I’ve gone every year since 2005, except 2006 (when it clashed with a trip to LA for E3), but every year I attended to officially represent NCsoft. What started in 2005 as a couple of us stuck in a corner trying to flog City of Heroes (without actually selling it) culminated last year in a big ol’ stand with practically an artistic production-line to handle the pencilling, inking, scanning, colouring and printing of player sketches. Without a doubt, in terms of our professional ambitions, Bristol 2008 was our high point. As a fun weekend away for me personally though, this year is the hands-down winner.

Despite that, we definitely fulfilled our primary purpose: to help out Andrew Wildman once more with Draw the World Together. Mat and I couldn’t be happier to help, but as always, there were a lot of people who made things happen.

First and foremost was Mike Allwood, Expo organiser, who gave us the space and time we needed to sketch in. It was no easy feat, as with this year’s Expo being squeezed into the Ramada Hotel (with overspill at the nearby Mercure) it was hard to swing a cat, let alone get half-a-dozen artists to sketch in one room. Mike also ensured that our most generous supporters could get into the Expo, even after tickets were officially sold out. As always whenever I saw Mike over the weekend he was a picture of relaxed calm amongst the chaos, and went above and beyond to help things run smoothly.

DTWT doesn’t really work without Andrew Wildman at the centre of things though – even though he’d say he’s not the most important part! As always Andrew pulled strings, stroked egos and generally hustled to get a great group of artists to sit and sketch. He’s a diamond geezer, as anyone will attest to, and of course he sketched more than a few things on the day too.

Mat and I? We just turned up, really. So let’s kick back with the traditional, chronological, rambling retelling….

Travelling light

As we were paying for our own hotel room, Mat and I chose to head down on Saturday morning and stay one night. Luckily Mat owns his own wheels, so that also cut down our weekend costs considerably. Saying that, it might have contributed to the first, ahem, ‘bump in the road’ of the weekend: getting a flat tyre on the M25.

After a quick, invigorating stop on the hard shoulder where the ol’ teamwork skills kicked straight in to help us change the wheel in PDQ time, we resumed the long drive onwards to Bristol, our old friend ‘Jane the GPS System’ bringing us to the hotel. As we stepped out of the car in the Ramada’s car park, Andrew and Lesley Wildman arrived too, so we all entered the Expo at the same time.

Call it what you like – Convention Fug, or Eau De Fanboi perhaps – but there’s a distinctive smell when you get a lot of con attendees together in an enclosed space. While not distinctly unpleasant, it was very obvious when we stepped into the Ramada’s lobby. That was because everything was already in full swing, with a crowded signing area proving the trickiest part of the small Expo floor to navigate during the whole weekend.

We found Expo management easily enough, and after a trip to Andrew’s room to drop off our stuff (as our own room wasn’t ready) we wandered around for a while, Andrew handing out sketch cards and pads to any artist who was interested in drawing on ‘em for charity. I spied Mike Collins sketching up a storm on one table, so dropped by to say hi; I realised quickly that he, like a few of the other artists, was unaware that I’m supposed to be emigrating. Yes, it can be a bit surprising.

Before too long, we ended up over at the nearby Mercure, the hotel we’d stayed at in 2007 and 2008. This year it was playing host to the Small Press Expo. Little brother to the generally more commercial offerings at the Ramada, the SPE offered the chance for anyone with an indy comic, ‘zine or random product to come and plug it.

After noting that Kevin O’Neill was present, signing and sketching the new volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 1910 (which we said we’d come back to later), we eventually managed to prise Andrew away from talking to Simon Wyatt and friends at the Insomnia Comics stand, and went downstairs to get some lunch. (Simon contributed the fantastic sketch of Donna Troy for our auction you see here – check out his blog and his deviantART page.)

Another pleasant coincidence brought Andie Tong to our table for lunch, so we ate and caught up, with me explaining the boring intricacies of UK-US emigration, and everyone else listening politely. Eventually it got to be ‘about that time’, and we headed back to the Ramada for the so-called ‘Sketch-a-thon’, as Mike Allwood had dubbed it!

More ‘sketch’ than ‘thon’

After standing around being British in our designated room for a bit (hinting strongly that Alan Davis, superstar artist though he may be, needed to vacate the premises… without actually saying so) we got to work with our remarkably meagre resources.

