2013 Moments in Music

I mentioned that I wasn't quite done with 2013 so here's my wee list of favourite CD's from last year, not necessarily released in 2013 but they all helped form my soundtrack to the year, (and checkout 2012's list here!);

1. DAVID SYLVIAN: Gone To Earth (2006)

2. DEAD CAN DANCE: Anastasis (2012)
3. THE BLUE NILE: Walk Across Rooftops (2012)

4. DEAD CAN DANCE: Wake (2003)

5. DAVID BOWIE: The Next Day (2013)

6. DAVID SYLVIAN: Brilliant Trees (2006)
7. PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING: IEE (2013)

8. LONDON GRAMMAR: If You Wait (2013)

9. ENNIO MORRICONE: Good, Bad & Ugly (1967)
10. THOMAS DOLBY: Floating City (2011)

I came comparatively late to David Sylvian's solo career via his first excellent retrospective Everything & Nothing (2000) and resisted his earlier works thinking that all the best tracks were already on this collection and its ambient companion Camphor (2002) but finally succumbed in 2013 and while there is a little overlap with those releases, both the Gone To Earth and Brilliant Trees remasters are  unexpectedly wonderful and kept me returning to them many times during the year.

 

As did the remaster of The Blue Nile's debut which I'd never previously had on CD despite proudly owning on vinyl back in the day! I would still say that Hats is their best but I was surprised how fresh Rooftops sounded, including the various bonus tracks.

 

After the excellent Albert Hall gig last year I continued my fascination with Dead Can Dance but so far have not dipped into their back catalogue thinking again that Wake will have all the best tracks, but maybe like with David Sylvian, I'll be proved wrong?

 

My other favourites, with the exception of Ennio Morricone, were all pretty much contemporary releases for me headed of course by Mr Bowie!  What a wonderful surprise his return was and while not a true classic, The Next Day is a strong contender and contains many worthy additions to the Bowie songbook. It was also a great reaction by the man himself to move forward while everyone else was looking back at the excellent V&A retrospective, proving that as usual Bowie's at least one step ahead!

 

My other 2013 favourites were mainly discoveries through the increasingly essential BBC 6 Music shows and the live circuit where I managed to see both Public Service Broadcasting and Thomas Dolby perform, separately I should add! P.S.B kept in character during their performance accompanied by the vintage information films which give them their name and are well worth checking out as is their earlier The War Room E.P which preceded their Inform, Educate and Entertain album.

 

 

We caught erstwhile 80's star and pop eccentric/genius Thomas Dolby at a small local intimate venue with maybe 100 or so people on his short Invisible Lighthouse Tour where he provided a live narrative and soundtrack to his recently completed movie about the closure of his local lighthouse and it was really quite something special. He even took a short Q&A session in between encores talking about his inspiration, his music and experiences, a humble and very talented man who, perhaps like Mr Bowie (who Dolby of course accompanied at Live Aid), has not yet turned his back on creating inventive music.

 

  

Looking to the Future!

Happy New Year (Godt Nytår Danmark!), we made it to the future, well 2014 at least!

It's always quite exciting at New Year I think, making plans, looking back and (hopefully) feeling positive about things or at least taking positive steps to change what you weren't happy with in the previous year. Hopefully this positive attitude will last beyond the winter chills that January always seems to bring.

I'm fortunate that I'm really pleased with the way that 2013 went both personally and creatively with Accent UK venturing far and wide on our comic travels with sales, on the whole, better than before. Only real regret was (again) not completing a comic project of my own, despite having several 'in-progress', so that is something that I have to fix this year - honest!

I've made a decent start, deciding to settle on only one of my projects which is already researched and plotted so just need to draw it which is both the fun and hard part; hard to start but fun when you get into it, so we'll see. Once I'm a little more into it, I'll post more information, with the above image, one of my first of 2014, possibly being a clue but possibly not!

Accent UK have of course a few more definite plans for release this year which will be posted on our blog but I understand that our most recent title, Missing: Have You Seen The Invisible Man? has completed its distribution by those fine folks at Diamond and is in store now at your favourite local comic shop worldwide, look out for it, and see the full list of new releases for this week here!

❏ SEP130828 MISSING HAVE YOU SEEN THE INIVISIBLE MAN ONE SHOT ................................ $5.00

We've also put together our preferred 2014 schedule which is again shaping up to be a busy one with at least 11 shows, matching 2013's total, but with several new events and venues to keep things fresh. More on this once confirmations are in place and I may still squeeze in a few blog mentions of the moments of adventure time from last year, have fun this year whatever you do :)

2013 Comics !



Forbidden Planet's 2013 logo

Inching towards the end of the year and I'm pretty pleased on the whole with 2013, although it really zoomed by, but maybe that's just my age!

