Please find below a carousel of sketches from the fabulous Thought Bubble comics convention. It took me a while to write just about the first day so maybe I’ll do another post about the second day…
![some pencil drawings of myself, crying, and then not crying with a desultory thumbs up, and a scribbled caption "I used to be better at drawing crying people [me] and I think overall that's a good thing"](https://hannah-mccann.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/TBUB2404.jpg)
I love going to Thought Bubble when I can get, and I am still dreaming a bit of the time I can go as an Exhibitor, as aside from anything else, I think I would actually find that less nerve-jangling than going with basically no money to spend, and fairly poor social reserves to draw from! But so many beautiful comics friends were there, including loads of Leeds Comics Collective friends, who had our supremely exciting first anthology on their tables! If you are reading this and you are sad you don’t have one, don’t despair! Go to my shop and buy yourself one (shameless plug early on), or LCC’s shop! Either way the money will end up in the collective pot 🙂
It’s really exciting to be a part of this ultra supportive and cool crowd. Here are two Broken Frontier articles about the anthology, so cool! www.brokenfrontier.com/cryptids-of-leeds-review/ & www.brokenfrontier.com/leeds-comics-collective-cryptids
The first panel I went to was super exciting for me as I really love the work of Candice Purwin – she is one of my absolute favourite creators. I was too caught up in shyness and personal strife to go be embarrassing at her stall but it was wonderful to see her talk about her work.
The panel was led by the fabulous Jenny Robbins, whose insistence on simply being confident in your own work is an inspiration for us all! Her graphic novel, Biscuits, is a wonderful thing too. Sabba Kahn is another of my favourite comics creators, and everyone should read her beautiful graphic memoir, The Roles We Play. Many people will recognise the gorgeously blobby work of Alex Norris, their “oh no” comic strip is one of the best things on the internet. Last but by no means least, the wonderful Karrie Fransman. I am ashamed to say I still haven’t read her book, The House That Groaned, but I’ll go remedy that in the Library soon. It was very interesting to hear about the work of The Comics Cultural Impact Collective, as I remember the beginnings of this group a few years ago. They are very cool!
There was a great deal of useful information about applying for funding & awards, but I think one of the main takeaways on that front: do it, do it, do it over and over again if you need to!
The next one was, in fact, about Arts Council funding and presented by The Comics Cultural Impact Collective! This was a workshop that was fairly over-subscribed. I was lucky enough to slip in and stood at the back long enough to get this sketchy sketch of Karrie Fransman and Hannah Berry, before finding that my claustro/emeto-phobic panic alarms were set a-clanging and I had to escape, so I didn’t get much information from this unfortunately! That was a long sentence there.
Essentially, this collective is doing hugely important work to spread the good word on comics, collect HUGE amounts of very helpful data/statistics (particularly helpful for funding applications). They also had a brilliant free guide aimed at organisers of comic art & zine fairs to share key information on making them more accessible in all the different ways that you can. So I brought that home with me for me and my Footprint co-workers.
As everything was becoming a little bit overwhelming, me and Joe availed ourselves of (perhaps) the best part of the convention. Graphic Novel Reading Room is a brilliant regular event based in Sheffield. I haven’t been, but the lovely Jane Horton, who designed the logo and who I met on Sarah Lightman‘s drawing graphic narratives online course, told me about it many moons ago. It was a true oasis of happy reading time, away from all the buzz of the halls. I read Linnea Sterte‘s ‘A Frog In the Fall’ and fell in love with everything about it. Joe read a Junji Ito collection, and we both had a brilliant laugh at the spooky spreads.
The last panel of the day was so fascinating, I loved it! It was called ‘In Stars and Shadows: Folklore and Mythology in Comics’. Kieron Gillen hosted this one rather than being just a panellist, as John Reppion was unavailable, and I thought he did a pretty stellar job for someone who had had as little sleep as he said (a small child + comics convention). The other guests were B. Mure and Juni Ba.
This was such a cool topic to discuss and I really loved the breadth of experiences and interpretations of myths & folklore from the panellists. It helped me do a little further contextualisation of my St Brigid comic that I’ve been working on (& not working on) forever.
I will be reading over these notes and chewing on a few thoughts as I progress with my own work. But for now, I think this post is long enough! I’ll split it into two!
