Nine random thoughts about Kapow!

1. I had a great time at Kapow! on Saturday, only undermined by the fact I was utterly, utterly knackered. I'd just done three late shifts in a row at the day job (night job?) and badly needed to catch up on sleep. It would have been nice to stick around in north London for a drink or two after the con, but I was ready to drop by 4pm.

2. The Business & Design Centre in Islington is a terrific venue - probably the best I've come across for a comics-related event in the UK. It's big, well-lit, easy to find and just looks great inside and out. The rooms in which Kapow! held its panels were similarly impressive, and the fact there were lots of places to buy food on the premises - good food, not just sandwiches - made it pretty much perfect. The only criticism was the lack of air conditioning - I was sweating like an Amazon explorer by noon.

3. Actually, the lack of air conditioning isn't my only criticism. The ticketing arrangements for some of the bigger panels were a bit chaotic and venue - not convention - staff sent us to entirely the wrong place to queue for the Warren Ellis panel. No big deal, though, really.

4. Alas, I didn't take the Petal pitch document with me to show to publishers. There were a couple of art corrections that needed doing and I wanted to work a little more on the content of the pitch itself. Petal will be ready soon, though, very soon...

5. I spent a daft amount of money on comics and graphic novels, including The Slaughterman's Creed and White Knuckle (from Markosia); The Red Wing and The Strange Talent of Luther Strode (Image); Kronos City (Time Bomb Comics); Abasalom: Ghosts of London (Rebellion); Guts, Madam Samurai and Slumdroid (Scar Comics), and Westernoir (Accent UK). I may even review the ones I most enjoyed here over the coming weeks...

6. It was lovely to see my old friend and collaborator Declan Shalvey in such high demand for sketches and autographs from fans of his work on Thunderbolts, Northlanders and 28 Days Later. He also told me he's going to be drawing one of my favourite current books later in the year which is great news.

7. In the end, I only managed to catch a couple of panels. Warren Ellis's Q&A was great fun with a wide variety of questions from the floor about his work. I'm not a great fan of Ellis's online persona but mercifully there was no mention here of whisky, technology or obscure bands from Iceland. Best question of the session came right at the end from the guy who asked: "When your daughter goes off to college, who is going to look after her horse?" Brilliant.

8. Also enjoyed the Storage 24 panel with the film's writer/lead Noel Clarke and director Johannes Roberts. Basically, it's Alien, set not aboard a spaceship but in a London lock-up. The clips and trailer they showed made it all look like rollicking good fun and the only surprise was that they decided to completely give away the look of the alien. Talk about spoilers...

9. Just when I thought the number of comics conventions and related events held in this country had surely peaked, a leaflet I picked up at Kapow! brought news of yet another one. The Northants International Comics Expo (aka NICE) is taking place in Kettering, Northants over the weekend of September 22-23 and boasts Alan Moore as its guest of honour. I wonder how long it's been since Moore fetched up at a UK con? Probably not since that famous UKCAC in the '80s when he turned up wearing a gleaming white suit and complained about someone asking him for an autograph while he was trying to have a pee!

On a more positive note...

IT'S been an interesting start to the New Year. As I mentioned in my previous post (you know, the ranty, embittered one about how awful 2010 was), I've been talking to a film producer for a few months now about turning one of the comics I wrote and published a few years back into a movie.

Anyway, things seem to be moving in the right direction at the moment and just last week I was in London (at swanky Soho House) to meet said producer, a couple of up and coming young screenwriters and a well-known actor/director whose work I admire enormously.

The premise of the meeting was to start thrashing out a plot made up of the stuff from the original comic (which would probably only make up 15 minutes of film time), a load of new material I'd written to continue the story and a variety of ideas from everyone else. It went very well and although there's still a lot of work to be done and obstacles to overcome, I got the feeling everyone present was really committed to making this happen.

I won't be counting my chickens though. I was in a very similar position a couple of years back after being contacted by an American producer who had worked on a hugely successful '90s serial killer flick. Everything was really positive for a few months and then slowly but surely the whole project crumbled to dust. I'll get round to telling that whole sorry story one day (perhaps on here) but it still hurts just thinking about it.

* I'VE been writing some short stories recently (well, I might as well get on with something while I wait for a couple of decent, reliable comic artists to make themselves known). I haven't written prose in years and years but it's going quite well so far. It's much harder work than writing comics, where you have an artist to rely on for a lot of the tricky stuff. Anyway, I seem to have settled into a kind of horror/comedy groove and am going to have a look around to see if I can find some anthologies to submit my stuff to.

* THERE should be a new four-page comic story available for free download from moonfacepress.com in the next few weeks. It's called The Saboteur and is written by me and drawn by Mick Trimble, my collaborator on Septic Isle. It was originally intended for Accent UK's Robots anthology a few years ago but the story's original artist never got round to finishing it and Mick stepped in.