With a fine and trouble free start to the day we arrived at St Pancras, facing the prospect of a Victorian London without any notion of lifts or working escalators for those in wheel chairs or who are lugging two boxes of comics. Hopping on the tube we eventually made it to Stepney Green, and seeing the Queens University location was within walking distance from the station was handy. Winding through the campus buildings we found the Octagon, a cavernous, unsurprisingly octagonal room which looked to be a library of some sort, a lovely domed ceiling with busts of Plato and Socrates and other philosophical greats under a skylight you could half imagine Batman to drop through at any time.

ABOVE: Our first customer of the day. A man of fine taste.

A great turnout of exhibitors, many new faces amongst the familiar, including Shane with a massive selection of titles spread out over three tables. How he managed to fit them all into a suitcase at the end of the day I'll never know.

Left: Leon at our table, Pete (Bugpwder) Ashton behind him

Right: David Whiteland of beholder.co.uk and customer

Our table was placed on the left of the main doors, between Daniel and Alex of TALES MAGAZINE and David Whiteland of beholder.co.uk, the three of whom were great chaps. In the morning things were a bit slow, customer wise, but soon picked up midday with a steady influx of people, leading to 2pm and the panel.

Below: Alex of TALES MAGAZINE

Moved from previous venue of the corridor to the chill-out area just outside the Octagon, the panel consisted of Daniel Merlin Goodgrey of E-MERL.COM; Pete Ashton of bugpowder.com; Aaron 'smurf' Murphy of confusion.kyou.co.uk; Roger Langridge of hotelfred.com; Mardou of stiro.com; David Whiteland of beholder.co.uk and myself as the humble host trying to disappear into the corner. It was an interesting and lively debate, with a cosy audience of around 20-odd people. Covering topics as diverse as the reasons behind the fall of the UK Comics industry, the essentially infinite canvas of the webcomic (or hypercomic) as developed by Daniel, as well as the marketing and storytelling possibilities of the new medium to involve the readership in a way most webcomics have yet to try, but was experimented successfully nearly a decade ago by David with his weekly puzzle site. The talk overran which is always a good sign, and the rest of the afternoon I tried to make it to as many tables as possible while Leon kindly manned the fort.

Sales wise, RE1, the Guide and JUNCTION 1 seemed to be the most popular titles, with lots of questions on RE2's release date; it obviously seemed to have struck a chord which was nice to hear. Hopefully many new contacts and future friends have been established this weekend, and certainly lots of ideas for myself to mull over.

The journey back was a tad more arduous but despite the delays and seating
only available in the smoking carriage, we made it back safely, with a
ton of new comics to read and review, samples of which will be added here shortly. In the meantime, if you haven't already, go to the slideshow for more images from the day.

-BARRY RENSHAW