No van full of stock this time for us, no ubiquitous black boxes of ‘stuff’ ready for any occasion. Instead, we ended up getting our Draw The World Together banner up on a wall by ingeniously re-purposing the cords for the window blinds. It was a crazy plan, but hey, it worked.

As if by magic, suddenly artists appeared; and not just the welcome familiar faces of Neil Edwards, Kat Nicholson and Jason Cardy. We had newcomers too; Stephen Baskerville, an old friend of Andrew’s who’d inked his work for many years, took a seat and got straight to work. Lee Bradley sat quietly at the end of the long table and turned out sketches without complaint. We even had David ‘V for Vendetta’ Lloyd for a while, who accidentally ended up facing the door – and as a result, probably just drew his trademark ‘V’ sketch more times than he cared for. But what the hell, every one of them earned us cash. With extra chairs and tables secured, and then with the arrival of Laura Howell to sketch as well, I realised we had more artists (eight!) than we had customers!

Luckily for us, some of those customers (Torsten, Paul, Ben and Rebecca) were regulars, and were ready and willing to donate plenty of money, so pencils flew and pens scratched as everyone got down to business. Unlike the previous couple of years, we had no scanner on hand to capture the sketches, so that meant no colouring and of course nothing I can show to you here (yet). I saw some excellent work though, from all of those involved.

For myself, I got Captain America immortalised by Neil Edwards and a Black Widow by Lee Bradley. I would have potentially gotten more, but my budget only stretched so far – and frankly, I wanted to get sketches from elsewhere around the Expo. For one, both Mat and I had sworn oaths that we would not leave the con without getting a sketch by Andie Tong; after all, we’d waited since BICS 2007!

Time passed, sketches got done, and before long between the amount of artists we had and the lack of foot traffic (our room was well away from the main floor) we had something of a lull, so said goodbye and thank you to a few artists. We rounded up a few more customers, but generally it was a little less intense than previous years. Which was fine with all of us, really; the objective wasn’t to try and top any previous amount we’d raised, but instead to see if the Draw The World Together idea would work with little to no ‘corporate support’, and it seemed to do just fine.

So fine, in fact, that I felt happy to wander off at times, although generally I was going on some errand or other. On one particular trip I dropped by to see Mike Collins again, as I’d been meaning to see if he had copies of A Christmas Carol to sell. (At last year’s show, he’d been working on pages from the book, and I really wanted to read the finished product.) He didn’t have any – but then a little later on another pass, he said “I’ve got something for you” and produced a full-page ‘pin-up’ style image of the Flash. I thought, understandably, he was offering it for auction – but he said no, it was for me. “Because you’re going away.” Chuffed? I certainly was.

A second Mike Collins-related bit of good fortune happened later. A gentleman wandered into the sketch room and asked for me by name; he said Mike had sent him over because he’d said I wanted to pick up A Christmas Carol. Turns out he was Clive Bryant, publisher of Classical Comics. He produced two copies of the graphic novel – one the ‘Original Text’ (ie, all dialogue as Dickens had wrote it) and one the ‘Quick Text’ and asked me to pick one. Taking the ‘Original Text’ (of course) I asked how much I owed him, being happy to pay – and he gave it to me for free! Chuffed? Again, I was. So huge thanks to both Mike Collins and Clive Bryant for making my weekend with their generosity.

When 5pm rolled around we held a raffle to see who’d win the ‘mega-goodie bag’ put together by Mike Allwood; perhaps unsurprisingly Torsten clinched it, which was appropriate given the amount of money he’d donated (and hence the number of raffle tickets he had!). With that done, we put our pencils away for the weekend, and got ourselves ready for the evening’s event… a charity auction!

Auctions for fun and profit

Our organisation for the auction pretty much amounted to “Moving what we have to auction to the room we’re going to auction in”, so we didn’t exactly look slick. Still, we had more people turn up than I expected, even if many of them just seemed to want to look at the art, and not bid on anything.

