The Thought Bubble Festival is the best geeky convention I have ever been to and I’m pretty sure I’m now ruined for Australian geeky conventions forever! There was so much for me to do and see that my head was spinning! This post is going to be a long one, so buckle in! But I should back up a bit first…
The Thought Bubble Festival is an art festival held annually in Leeds that is dedicated to sequential art. It is the largest convention of its kind in the UK and is attended by many international comic guests, this year it celebrated it’s 10th year. I found out about it while randomly browsing the internet last year only a few months before it was held, then watched with mounting amazement and horror as almost every creator I have ever admired in comics was announced to go. There was no way I could go last year for several reasons, but this year I was determined to attend. So I did.
Being held in northern England in November it was a bit chilly when I arrived, but I quickly made friends with people in the line over our shared misery with the weather. There were three buildings worth of events, so three lines to choose from, but the crowds weren’t unmanageable so there was plenty of time to look through the guidebook and map and work out the best place to go first. When the doors were finally open I think the haste to get inside was due in equal parts to excitement to start the festival and to get in out of the cold!
Of course I brought a huge number of comics to get signed, thinking maybe I’d get through some of it, but by the end of the first day I was almost through my entire pile! Plus a bunch of wandering around and talking to local artists. Everyone was lovely, but seemed surprised that I’d traveled all the way to Australia for the convention!
One of the very first things I did was head to the table where Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie were seated. The Wicked + The Divine is a series I love, so I proceeded to make an idiot of myself at their table, including forgetting how to spell Melbourne. But there was lots of laughing and a little chatting and I walked away with some shiny things! Later on I was lucky enough to go to a panel with these guys and others that have worked on The Wicked + The Divine, including Kevin Wada. They discussed the creation of their magazine issue, which was fascinating!
Before the main Though Bubble festival started there was a few signing tours held at Travelling Man comic shops around England. I was lucky enough to meet Jeff Lemire at one of these and he signed my copy of Plutona. I then got to meet the amazing artist Emi Lenox at the Thought Bubble Festival. Emi had postcard prints of her cat pictures at her table which I possibly spent more time squealing over than was strictly ok… But they were so damned adorable! I picked up my two favorites to take home and admire.
The Clean Room is a spectacularly creepy series, due in no small part to the fabulous character designs and sleek artwork of John Davis-Hunt. His table was quite crowded when I arrived, but it gave me the opportunity to watch him very quickly produce wonderful detailed sketches. When it was my turn, I asked if he would please sketch me one of The Entities from The Clean Room. This was the result! Also had the opportunity to chat to him and his partner about their trips to Australia and encouraged them to visit Melbourne next time- it really is worth the trip! Did manage to thoroughly distract him from sketching with chatting, but it was lovely to chat to him!
Batgirl of Burnside is an awesome character who I really enjoy reading. Three members of her creative team, Babs Tarr, Cameron Stewart, and Brenden Fletcher attended Thought Bubble and I got to meet them all! Even got a selfie with Babs, I was lucky that the person in front of me in the line asked her first to remind me!
Sean Philips is my very favourite noir comic artist. The work that he and his co-creators have done on books like Criminal and Kill or Be Killed is absolutely phenomenal. These books have re-ignited my love of non-fantastical comics and I was very excited to get Sean to sign these two issues for me.
When I realised Declan Shalvey was going to Thought Bubble I may have vomited hypothetical fangirl sparkles everywhere. He was the final straw that decided me on coming to Thought Bubble, so meeting him was one of my favourite things that happened during the festival. Was going to ask if I could have a selfie with him, but lost my nerve at the last minute. I got to watch him do a cover sketch of Batman and then he signed my issues of Injection and Batman. Watching talented artists sketch is amazing and I was so glad to watch Declan’s Batman sketch be put down on paper.
Later on in the festival, I had the opportunity to go to the #ArtCred panel hosted by Declan. The panel consisted of creators that provided art, scripts and both to the comics they contributed to and the discussion wend over time by a reasonable margin, and rightly so! The panel was fascinating and it was great to hear a group of like-minded creatives speak about such a huge issue in the comics industry.
Both Erica Henderson and Ryan North were very busy over the weekend, or perhaps I just showed up to their table when their panels were on. Didn’t manage to get into their panel speaking about The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, but I did manage to meet them both! They both drew me a tiny squirrel on the cover of my comic (Erika’s is cuter!) and I got to chat to them a little. Even got a selfie with Ryan! And an awesome print of Squirrel Girl surfing on Superior Iron Man! There was a lot of squeeing!
