Kapow!

Last weekend we drafted in both sets of grandparents and spent the weekend geeking it up at Mark Millar's Kapow! comic con, the first of its kind in London. It was lots of fun, although I severely underestimated the length of time we would spend queueing (next time I'm taking a flask of strong coffee and a copy of War and Peace). I think the organisers underestimated how long fanboys would be willing to queue, too - bigger venue next year please!

I made it to a couple of the Marvel panels, although I don't know enough to be particularly excited by any of the announcements. The most surreal sight of the weekend wasn't the people in costume (although there were a few!) but X-Men editor Nick Lowe and writer Kieron Gillen in Prince Harry (yes, Harry) and Kate Middleton masks. Very disturbing.



And I saw the debut episode of Falling Skies, Steven Spielberg's new TV series (a fairly generic take on the band-of-survivors genre, but if you think the only thing missing from The Walking Dead is aliens then it's for you).

But my favourite part of the weekend was wandering through Artists' Alley and watching the artists at work. Some of them were big names (Brian Bolland anyone?) and some of them were just starting out but it was a pleasure to watch the creative juices flowing (or not - there were a few hangovers going around on Sunday morning).

I got some Batman sketches from various artists (and a Hulk from Paul Davidson - I mentioned hangovers, right?), which I'll post separately. Mark gave me a little sketch book to carry round, so they're only small pieces.

Mark however went for the big sketches, and got two incredible pieces, by Marvel artist Filipe Andrade and Sean Phillips, who spent the entire weekend drawing and painting for fans and was by far the hardest working man there. Incredible the sort of artwork he can knock out in fifteen minutes! It really was a joy to watch.