Current mood:	exhausted
Entry tags:	comic, comics, convention, komiks, komiks.dk, tb, tegnebordet, w.i.t.c.h.

Komiks.dk
Komiks.dk was really nice.

It was relaxed and calm, with a very diverse set of guests ranging from small children (with geeky parents) to anime cosplayers and mature comic geeks. Obviously it was aimed more at western comic readers than manga-fans, but that's OK. There's plenty of asian-themed cons. :)

I got to see a lot of people which was really cool. Some I've meet already and some I knew from the Internet.

Saturday was mostly interview/lecture day, which was a very warm experience, but still good activities. Para decided to take home Saturday to tend to his pod-cast with Henning and Lupus. Reggae (the kind girl offering floor) took care of me, and took me to a reception at Christiania for a comic exhibition together with a bunch of prominent people from the Danish comic underground. Technically I actually do belong a little to that subculture. I had a manga underground comic (two issues even) printed back around 2000 together with M-chan. I've talked to some of those people online earlier, and some of them as a minimum knew who I were, so I had a great time. Only problem was that I felt really weird and semi-dizzy, so I went to Reggae's apartment around 10 PM (I had her spare key).
The Don Rosa interview was kind of ruined by the fact, that my group had placed ourself at a table besides all the chairs, but the sound only reached the chairs. We moved onto the floor behind the chairs for the last half hour, but kinda lost the first.
The Mezieres and Christin interview was surprisingly cool. These guys have been going for 30 years, and has a lot of funny anecdotes about their early years. And Mezieres called the question I asked him clever. :D
My french comic theory thing probably would have been better in a room with air-conditioning. That was really high level for that heat. Also he could have used another hour and me being in the mood for a university lecture. Unfortunately my brain wasn't really geared for that.
Peter Madsen was - as always - awesome. that guy can make a six-year-old and his 65-year-old "grand ma with no comic interest" entertained at the same lecture. By doing his normal routine. He's just amazingly good at giving lectures about what he does in a language everyone understands. And he always seems so pleasant. :)

Sunday had a lot fewer visitors (Don Rosa really was the main attraction for a lot of people, and he was most prominent Saturday). I had a workshop with Barbucci and Canepa, and stood a lot in line to get a drawing from them (and also the artists doing Valerian). They made a number system in the lines, so you could be in several lines at the same time, and leave them from time to time. That was really nice, as the lines were outside in a courtyard and the sun was pretty bad. Also it gave me time to get food and go comic shopping (I bought a lot of European albums).
Barbucci and Canepa showed up almost an hour late for their signing. And later they were late for their workshop as well. :/ I don't care how hangover they were, that's not the best way to treat your fans standing in the mid-day sun waiting for a signing. I stood in line from 10.35 to 12.00, and from 13.00-14.50. It did get me a nice Barbucci/Canepa drawing and a quicker Mezieres drawing, though. The drawback was, that my Mezieres number came up right after my Barbucci/Canepa sketch with glitter and glue was done, so the two papers in my sketchbook with that drawing glued a bit together. Nothing bad, though. And yes, I said glitter. After Barbucci made the sketch, Canepa would give it a hint of colour with a metal coloured marker, and glitter on top of it. They were using ten minuttes or more at each person, so it took a lot of time.
The Barbera/Canepa workshop was cool. Lot of fanservice, and aimed so everyone could follow while not at the same time being basic "how to draw". The participants ranged from 13-year-olds to actual art-school students, so I can imagine that it was a difficult task (I heard one of the art school students complain a bit later about knowing everything already). Most of the participants were girls, so they must have figured referring to the W.I.T.C.H. girls for most of the workshop would make that part happy. Yay. ;) - And yeah, they were at the least 15 minuttes late, but I spend the time together with girls from Tegnebordet and pencils and paper. That was cool. :)
The "all sci-fi super star question hour" from 12-13 was a bit of a let-down as most the things Mezieres and Christin said had been mentioned the day before, and Canepa spoke french with Thierry Capezone as her interpretator (that grows somewhat boring in the end). That girl is just really bad at English...

I took the trip back to Odense and Para Sunday evening, and got there at 10 PM. We were woken by his phone at 6 AM today, calling him to work, so I left his apartment at 7 AM, and was home around 1 PM... Not lining in Århus any more AND having trains with one hour extra travelling time sucks. I'm still pretty busted, but all in all I had a very nice weekeend. :)

Thanks a lot to all the kind people hanging out with me. You were really what made this con. :D