COMICA NEWS

Comica ‘09: Comiket Returns

Posted: October 5, 2009

Illustration © Lewis Trondheim

Just confirmed are the date and new venue for the third Comica Comiket, our small press and self-publishers comics fair. After the pilot in 2007 in the Nash Room at the ICA, last year London Underground Comics came on board and helped us more than double the number of exhibitors filling both the Nash and Brandon Rooms. This year We Are Words + Pictures, Nobrow, Savage Messiah, Solipsistic Pop and others are helping out to make this the season’s most sizzling and significant gathering of scribes and scrawlers from across the UK indie scene. For 2009, on Sunday 8 November, we’re relocating Comica Comiket to the ICA’s cool ground-floor Theatre which can accommodate even more tables and all in one room, handily right next to the Bar. The Theatre and Bar will also showcase a number of launch events for new titles released on the day. Any small presses or self-publishers interested in exhibiting, please contact Paul Gravett via the website email for details.

Parallel with Comica Comiket on the afternoon of Sunday 8 November, we’ll be running Real-Fi, a Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption student workshop in the Reading Room, and a series of panels in the Nash Room. These kick off with a graphic novels discussion hosted by Rachel Cooke of the Observer with creators Bryan Talbot, Julian Hanshaw and others. Julian was last year’s winner of the Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize and has his first graphic novel, The Art of Pho, coming out from Cape next Spring. The panel will wrap up with the presentation of the runner-up and winner of this year’s prize.

Following this, Helen McCarthy will be your guide through the life and career of the God of manga and anime, Osamu Tezuka, through rare photos, original art, anime clips and manga highlights. And to round off the day, there’s a FREE panel discussion (places must be booked), supported by Ctrl.Alt.Shift, on political comics. Our host will be special guest Swedish expert Fredrik Strömberg, author of Comic Art Propaganda, forthcoming from Ilex Press, joined by Pat Mills, Asia Alfasi and Polyp, cartoonist of Speechless, an eco-fable in silent comics form published by Friends of the Earth International and New Internationalist Publications.

It’s going to be a great Comica Sunday - see you there!