BRISTOL COMICS EXPO COVERAGE
Bristol Comics Expo took place again this year on the weekend of 12-13 May. Once more, the exhibition centre was packed with fans with a record attendance for british comics conventions! The Comics Nexus (=yours truly) was at hand to report on the panels, the guests and the big announcements! Stay tuned at the Nexus throughout this week for detailed coverage of the Expo.
VERTIGO PANEL
The Vertigo panel attractedalmost as big a crowd as the earlier DC panel of the day, with Group Editor Shelly Bond and Sales VP Bob Wayne hosting the panel joined by a plethora of creators (see photos below) and presenting a slideshow with current projects and exclusive new announcements, before fielding questions to the audience who were in good form and high spirits.
Left to right: Mark Buckingham (Fables), Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra (Y the Last Man), Andy Diggle (Hellblazer, Losers), Liam Sharp (Testament), Jock (Faker, Losers)
On the left side: Bob Wayne (Sales V.P.) and Shelly Bond (Vertigo Group editor, hidden behind the bottles)
• The first book from the Minx line came out the week after the convention, the Plain Janes. Shelly Bond is very proud of this line of books, aimed at young adult female readers. A new Minx book will be released every month. Plain Janes features Jane, a transfer student, finding friendship between three girls also named Jane who agree to leave their mark on the town by forming a secret art gang.
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Vinyl Underground is written by Si Spencer (Books Of Magic, life during wartime) with art by Simon Gane (Paris with Andi Watson from SLG) and inks by Cameron Stewart (Other Side, Guardian, Catwoman). The book is set in London, following 4 amateur detectives and featuring the use of magic through old vinyl records. (Rich Johnston was absolutely giddy at the idea and its similarities to Image’s Phonogram, although the respective creators had already talked things through at the convention bar)
• On Hellblazer, new writer Andy Diggle commented he wants to take Constantine back to his roots, as a more suave person who’s on top of things and his own affairs, hence the wardrobe shift back to his suit underneath the trench coat.
• Y the Last Man #57 is featuring a ‘shocking amount of nudity’ throughout the issue. Pia Guerra commented that the inker had to hide the pages from his family while he was working on the title. Jock jokingly complained about being asked to cover the naughty bits in Faker.
• Northlanders is a new monthly written by Brian Wood (DMZ, Local, Demo) with art by Davide Gianfeliche, set 1000 years in the past during the Viking era. It stars a Viking Prince returning to his homeland and trying to wrestle power from his corrupt uncle.
• The Un-Men from Swamp Thing get their own monthly series starting in August, written by John Whalen (Big Book of the Weird Wild West) and artist Mike Hawthorne (3 Days in Europe, Umbra, Hysteria).
• Silverfish, the original GN coming out in June by David Lapham (Stray Bullets) was described as ‘John Hughes meets Hitchcock’. Shelly Bond said that this is the best work Lapham has ever done.
• The OGN hardcover Sentences details the life story of R&B artist M.F. Grimm from his first performances to his accident and his incarceration and his eventual rise to fame. It is written by the artist himself, (real name Percy Carey) with art by Ronald Wimberly (Lucifer).
• Shelly Bond is excited with Celia Calle’s cover work on American Virgin.
• Brian Vaughan is writing the intro for the first Scalped TPB. The book is a favourite among the creators in the panel.
• The panel raised the question to the audience about what title they wanted to see collected in the Absolute format next. The most popular choice from the audience was Preacher, but the editors announced the next title to be collected is decided to be Absolute Death.
• Mark Buckingham states he’s very happy working on Fables since he gets to tackle new characters and environments with each story arc. He’s set to work on Fables for as long as he lives and revealed some familiar faces we haven’t seen in a while will be returning to the series.
• Cairo is an OGN by journalist G. Willow Wilson and artist M.K. Perker (Fables #59). It is an adventure starring five wildly different people who are drawn together by a genie in a hookah. Bob Wayne later talked aboyut the experience of reading Cairo. Although he at first wasn’t impressed by the pitch, when he started reading the first pages he couldn’t stop before he had finished the whole book and had sent an urgent request for delivery of the remaining pages to his desk.
• Jock is doing the art on Faker a new monthly series written by Mike Carey. The story centres on a group of student friends who wake up after a drunken party night to discover an extra friend in their gang that noone knows anything about.
• Asked by the audience which characters they would like to see make the transfer from DC to Vertigo, Pia Guerra got the greatest applause for her answer of Wonder-Woman. She thought that the character is stagnant and characterless because of the limitations of the normal DC Universe, while if she made the move to Vertigo she could finally have sex.
• Another audience member asked the question if the creators in the panel found a theme in all the work they have done. Brian K. Vaughan gave the most insightful answer and surprised even himself. He said he’s been writing about people who are trying to do the right thing when there is no right thing.
• The juiciest quote of the evening, and one already referenced in other sites belongs to Pia Guerra. Guerra was retelling the story of how her husband Ian Boothby (Simpsons, Futurama comics) broke into the industry by regularly sending in his mini-comics to the editors until they came to expect them every month and look forward to the next one. She concluded the story with the memorable: ‘Show that you’re regular, that you can continue to put out‘.
• Shelly Bond explained what she’s looking for in successful Vertigo pitches: familiar themes with a new twist and themes than can be boiled down to one sentence.
• The panel ended with a screening of the full-length trailer of Stardust, exclusively for Bristol con. Mark Buckingham and Pia Guerra had to hide under the panel table to not block the trailer screen and report it’s now their favourite way of watching a movie.
Check back on the website tomorrow for more panel reports, from the Allan Heinberg panel with exclusive video captures!