Regardless, somehow it seemed to work, and later that evening it turned out that we’d made over £200 from the auction alone, which is pretty good considering how many Transformers toys we had… highlights included auctioning a number of the infamous sketch cards (contributed since 2007, only sold once before!!) and also saying goodbye to Boo Cook’s excellent Manticore sketch (hope it looks good in Ben and Rebecca’s house) as well as the Simon Wyatt sketch seen above, which I almost nabbed myself.

Combining the auction cash with the £300 or so we’d made in the afternoon, and we’d made over £500 for one day’s work – which is pretty amazing given we’d just sketched for three hours (with less than the usual crowds!). We were all well-pleased, and felt quite justified in taking ourselves off to the bar for a swift drink.

I was surprised how much I ached when I sat down that night – a sign of encroaching age, I fear, dear readers – and did wonder just how I’d managed this in previous years. Regardless it had been worth the effort for all the usual reasons; getting to watch artists work for charity, raising the money, seeing old friends, and engaging in mindless chit-chat about games and comics and movies. Even better, the always-present spectre of trying to make some money and sell some games was gone, so all-in-all, it was a far less stressful con than previously.

Dinner for 13

A rag-tag group of us quickly formed in the bar, and off we went to try and find dinner. Simon Furman, writer of all things Transformers (amongst others) led the way, and it turned out he was aiming to take us to the same curry house we have ended up in at least twice in Bristol, The Raj. Finding out that was full, however, we crossed the street and got lucky in Myristica, which might sound like a pulp fantasy setting, but actually is another Indian restaurant.

It turned out to be a serendiptious decision however, as the food was excellent, we got our own ‘private room’, and were waited on hand and foot by the attentive staff. It was easily the best curry I’ve had in Bristol (although The Raj was a close second) and made even better by the presence of friends all around. The only slight downside was that Mike Collins and Neil Edwards hadn’t been able to join us, having family and work commitments. This being our traditional Saturday night Expo curry, however, I felt they were there in spirit.

Naturally, with our bellies utterly stuffed with curry, it was only right after we left the restaurant that we’d head back to the Ramada bar, traditionally jammed with comics fans on Saturday night. This year it was actually a little less busy than I’d been used to, but still had enough people at the bar to make getting a drink a very long process.

Gradually people began to drop off to bed, but Mat and I ‘stayed the course’ mostly out of bloody-mindedness than any rational reasoning. We ended up sharing a corner with Paul, who was croaking to an assorted group of UK comics podcasters. When the clock struck midnight however, Mat and I duly decided we’d ‘gone the distance’ and crept up to bed. We’re not getting any younger here, people.

Any given Sunday

The next morning, after a long, leisurely breakfast with Andrew and Lesley, Mat and I had the unusual freedom to wander around the Expo, with no stand beckoning us back after a few minutes. It was kind of weird.

Partially, it was because the Expo was so much smaller this year. A couple of small rooms, a corridor, one big dealer’s room and that was pretty much it; you could get around the whole thing in minutes. So we did, pinpointing stands and artists we wanted to visit later. One notable absentee was Mr Andie Tong, who was nowhere to be seen; Mat and I decided he’d probably fled, knowing we were coming to get our sketches or else. We decided instead to head to the Mercure so we could pick up copies of LOEG 1910 and get Kevin O’Neill to sign – only to remember as we exited the Mercure’s lift that the Small Press Expo was running on Saturday only. D’oh!

A quick about face back to the Ramada, and we said goodbye to Andrew and Lesley for the second time, as they drove off home. Now we were left to our own devices, and duly split up. After some consideration I got in a short line to get a sketch from Dylan Teague, and Mat went shopping. While I watched Dylan create some excellent art and wondered exactly what I’d get him to sketch, in what I can only call an insane coincidence, I ran into my old friend Liam, who was down from London for the day. We chatted for a bit, catching up on the past few years, as I moved slowly to the front of the line.

In the meantime Mat returned from shopping and Andie Tong Watch, telling me that the mysterious man had not popped up on his previous stand. Figuring that possibly Andie had gone home, when Dylan asked me what I wanted to have sketched I suggested Marvel’s Spider-Woman, as I’d been thinking about getting Andie to do the same. Dylan did a very nice job even though he wasn’t too familiar with the character, and I went away happy.

Queuing for Dylan had pretty much taken it out of me, though, and Mat wasn’t interested in queuing himself. Instead I did a bit of shopping, picking up three massive volumes of Judge Dredd reprints for just £25 from the Rebellion stand.