Anyway last year I posted my favourite comics of the year (see 2012 here) but as the eagle-eyed may  have noticed that the, always interesting, Forbidden Planet blog have already done the job by asking me to contribute to their annual 'best of' postings which you can read here.

It is quite an honour to be included so thanks to Joe and Richard for the invite and it'll be interesting to see what the 'poll of polls' will reveal about what caught people's imaginations this year. Looking at my list, my 'best-of' and honourable mentions were all graphic novels and perhaps more oddly, all my choices were by a single writer/artist creator and also all ones that I'd been fortunate enough to meet at various comic shows I'd attended, probably just coincidence but the truth is I do most of my buying at shows these days as a great way to both discover new works and meet creators in person.

Anyway here's my full choices with a page of their interior art to encourage you to check them out for yourself if you haven't already;

The Nieuport Gathering - Ivan Petrus

Sailor Twain - Mark Siegel

 

 

The Great War - Joe Sacco

Cursed Pirate Girl - Jeremy Bastion

 

 Gigantic Beard That Was Evil - Stephen Collins

 Pachyderme - Frederik Peeters

There was a great many more that I enjoyed last year including finally catching up with Posy Simmonds Tamara Drewe, Cinebooks excellent Scorpion and Spooks series, re-reads of Charley's War and new to me 'discoverys' Kings in Disguise and Freddy Lombard.

 

I once again didn't read any traditional 'pamphlet' comics from the so called mainstream publishers, but instead picked up and enjoyed new works from the likes of Doug Noble, Rob Jackson, Connor & Lizzie Boyle, Ellen Lindner, Jim Alexander, Boulet and latest find, Jessica Martin and no doubt others that slip my mind at the moment.

 

There is thankfully a host of great comics out there and hopefully you've found some time to catch up with some of them yourself, if not what are you waiting for!

Best wishes and See You in 2014 !

US Comic show exhibitor analysis

A taster of The Devastator's analysis - its much clearer on their site!
(click the above image for link) 

 

The always interesting Beat blog has a great link here to The Devastator's analysis of recent comic shows from an exhibitor's sales point of view. This is a rare if not unique occurrence and for anyone interested in comics, festivals and a bit of clearcut comment is fascinating.

Being a US site it of course concentrates on American shows of which only the Emerald City Con in Seattle is one that Accent UK have exhibited at (and it has to be said we found it slow) but its still pretty useful. The site's compilers are at pains to point out that the analysis is based on those exhibitors who responded to their survey, some 46 in total, so the results are not overly scientific but interesting nevertheless.

It would be interesting to have a similar UK survey but as recently commented on, sales, while obviously important are not always the only factor which determines if a show is successful or not. Certainly for us while our Seattle sales were disappointing we were breaking new ground with our first US show and had we been able to follow up, we may well have grown our audience there, similar to what we achieved with our European shows in Copenhagen and almost achieved with New York's MoCCa but its a difficult thing to sustain on available resources, particularly now that our 'home' UK market has a vibrant convention scene of its own.

Enjoy the article and analysis and perhaps give your own findings some thought?


An eager looking Accent UK in Seattle 2010

 

Howard Burke of Seattle's Zanadu Comic shop has a surprise Accent UK vist
(Zanadu were already stocking our books - Yey!)

Dave made a few new friends on our Seattle trip including the famous Pike Market Pig !

Mandela Salute!

 

The loss of Nelson Mandela is certainly touching the world and rightly so, certainly one of the immense figures of our modern age who influenced so many people and effected a massive change in his troubled homeland.

While visiting South Africa in 2010, I witnessed a nation still very much finding itself in terms of economic and social parity but from what I learnt from others who had lived under/with apartheid, even this 'imbalance' was a million years from that experienced a relatively short time before. In fact one of our party whom was making his first return to South Africa since those troubled times was quite emotional after chatting to, joking with and having photos taken with one of our young female guides stating that such open friendliness between white and black would just not have been possible and may well have lead to imprisonment or worse.

Sobering thoughts indeed and while difficult for us coming afterwards to fully understand we can all of course appreciate the difference Mandela made and he will of course be long remembered.

While not himself a Zulu - (Mr Mandela's father was a chief with the Thembu tribe, part of the larger Xhosa nation who along with the Zulus are probably the best known of South African's tribes) - I'm sure I can be forgiven for posting the above salute from a Zulu warrior.

Happy St Andrews Day

 

 

Well I thought it would be good to do another wee sketch of David Livingstone for his bi-centenary on this St Andrews Day but while I did this last night unbeknown to me sad events were playing out in Glasgow, so I think any celebrations will be somewhat tempered.

