2018 Comics Tour Schedule!

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! 

Back from Berlin?

Mmm a wee trip to Berlin was preceeded by some exciting news which can't yet be revealed but is keeping me oh so quiet and very busy from updating so here's a few scenic shots.....

 

2017 Tour to be announced!

 

Well it's been a real hive of activity at Accent UK Towers these last few weeks as our 2017 'tour' schedule is taking shape with much computer stress, checking of schedules and journey logistics, it's not a cup of tea I can tell you.

However it looks likely that we'll equal if not beat last year's record breaking number of 16 shows, although with much duplication of dates etc, one or two shows will sadly be missing from our final schedule while others require us to 'split the band' and attend two shows the same weekend such is the current state of the crammed UK & European comic convention circuit!

In all though, quite a nice problem to have as Dave and I enter our 15th year of comics creating under the Accent UK banner! Watch this space for confirmation of our 2017 dates and in the meantime here's a few random scenes of our encounters on our travels! 

 

  

  

 

 

 

Ha! And if you've made it this far you may, from the top, Belfast, Aberdeen, Birmingham (2), Copenhagen, Helsinki, Dundee, Blackpool, New York, Copenhagen (3), Glasgow, Lincoln, Helsinki & New York!!

Oh Vienna!

 

We are lucky in that we usually sneak away for a few days in January and this year after pricing up a trip to London we found that for almost the same cost we could zip across to Vienna, so that's what we did. We'd never been before and hadn't really done a huge amount of research but we had a lovely time, even with the cold winter weather!

We basically got ourselves a 72 hour travel pass and, by tram, bus and metro ventured around the inner and outer city doing a wee bit of exploring and sightseeing. There was plenty of choices for museums and culture but we really only had time for one and chose the (upper) Belvedere  home,  of amongst many other fine pieces, Gustav Klimt's famous The Kiss, which was a real thrill seeing the original.

The impressive approach to the upper Belvedere, a former palace

 

We couldn't but help be impressed by all the impressive architecture and compared to most other capital city's, just how quiet and clean it all seemed.

The Austrian Parliament building (designed by a Danish architect apparently)

 

St Stephen's Cathedral

Vienna was also famously the setting of Carol Reed's Third Man movie, based on the Graham Greene novel and starring Orson Welles and while we didn't venture on a tour of the sewers we did visit the Prater amusement park, which is still dominated by the Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel, which prominently features in one of the movies memorable scenes.

 

 

There was also a special ice skating event, Wien Eistraum, ('Vienna's Ice Dream'), that had just opened where thousands of skaters made their way round a specially constructed track in front of the town hall, surrounded by log cabins serving up delicious fresh cooked food and beer, it reminded us of Manchester's Christmas markets but more relaxed!

We enjoyed wandering around and had fun trying the local food and drink - the coffee houses and cake are as superb as we'd heard and the Ottakringer beer wasn't too bad either. Although we didn't visit the Opera, we did enjoy an evening concert of Mozart, Strauss, ballet and operatics in the chamber room of another former palace so we got a wee flavour of Austrian culture that Vienna is of course famous for, even if I couldn't get that Ultravox song out of my head!