From Super Saturday to Sparse Sunday at the Bristol Comic Expo

Day 2 of the Expo, and the halls at the Ramada were certainly as quiet as I had been told. The bustling crowds of yesteryear had been replaced with small clusters of comic collectors intently skimming through boxes. Stallholders faces looked agitated at their lack of spending.

It was equally quiet over at the Mecure where the smiles and joy in people’s faces is less dictated by how much cash they’ve made that morning. At the Mecure event people still chatted, joked and discussed comics at their leisure. The atmosphere at the Ramada was dark and resentful, except at the far end of the room:  my destination of course - the home of Cinebook.

By contrast at the busier Cinebook stand the stallholders were friendly and conversational in a manner more alike that found at the Mecure. It soon became evident that their approach had been instilled by owner Olivier Cadic who as well as importing European albums to these shores is also more importantly a Continental approach to selling the 9^th Art that transcends our Anglo-Saxon  manner of business.

Olivier claims to be no artist or expert on comic art or aesthetics, but he understands the values of equality and respect for what’s ‘different’, shunning the Anglo-Saxon way of arranging hierarchies in terms of ‘better’ or ‘worst’ or measuring comic art in terms of money or sales. A cultured man with a business mind – can you beat that? If only our comic shops and distributors had such people in charge.

I spoke to him for just six or seven minutes but it was a fine way to wrap up the weekend and leave with a certain manner of feel good optimism when combined with all the encounters and conversations of the previous few days.

I drove home from Bristol thinking of the many personalities who’d called by the Dealer Comics stall in recent days and how they would all be affected if a more European approach was applied to the UK comic industry from top to so called bottom.  Would Tim Pilcher and the CBA be the potent and highly financed representative body they surely could be? Would Terry Hooper at the CBO be running discussion panels at many annual comic shows where people could passionately disagree and not fall out? Would publishers be fighting over the talents of artist Des Taylor? Would Comic Heroes Mag be the heated furnace of discussion that it could soon be? Would underground publishers such as Knockabout and Wasted be embraced and respected by the retailers? Would retailers become youthful minded, cultured and less preoccupied with money, superheroes and fast sales? Would they provide a full even handed spectrum of choice? Would Diamond become one of several distributors, perhaps specialising in Superhero Mags? Oh the possibilities!

And so to the good news: Several French Publishers are planning to visiting the UK in the forthcoming months with ideas of both importing and exporting talents; a series of cross pollinating exercises which many will certainly welcome.

Already looking forward to it.

Jas