Coming to Copenhagen!

The splendid show poster from Kerascoet!

Excusing the bad grammar above, Accent UK are dusting off their passports to make our first convention appearance of the year and what better place to start than Copenhagen Comics!

One of, if not, our favourite show which is always very different in approach and atmosphere to every other show we do and one we've been attending bi-annually since it started in 2004!! Really looking forward to catching up with our many Scandinavian friends and creators as well as fellow Brits including Garen Ewing and Cliodhna (Ztocial) who are making their own return trips.

That said the move from Summer to Winter may test us so maybe we should seek some local beverages to keep us warm! We'll see! For those attending we're at a large stand - number 23 - at the same central venue as recent years;

Details of all fellow exhibitors can be found here and details of homegrown and international guests here  and here including Tom Gauld who we've not seen recently. The guest list is always electic and apart from Tom (and Garen obviously!) I'm really excited to see Boulet again (John Anderson of UK's Soaring Penguin will be equally delighted), one half of Kerascoet (see poster above and the wonderfully macabre Miss Don't Touch and Beautiful Darkness) and Grzegorz Rosinski of Thorgal fame, of which Scott and I saw a wonderful exhibition of at the Comic Art Museum in Brussels a couple of years ago!

 

Hopefully there will be some new discoveries too!

Both my wee Moments of Adventure and the WesterNoir trade will be making their Danish debut along with, I think, 6 releases since our last trip, so something new for everyone!



















Sadly in a very late development, Gary Crutchley is now having to miss the trip which he was eagerly looking forward to and will watch proceedings from afar and hold the Accent UK fort at this end. We'll be thinking of you Gary and trying not to enjoy ourselves too much!

Right, off we go! 

MoCCA 2013 - Who Are You?

Getting excited now, we're all booked for the forthcoming trip back to New York and the MoCCA comic festival! We really enjoyed last year's show meeting the likes of Jason and Tom Gauld but this year sees some changes with the show now under the control of The Society of Strip Illustrators who took over MoCCA last autumn. Thankfully the handover and communication has been very good with little apparent disruption to its organisation.

While they hadn't made any inital radical changes to the show, the last few weeks have seen things gathering pace with the preparation of a specially produced shows brochure, now called a 'journal' featuring an image and blurb from each exhibitor, so look out for ours based on the cover gallery below.

They have also started a tumblr feed which is regularly featuring exhibitors (including a certain Accent UK back in January which I somehow missed!) and news on the show including the inaugural Awards of Excellence to be awarded at the show whose announcement of has (finally) got the US comics reportage excited in the event!

The essence appears to be that heavyweight (in terms of comic industry stature!) judges, Karen Berger, Gary Groth, Nora Krug, David Mazzucchelli and Paul Pope will stalk the exhibitors hall on the Saturday, select their favourite publications, debate them and that evening announce the winners of the most outstanding work on show....gosh....no pressure then!

The show runs the first weekend in April and this year's guest of honour is Bill Griffith of Zippy the Pinhead fame!

(Zippy [who else?] the Pinhead by Bill Griffith)

I only really know of him from his entertaining section of Ron Mann's late 80's comic documentary 'Comic Book Confidential' which among other things showed said live action Zippy in his bestest housecoat out shopping and generally being happy while singing that annoyingly catchy tune, "I'm Zippy - Who Are You?". It will be interesting to see the man behind the man himself!

 

Bill Griffith has also recently been mentioned by Robert Crumb through a collection of Robert Crumb's interviews and comments on other artists and various cultural figures such as Jack Kerouc, Jean Paul Sartre, Hugh Heffner (!), Moebius and others. For a fascinating insight into Crumb's thinking and much, much more see the excellent 'Crumb on Crumb' collection here.

 

Did I mention that we're getting excited about MoCCA!!