BICS and Pieces

One week on from BICS and there seems to be a whole host of things going on in the Time Bomb Comics world!

Dan Barritt is storming through The Sisterhood, with some beautiful artwork being produced for our first full-colour book. The image here is not the cover but page one of the comic itself - the opening splash page. I'm sure you'll agree it looks pretty awesome - jaws collectively hit the floor when we first saw it - and the cover is pretty breathtaking too, which should be up on The Sisterhood page on the main website pretty soon.





As for the website Andy has been doing a great job knocking it into shape and it now has the foundations in place for what we had in mind for it originally. Over the next few weeks there'll be more tweaking and some bells and whistles added that Andy's getting quite excited about, including some animations. If you haven't seen the new website yet click on over here and then let us know what you think of it.

Looking to the future, I'm just putting the final polish to the script for Primetime, a forthcoming one-shot with art by Paul Thompson, and Andy is cracking on with the final few pages for The Furies graphic novel. At the same time Andy will be working on a 4 page short story of mine that will hopefully be published in a future Accent UK anthology book. After he's done all that, I suppose I'll have to start taking Andy's mutterings of putting together another Ragamuffins comic seriously...

We've also just had our final table confirmation through for the Leeds Thoughtbubble show on Saturday 15th November. No new releases for that, but looking forward to seeing what the Leeds contingent think of Dick Turpin and the Restless Dead and the preview art for The Sisterhood. I'm also wondering if we'll find another "Dan", given we found the talented Mr Barritt at last year's show!

Then we've had some follow-ups from some of the fellow creators we met at BICS including writer John Owens and artist John Cahill. No definite plans as yet, but one of the great things about shows like BICS is the chance to find some new talent to work with - and there's always the possibility that the Next Big Thing in the comics industry will have had their first published work in a Time Bomb Comic!

Finally the guys over at Comics Village have given over their latest Eye Candy column to showcasing Dick Turpin and the Restless Dead. Check it out and indeed the rest of the site which has a pretty hands-off approach to it's contributions and can be wickedly entertaining as a result. Glenn Carter, one of the brains behind the website, was another face from BICS and we look forward to seeing his review of the Dick Turpin book on the site soon. The feedback we've had about the comic already has been very positive - so fingers crossed!

BICS 2008 - On Reflection

Time Bomb Comics had a blast at BICS. Dick Turpin and the Restless Dead was unleashed on a mostly unsuspecting public and they seemed to enjoy it! We had a steady stream of people stopping by the Time Bomb Comics table over the two days and it was great to meet so many people who'd picked up Ragamuffins last year - enjoyed it - and came back for more. There were also a fair few newbies who were oblivious to Time Bomb until we encouraged them to part with their cash and sample our wares, but on the whole they didn't seem to mind too much!

This year the show was split between two rooms simply due to the number of exhibitors there. We were in the Main Hall but there was a much smaller Exhibition Suite adjacent to the main entrance. All well and good but this definitely gave the show a different vibe this year, the Hall so empty to the Suite at some points during the Saturday that some of us were wondering if the fact there was two rooms was lost on some of the attendees and they'd came and went before discovering the much bigger Hall existed. Not such a wild flight of fancy given the two rooms were seperated by a large permanent exhibition and there was initially no signage directing the unititiated to the other part of the show.

The Saturday was much quieter than the previous year - at times on the afternoon there were definitely more exhibitors in the Main Hall than visitors - but the unexpected flip-side was that the Sunday was much busier than 2007. This was no doubt in part due to some canny panel scheduling, with the keynote Dave Gibbons Watchmen talk being allocated the early Sunday afternoon slot - thus ensuring the second day was not the usual graveyard shift!

It was great to meet up with some fellow exhibitors, and to see how the British comics industry continues to thrive - albeit with smaller Indie publishers like ourselves. There were two new arrivals on the scene in the form of Reaper Comics and Ariel Press, and both these publishers had some great looking comics on display, but it was also enjoyable to catch up with some of the longer established publishers like Insomnia, Accent UK and Murky Depths. The latter is one of publishing's best kept secrets - a unique magazine that blends comics with short stories that really should be much bigger than it actually is.

Despite some grumblings from some of the exhibitors and attendees (proving you really can't please all of the people all of the time) BICS 2008 once again proved itself to be one of the key players of the UK convention circuit. There are plans to cap exhibitors next year - suggesting the two room format wasn't as successful as expected - but it really is a well put together event and already pencilled in our events diary for 2009.