Aces Weekly wins the award for Best Digital Comic

At the True Believers comic awards last night, Aces Weekly won the trophy for Best Digital Comic. The event was hosted at the London Film and Comic Con at Earls Court with an appearance by the legendary Stan Lee. 

The publisher of Aces Weekly David Lloyd (shown above) collected the award. This is great news for the online comic (which has featured new strips of Combat Colin, Psycho Gran, and others) and it's pleasing to see David's hard work in promoting the comic rewarded by the readers. 

I wasn't at the awards ceremony myself as I had to leave earlier to catch my last train home but I had a very enjoyable day at the convention. It was great to catch up with old friends such as Mike Collins and David Leach and to finally meet people I'd previously only communicated with online such as Jessica Martin and Gary Whittock. Next to my table was the artist Chris Geary and you can check out his website here.  

Personally I had a very enjoyable day meeting readers and doing sketches of various characters. It really makes it all worthwhile to meet people who grew up on my strips years ago and know that they enjoyed Pete and his Pimple, Combat Colin, etc. As freelancers we had very little feedback from readers back before the days of social networking so it's always a pleasure to finally meet the  readers of Oink!, Transformers,etc who were our intended audience and discover that they did enjoy the strips.

I didn't have time to take many photos this year but here's a few...

A fantastic replica of the 1966 Batmobile!

Phil Clarke, organizer of the very first UK comic con back in 1968, had a fantastic display of original artwork from classic British comics. Here he is holding a copy of one of his books, the excellent Great British Fantasy Comic Book Heroes, which I reviewed two years ago here. 

Gary Whittock with his brand new Damned Dirty Apes! comic books, which you can order from Amazon.

Conventions are a big attraction for cosplayers these days (or 'fancy dress' as we used to call it). Here's a pic I took of the Guardians of the Galaxy cosplayers on stage...

Speaking from the perspective of a guest I thoroughly enjoyed the day, although I know the incredibly long queues for things such as the Stan Lee signing were a pain for attendees. It was a shame that comic guests were in a different building to film and TV guests, and some confusion arose from that too, but it would have been impossible to fit everyone into one hall. It was a little disappointing that guests were not allowed into some of the panel discussions without tickets (I would have liked to have seen the Doctor Who panel) but it didn't ruin my day. The organisers and staff were working hard to keep on top of things but there have been some negative reports. These sort of events are growing every year and it must be a nightmare to run them. I understand there were over 120,000 attendees! 

Personally I'm always grateful when anyone steps up to put on a show like this. I certainly wouldn't fancy the stress of running one! My thanks to Mike Conroy, Cassandra Conroy and their team for organising the weekend. See you at the Sheffield event on 30th August!