With those in hand we were just about ready to leave – but not before we ran into Kat Nicholson for one last chat. She showed us some sample pages from the adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that her and Jason Cardy are doing for Classical Comics. As most of the time Kat and Jason are colourists, this is an exciting step forward for them. Essentially they’re ‘digitally painting’ the book, with of course the script coming from ol’ Bill himself. Quite a challenge I’d imagine, but they have 10 months to get it right!

Saying our goodbyes, Mat and I headed for the lobby, resigning ourselves to another con without a Tong sketch. “You know,” I said as we headed for the doors, “this is when we’ll run right into him as we leave.”

And who did we run right into? Andie himself, on the phone with Andrew Wildman, trying to figure out how to get his own Draw The World Together donation over to Andrew. This was obviously fate, so Andie immediately promised his first two sketches to us. Hurrah!

What’s the big deal?

You might be wondering why getting a sketch from Andie was a big deal to us. He’s hellishly talented, that’s for sure, but the real truth is that we’d just been too nice for too long.

Andie first turned up out of the blue at the Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS) in 2007, where he wowed us with his work. (In fact, I seem to recall he wowed the other artists quite a bit, too.) However, as was always our policy at shows, everyone on the NCsoft staff held back from getting a sketch done on the day – just so we could ensure that you lot got your sketches first. Sure, our money was as good as anyone’s, but if there were customers before us in the queue, they came first.

As you might understand over the years this was a particularly hard policy to stick to, especially when artists like Andie were drawing their hearts out right in front of our eyes. So more than a few artists graciously did sketches for us outside of shows, including Andie himself; you can see the Aero he did for Chris here, and Mat also got a surprise Transformers sketch at one point. I, however, through fate or luck or whatever, had never ‘gotten a Tong’.

So down Andie sat, and Mat, who already knew what he wanted, ponied up for a full-colour sketch of, erm, Marvel’s Ms. Marvel – with all the money promised by Andie to DTWT. Mat and I happily settled in for the long haul, knowing the sketch would take a while but content to watch Andie work. As always it was a pleasure; confident, fluid lines, intuitive shading and in Mat’s case, some lovely layered colours combined to form a thing of beauty. (Update: added Mat’s scan, left.)

Leaving me to ponder was probably a mistake, however, as we also happened to be standing next to Charlie Adlard’s table (told you it was a small Expo) who was selling copies of a telephone book-sized compendium of The Walking Dead for just £15. Being a sucker for post-apocalypse stories – but an even bigger sucker for monster bargains – I snapped up a copy, leaving me just enough money to get a sketch from Andie, but in black and white.

That just wasn’t going to cut it for Spider-Woman, and besides, I already had a sketch of her from Dylan. Mat suggested Batgirl as an alternative – Barbara Gordon, natch – and Andie went to work, creating a fantastic sketch that I’ll proudly put on my wall next to Mike’s donated Flash.

With both of our sketches completed, we had very little reason to hang around – and little money to spend, anyway. We clambered back into Mat’s car, rolled down the windows, cranked the tunes and set the GPS for ‘Home’.

The last Expo?

As we headed home, Mat bearing the brunt of the driving while I occasionally made a semi-intelligent remark, I didn’t think too heavily about the fact that this may have been my last Bristol Comic Expo. After all, this time next year I’ll be Stateside (Come hell or high water!) and while I’d love to say my new company would exhibit at future shows, I really doubt that’s the case. (But never say never.)

However if this weekend was the last time I head down the M4 corridor towards Bristol, with blues-rock playing and sun streaming through the windows, well – it was a great way to go out. In a way it felt like things had come full circle from where we started; we started as a two-man operation, and to there we returned.

Comic Expo – and comics shows in general – have given me some excellent memories in the last few years, and for that I’m eternally grateful to everyone who’s ever attended a show, drawn a sketch, bought a game or just hung out in the bar with me. Hopefully, I’ll see you at another venue before too long.

For now though, if you’ll excuse me, I have some light reading to get to.

Extra: Pictures!

Thanks to Torsten, who took pictures of the sketching and also a few of the auction, here’s a gallery to enjoy. Thanks for sharing, Torsten!