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MCM London Expo 2010 – Friday And Most of Saturday

I'm not going to MCM London Expo today. Oh I want to, don't get me wrong, but something (possibly in a bacon sandwich from the Fox pub) has seen me struck down with vomiting, shakes, diarrohea and the rest. Bleeurghh.

The Eagle Awards went off well. Damn you CBR! I was very pleased to see Freakangels get a win for webcomic, after not seeing a whisper of a gong before now. Warren Ellis refused to believe he'd won Best Writer. My good friend Khandie Khisses picked up the award for League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen on the basis that she's one of Alan's burlesque dancers and she seemed damn thrilled. Not sure how 2000AD will take to Tony Lee accepting their award, and it was a shame that Frank Quitely was struck down with the lurgey, Gary Erkine in full kilt regalia accepting award after award for the man. And these awards do matter. I understand that as a result of Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man winning best British black-and-white comic, a rather well known Hollywood producer got in touch. And Pat Mills' Requiem winning best European album saw the translated version from Panini UK fly of the table the next day.

Bernard Chang was one of the star of the show, and shared with us some of his working practices.

Chang pencils his artwork roughly on one side of the page in reverse, then flips it and inks on top of the lightbox. He flips a number of times back and forth through the creative process, eschewing the traditional pencils-then-inks approach and avoiding the problem off odd looking panels by seeing then in reverse through the process.

It's a technique he copied from Shen Chu, who took it from Chris Sprouse – you can see the double page spreads below as a demonstration of that.

We were also able to geek out about our mutual admiration of Nick Spencer, and Bernard promised a very interesting take on Supergirl in the months to come.

We also spend the first few minutes trying to work out what kind of threat he should throw at me, to keep up the reputation being spread by Keith Church, but failed.

I was very impressed regarding Marvel UK's publication of the Chris Claremont/Milo Manara X-Men book, an oversized colour hardcover that beats both the original Italian and US publication of this book. With that and the Knights Of Pendragon trade paperback I knew I was going to be bogged down.

I alo understand that Alan Davis was so impressed by Marvel UK's presentation of his Captain Britain work, with more extras than the US version, that he's offered them a new cover for lower-than-normal rates featuring The Fury, as well as a few other behin-the-scenes notes and sketches, for btheir upcoming sixth volume.

I spent much of yesterday with Bleeding Cool's Brendon Connelly, and we interviewed Chris Claremont – mucyh of the time talking about what we have collectively gleaned about the upcoming Wolverine 2 movie. I feel a separate column coming on – but you'll never guess who Chris wanted to play Wolverine before Hugh. Chris Claremont also mentioned in the Writers Panel yesterday that he had pitched an X-Men/Warehouse 13 crossover to Marvel…

There was much talk of Mark Millar's announcement for a competitive comic con in London, The Superhero Con, for next year. Although a combination of a venue capacity of around 3000 once stalls and booths are in, and a car park below that can fit thirty cars seems and a table cost of £140 (£100 for guests) have mollified things somewhat. The biggest objection I think was not to the show's existence – indeed most people, inclding me, really want to go, but that it was promoted in a way that dismissed the MCM. Despite having a comics section bigger than any other current dedicated comics con in the UK, and an attendance this year just shy of 50,000 visitors. It seemed Mark doesn't consider it a proper comics con, even though his own is intended to also have movie and TV studio prescence. Tony Lee was one who challenged him on Twitter over this – and challenged Mark to at least visit the show before dismissing it.

Have a few more pics and a video I took of my way home, early. Remember, I was holding back the vomit…

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