 

Our thoughts with all who are affected.

Thought Bubble Moments!



Thought Bubble 2013 is that-a-way!

Gosh that was quick, the weekend's Thought Bubble festival in Leeds brought Accent UK's long year of comic shows to an end and was a suitably good way to wind down 2013.

Given the problems the organisers had with fulfilling exhibitor table requests, the addition of a new hall in vacant shopping units gave everyone who wanted to, the opportunity to exhibit, for which the organisers deserve thanks in responding to the unprecedented demand. However the question was always going to be whether this demand would be matched in increased attendance and spend to warrant the extra investment?
 

Thought Bubble 13 Crowd

On this point, and purely on our numbers and observations, I would say the jury's still out. Its hard to say but would reckon that attendance was pretty similar to previous years which of course meant with even more exhibitors, people's spend was spread even further. Its not surprising therefore that our own sales were down from 2012, but in fairness we had a host of new books last year which helped boost our sales to a record tally. With only a couple of new things this time we expected a modest showing which is exactly what we had, although we still comfortably beat 2011's sales, so it's not all bad.

Most exhibitors I spoke to were similarly 'okay' with things with no-one saying they had done amazingly good or bad, just 'okay' and in fairness for a cold November weekend at the end of a busy convention year that's not too bad really, considering everything else the show had. 





Colin eagerly mans the AUK table - note Dave's lego boxset centrepiece!

A close up of Dave's lego set of Accent UK comic characters - can you find them all?



And that's the key thing, much like the recent Lakes event, its not all about the numbers, its as much about the community and social aspect as you catch up with familiar faces and discover new works, this combined with brisk early sales helped remind us that despite the table booking problems, Thought Bubble is still the place to go for the best mix of professionals, independent and small press creators and arguably the UK's best comic show in an increasingly crowded market.

That said, I don't envy the organiser's job in planning for next year when they'll be keen not to repeat the online exhibitor lottery but presumably they won't have the option of those vacant shop units?

 

Anyway back to this year and Dave and I had a blast in catching up with old friends and chatting to new and repeat readers of our books. Once again Gary Crutchley was able to join us and work his sales patter to ensure that his and Dave's Westernoir series be the top seller with the latest book 3 outselling everything else by a good margin!

 

Dave and Gary happy with Westernoir's Thought Bubble reception



Sadly Dave and I again failed to see any of the programmed talks and events - thats' none in the 7 years we've attended which is a shame especially as we'd greatly enjoyed the talks we caught at The Lakes recently. Mind you with a show the size as this you can't hope to see everything and certainly that was something I heard people repeat time and time again that it was 'too big' and they couldn't absorb it let alone buy everything they liked as there was just 'too much'!

 

Thom Ferrier (Ian Williams) & Me catch up

During my little escapes from the table I did manage to track down a few of the books I was looking for and a few that I'd not heard of before - see my 'haul' pic below - including an enjoyable book previously unknown to me, 'The IT Girl' by Jessica Martin based on the silent movie actress, Clara Bow. Its well executed and despite being a little short is a promising debut from the impressively enthusiastic Jessica, who has only recently entered the comics field after a varied and interesting show biz career!

Other highlights was again meeting Frederik Peeters this time for his new sci-fi series Aama from Self Made Hero which I am looking forward to reading especially after his previous excellent Pachyderme book which I had a lively discussion with Gary Spencer Millidge about as we tried to second guess its meanings and imagery - great fun!

  

Gary Spencer Millidge & GM Jordan strike a Thoughtful pose!



It was discussions like that throughout the show with numerous people - too many to list - that makes Thought Bubble special as most comics people will be there and its a great chance to catch up and chew the fat and with the show being so late in the calendar there's very much an end of term feel to it as you say your goodbyes and reflect on the close of another convention season.

 

Neil Cameron during his 'Draw an Awesome Robot' workshop

One final bit of very welcome news was when old comics pal, Neil Cameron told me that our very good friend and very deserving talent, Garen Ewing had won the British Comic Award for Best Young People's Comic for his Complete Rainbow Orchid book! Great stuff, we're all delighted for you Garen and will enjoy seeing you squirm with embarrassment with all the plaudits coming your way! You can read Garen's own report here and here's the full list of the 2013 award winners.

 

I'll let Dave say more about Thought Bubble at the main Accent UK blog but for me, after a fairly indifferent expectation about the show, I was pleasantly surprised and reminded how special Thought Bubble really is and I sincerely hope they can come up with a workable solution to its exhibitor popularity so no-one who wants to be there misses out, lets see what they come up with?

The 2013 TB haul and I still missed out on a couple of books!