are dispersed among hundreds of new ones. We’re switching between franticly jumping from customer to customer and rhythmic efficiency, but the charge in the air keeps us moving with the breakneck pace.
11:47am: We’re already facing a change emergency!
12:27pm: Back-up arrives from the shop in the form of Jared’s wife, Veronica – change emergency averted.
1:15pm: Have conversation with Mike Carey, writer of X-Men Legacy, in which I will later convince myself he was hinting that the characters Cable and Domino will be reunited in the pages of X-Force. Much later I will realise that, actually, he was just geeking out over how much he loves the dynamic between them, like I was. In some ways, this is more satisfying than being fed hints to the X-Men’s future.
2:28pm: Start to suspect time has collapsed.
2:34pm: Remember to eat.
3:01pm: Visit from my girlfriend, looking just a tiny bit pale. She informs me that (despite crushing all over Robert Downey Jr) if she met Iron Man in real life she’d be terrified. A moment later I see what the hell she’s on about when someone walks through the main door in the singular most awesome thing I will see all show – a home-made Iron Man suit. She was absent-mindedly wandering out of the toilets when she unexpectedly bumped into him. I can see how that might be distressing.
3:08: Meet Frank Quitely, one of the very top artists in comics and one of the men behind All Star Superman, the best Superman story I’ve ever read. Needless to say, he’s Not How I Imagined Him.
3:40pm: A break! Wander the small press tables, pick up Paper Science, prints from Kristyna Baczynski , Chloe Noonan from Marc Ellerby (well, his girlfriend – he’s in the loo). This, for me, is the best part of the show. Granted, I don’t really have time to queue for signings, but I don’t think I’d have the patience anyway (although for John Romita Jr at Thought Bubble 2010, I think I may make an exception). Getting to wander around the tables and see how much good stuff is being self-published is a real eye-opener. There’s a real breadth of incredible art and I’m proud to be part of the community.
4:16pm: Return to the OK Comics table to show off purchases.
5:00pm: Chucking out time. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Packing up begins. Fortunately, a very successful day selling comics means there are far less full boxes to go back to the shop than there were to come out.
6:40pm: All the boxes are returned to their rightful places in OK Comics. Stand in the shop, swaying slightly with a googly sort of look on my face.
7:30pm: After party! Beer! Limited sitting down! What an awesome day.
Mark Johnson is a Leeds-based video games journalist and occasional freelance writer on the subject of comics. He can be found on his blog, Twitter and Tumblr. He’ll be working at Thought Bubble on the OK Comics table again this year. If you see him (he’ll be the taller, more blonde one) you should go over and say nice things/give him abuse.