The 2013 Comica independent comic and art fair Comica Comiket took place at Central St Martins Art College behind Kings Cross and St Pancreas in London on Saturday. I was at Comica in 2011 in Bishopsgate and blogged about it.
As before, lots and lots of tables with individual artists or independent publishers displaying their wares: graphic novels, hardback or softback comics, small or large, colour and black and white, screen prints, postcards, buttons and many different bits and pieces. Quite fascinating walking around and seeing the sort of thing people create.
One table featured Zoom Rockman, a 13 year old artist and his "proper" comic called The Zoom. I bought a copy. Apparently, he's also "writing stuff for the Beano" , according to (I assume) his Mum, who was sat beside him. I don't generally buy "Beano" style stuff (honest) but made an exception here. Impressive for such a young man.
Like the last time, artists were invited to sit on stage and draw in public, with the work projected on a large screen so people could watch the process.
It's always quite inspiring strolling amongst so many artists and writers, stopping and talking about their work and how it's made. There's some fantastic stuff here and, as I noticed before, the print quality is often amazingly good: a lot of hardback and good paper.
Many small presses producing this quality work but I talked to one artist who described how he published his book via Amazon. This was new to me, possibly using Createspace. The comic book was called The Frumps and was a high-quality, colour paperback (again, not something I generally buy though).
An Italian artist thought that the independent scene in London was booming and special just now, perhaps because the UK never had much of a culture of comics for adults before, unlike France and Italy. Perhaps true, although there have been small press comics and books for decades here. Maybe the cost of producing has dropped so massively, due to computer production, printing technology and internet distribution. A lot of creative people with time on their hands.
I'll mark my diary for the next Comica show!
