A COMICA REVIEW BY:

SARAH McINTYRE

Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce) attended the 2011 Comica Comiket Independent Comics Fair on Saturday 12 November at the Bishopsgate Insitute in Bishopsgate.

Hurrah! This year’s Comiket, part of Comica Festival, was a brilliant success. Three cheers to Paul Gravett, Peter Stanbury, events co-ordinator Megan Donnolley and all the other people who worked so hard to make it happen!

And gosh, it’s awfully nerve-wracking drawing a brand-new comic in front of a whole room full of people! I sort of had a think about what I was going to draw on the tube, on the way in, but I was surprised to find out just HOW BIG the screen was! I’d never drawn a comic about Captain Waffle before, he’s from my picture book, You Can’t Scare a Princess!, but I thought it would be funny to have him storm a comics fair and get arrested for buying pirated copies of Tintin.

I wish I’d taken a photo of the page at the end, but I was too flustered to remember. I mostly based myself out of the DFC Library table, and Matilda Johnson, the office manager at David Fickling Books, kindly let me sell my mini comic Please Be Moral Do Not Spit alongside Vern and Lettuce. I noticed James Turner’s Super Animal Adventure Squad was selling very well, which was great to see. It’s SUCH a funny book.

It was great getting one of my comics heroes, Posy Simmonds, to sign my copy of our Nelson anthology. Nelson looks fabulous! Such a great coming-together of so many top British comic artists, it has to be seen to be believed.