Cardiff Expo originally started a few years back in early 2012, if memory serves. Kris, Jim and I were there with our comic book, "Lou Scannon" and it was a fantastically run con.
It was, by convention standards, relatively small but it was intimate, fun and had a brilliant focus on comic books. It supported small press and local talent in a way that hadn't been seen before in Cardiff and we adored working it. We always had a great reception there, sold a lot of books and generally got a lot of decent interaction with our readers.
The con grew in popularity over the following couple of years and looked like it was set to go from strength to strength.
Then the big boys seemed to move in.
A convention giant decided to start it's own convention in Cardiff International Arena. Not a problem in itself but it was booked for the same date as the original CICE. It's one of those cons with celebrities and huge halls and stuff like that.
With that in mind and numerous other reasons, CICE was put on a temporary hiatus.
As time has passed though, this convention giant has seemed to move away from supporting and promoting small press and UK independent comics and seems to be focussing more on the merchandise side of things. It's not really something I would call a comic con anymore, to be honest. It would be more accurate to call it a Celebrity and Merchandise convention.
Not that I'm slagging that off, you understand, but we've kind of been marginalised. There's no real interest at these giant cons, to support small press. I won;t name the company for obvious reasons but chances are, if you're from the area, you know who I am referring to anyway. Like I said, I'm not slagging them off as such, I just think that if they no longer want to support us, we need an actual comic convention that will.
SO as a result of really wanting to push and support the UK independent and small press comic scene, for one day only, the Cardiff Independent Comic Expo is back! I couldn't be happier! This con genuinely has one of the best atmospheres of any of the cons I have worked! (And I've worked quite a few now!)
This really is a REAL comic convention.
As a way of showing our support for the CICE, a bunch of the UK's small press and indie talent and myself have contributed towards an anthology that will be given away FREE with the first 100 tickets sold!
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| Kris received the proof copy the other day and sent us all these pics |
These tickets have now all sold, but you never know, maybe extra copies will be kicking around!
Tomorrow is the last chance you have to pre-book tickets for the event! Get on that by clicking here and getting yours!
You may remember that a while back, I posted about a new comic that I plan to launch this year! that's still on course though its taking longer to get finished on account of all the work I have on at the moment, but I have done a five page short for the anthology as a little taster of the main comic to come!
Here's the first page of my story (Which is incredibly meta):
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| Written and art by me, lettering done by the great HdE |
So if you love comic books and are looking for new reads and stuff, you should get to Cardiff Masonic Hall on Saturday the 27th June and get your Geek on! Family friendly cosplay is more than welcome too, so get your glad rags on and come party with us!
Once again, you can visit their website and buy yourself a ticket or two here
Or you can visit their twitter account here
Or go to their Facebook page here
You can check out the blog of my letterer, HdE, here
CICE is organised and run by Mike Allwood and Iz McAuliffe
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