I have to admit that Giant Days is a series I haven’t read, however it has been passionately recommended to me more than a few times! When it was pointed out to me that the series creator John Allison would be attending and that the Holiday Special would be released not long before I was to leave, I had to give it a go. I loved this issue! I was very excited to get it signed by John and check out the rest of the books he had displayed.
Ok, so Midnighter is one of my all-time favourite comic book characters. And the current artist working with him, Fernando Blanco, came to Thought Bubble, so I needed to meet him and gush about the scene with the train in the first issue of Midnighter and Apollo which is an absolutely amazing piece of visual storytelling! He also made this sketch for me. Such a brilliant process to watch! I was very lucky to get a sketch token, he only made six available per day. It was incredible to watch Midnighter emerge from what at first seemed like pretty random sketching. I love this sketch, I hope to get it framed very soon!
I picked up Tetris: The Games People Play at local comic book shop Travelling Man during a pre-Thought Bubble Festival signing they were holding. I didn’t intend to pick this up, it’s a sizable book and baggage limits are a brutal reality when attending international conventions, but a quick flick through it showed that Box Brown has captured the intriguing tale of Tetris in his quirky art style that was easy to read and difficult to put down. Tetris has taken up a lot of my time and it’s fascinating story was well worth picking up! Added bonus is of course that the creator attended Thought Bubble and I could ask him to scribble on this for me.
The second day of the festival was the first time I was able to make it into the New Dock Hall, not because it was hard to get into, but because there were so many other things! The very first thing I saw was this print by Pink Apple Jam, which made me squeal, run over to it, and laugh! Had a boisterous conversation with the artist about the print that included lots of arm waving and laughing. “Why can’t we just call them comics?” indeed! Had to buy this print, it will eventually be framed and put up near my comic shelves for me to giggle at.
Bengal was not an artist I had earmarked to visit, I probably wouldn’t have realised he was there unless I was wandering around and looking at the beautiful artwork displayed late on the second day of the festival. When I twigged that the cover artist for All-New Wolverine was at Thought Bubble I needed to get a print of this cover! Bengal was even kind enough to sign it in nice visible white pen and chat to me while it dried to make sure it didn’t smudge. Such a wonderful surprise!
I wasn’t intending to see Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy as I haven’t read Hellboy (Yet! It’s pretty high up on my list!) and there were a lot of fans wanting to meet him. But when I noticed he had done a specific print of Hellboy with The Black Prince that stands in the square across from Leeds station I was very keen to get my hands on it! I waited until the very end of the day when I hoped most people had already met him before joining the line, and was lucky to be one of the very last people to snag a print. I’m very happy with this special souvenir print! I walked past that statue every day I was in Leeds and Hellboy is a series I’ve been waiting for the right moment to binge-read through. Hopefully I will get to it soon!
The amazing festival artwork has been my phone screen background for many months in the lead up to the Thought Bubble Festival. Every time I looked at my phone, I looked at this wonderful piece by Emmeline Pidgen. When I met her I may have gushed a little about how much happiness looking at her artwork had brought me in the lead up to this trip. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to sell prints of her art, but I was able to get her to sign the festival flyer!
Over the weekend I collected some amazing bits and pieces that were either con-exclusive, created by local artists, or just tricky to get in Australia. My favorites of these are three tshirts. The first from Illustrated Mind is the Thought Bubble tshirt for this year with art by Andrew Maclean. All the volunteers helping to run the event were wearing this tshirt in red so they were easy to spot. After spending most of the weekend admiring it, I was glad I could get one of my own! The second was from Rogue Screenprint and I got it because I’m an evil person and like to see my geeky friends twitch! “Spiderman” with no hyphen placed on the Batman logo. I saw it, I laughed loudly enough that some people moved away from me, then I bought it. The third is a piece of artwork by Becky Cloonan, the ink is a metallic silver colour and I can’t quite make the camera do it justice. All three are gorgeous in their own ways!
Speaking of gorgeous tshirts, before I left for the UK I asked my local comic book shop, All Star Comics Melbourne, if I could pretty please have one of their shirts to wear to Thought Bubble. They were happy to help me out with two! I was able to wear one shirt each day of the convention weekend. I was so glad to show off my comic book store at Thought Bubble! Because these tshirts were hand-printed at short notice, I wanted to say thankyou with comics. If you look closely at The Wicked + The Divine comics, you’ll see one is personalised for them! I got to give it to them when I got home and that was almost as fun as getting the comics signed in the first place.
The Thought Bubble Festival was amazing, it made me more excited about reading comics and discovering new stories and creators. There really isn’t anything even remotely like it in Australia that I know of. I would love to go to another one in the future, and this time drag along a group of Australians do there are more of us there!
