Expo-sure...

By Tony Lee

So originally I was going to write a bit piece about 'Poogate', which everyone on the web seems to be talking about, but instead I decided to write a piece about the London MCM Expo, which is the wonderful convention that I've just left, having been there for two days with the Viscount Du La'Mange, the Laid Daniel Boultwood himself. And I clang a lot of names and show a lot of pictures in this one, so if you wanted me ranting about fan critics? Tough shit. Hmm, that's a bad pun right there...

Anyway. On Friday I made my way to Docklands and the London Excel centre to arrive around noon, check into the Novotel and set up the Comic Village, a job I was sharing this weekend with Emma Vieceli. I'd had some last moment hotel issues, mainly due to the fact that my hotel hadn't been booked for me, but eventually they'd managed to sort it. But this did mean that rather than a twin room, I had one big, double bed. For me and Dan. I don't think so. And you can stop squeeing over there you Tony/Dan slash shippers, there was a sofabed. Which was supposed to have been arranged already. So I called reception, asked them to sort this and made my way to the Expo.

The Friday at the Expo is always amusing, and often involves a lot of people shrugging and not being sure of what they should be doing. The Comic Village was no different. We had an area, but they'd already accidentally sold half of it, and had brought out six booths for the artists, which effectively blocked off the back wall and people like Markosia. In addition to this, we'd been given enough space for twelve artists – and we had eighteen turning up...

Luckily, after a couple of hours of wangling new tables, bullying and blatant lies, we'd sorted the area to a point where it worked, and Emma and Pud arrived, having spent the day in Heathrow picking up Dramacon celebrity Svetlana Chmakova, and they brought a Ben Templesmith and a Dan Boultwood with them. The comics area sorted and my part of the Comics Village now done (Emma and Pud would be pretty much getting the harder job being the point men for the weekend) we decided to celebrate by going to the pub. The Fox is right beside the convention centre and we got in for a late lunch around 3pm and then made our way to the sofas at the back to settle in for the evening. And as the evening progressed others turned up including Antony Johnston, looking super dapper in his shirt and with new gym-designed physique, Saviour of Brum Morag Lewis, Liam Sharp, my better half Tracy, a ton of Sweatdrop Studios guys and gals and Andie Tong to name but a few. Many of these guys shot off for dinner, and I checked Dan into the room, noting that the bed still hadn't been made, which was an amusing moment when Dan took in the lone double bed... Luckily another call brought forth two sullen staff that grumpily made the sofabed for us. Hooray.

Anyway, back at the Fox the evening continued with people arriving and leaving including a friend of Ben's who looked like she was fresh out of an episode of the 80's series Fame until it was just Liam, Dan and I and the pub was closing – so we retreated to the Novotel bar for another couple of drinks, talking about tattoos and comics before bed. Amusingly, Liam's main reason for being there (yeah, this being there for Gears of War? Cover story, guys) seemed to be to meet Michael Hogan, Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica, whom he absolutely adores...

Saturday started very early – the doors to the Con opened for the 'Early Birds' at 9am, which meant that we needed to be there before that. So even though we'd gone to bed late, we were up at 7.30 and breakfasting, Dan a little worse for wear. We saw Matt Parkman from Heroes across the room (Greg Grunberg, who I loved in Alias) but we didn't say anything. He knew we recognised him. He could read our minds.

And so to the con, where Dan and I were sharing one of the 'one person' booths. We had copies of our comics, some Doctor Who: The Forgotten #1's and a few Steampunk Goggles that I'd painted up earlier that week as a backup if comic sales were crap. As it was, they were the best thing we had, as by 10 a.m. we'd sold them all – the final pair to this young lady.

During the morning, I also sold a copy of Doctor Who: The Forgotten #1 to a rather good Rorschach which was nice, as for a change we were starting to get a lot more 'western' comic cosplayers.

Hnnf. Hfff. Grrf. Got any beans?

One of the reasons people do their own booths is so that any money they make from comps, they keep. And we're lucky to have Harry and Markosia as mates, as they don't mind this. But sometimes we get people walk over to us who had bought from Markosia and came to us for the signing. One such group were three men, Dave, Andrew and Jake who'd picked up two copies of Hope Falls #1-5 and, while they were at our booth picked up Dan's two remaining copies of The Doppleganger Chronicles and a third pack of Hope Falls. And before people go 'but that's money that Markosia lost', we sent Jake back to Markosia to buy another Doppleganger book so they all had matched sets.

Dave, Andrew, Jake. Top chaps

We also met Dale, who does The Doctor's Diary for Doctor Who Online who did a little piece on the comic. And then I was off to the Comics stage for my first 'public appearance' – interviewing Ben and Antony in a 'Parkinson' style.

The talk went for close to an hour, with Ben and Antony as ever raconteuring the audience with behind the scenes tales of comics, games and movies including such topics as why Warren Ellis is a scary old man and suchlike. Also during the talk I bumped into my brother Kevin and my niece Samantha – which was cool as Sam got to meet Ben. Sam's twenty one now, but when she was eighteen Ben sent her a jpg of an Angel cover he'd done with a happy birthday message on. I'd printed it out and framed it back then, and three years later, she brought it along to the convention to get it signed and Ben, being one of the coolest guys in comics quite happily did it while having a good old chat with her.

Ben and Sam

Yes, kids. Sometimes it rocks to be known as the 'cool uncle'.

And then it was off to lunch with Liam and Andi Ewington, who showed us some incredible art from his upcoming book The Forty-Five for the new and improved Com.X, a book by the way that Dan's doing a page for. Tracy arrived to join us and we wandered back into the con where I met Amy and Mark, who we first met in May at the Bristol Expo when Mark was an absolute top Gambit. And Amy's one of our 'Fallen Angel Army' and shouted to the world who great we were. Which is always good. Although I have to say, I have no idea what Mark was dressed as...

Hello, I'm a middle class British Voodoo priest. Lovely to meet you...

We caught up with new Eagles Awards co-ordinator Cassandra Conroy and Geek Syndicate guys Dave Montieth and Barry Nugent, and by this point it was early afternoon where in a shock realisation we discovered we'd sold all of our Hope Falls and Doctor Whos and all we had left was some trades and 2000 A.D.s – and we still had another day, so we packed it in and had a little bit of shopping where Tracy and I met the guys of the Who Shop in London, and picked up an ultra rare 6^th Doctor figure at a very reasonable discount , before we made our way to the celebrity Green Room via where Ben Templesmith was doing a radio interview. We didn't hear much but we did hear that apparently he's Warren Ellis's gimp.

I also popped in the toilets up there (much better than the ones on the floor) where I saw an amusing sign...

Basically next door to the convention was a Muslim 'Global Peace and Unity' conference, aimed purely at being harmony among the Muslim people. I say this in an ironic voice, as you'll discover later.

While we were up in the Green Room we caught up with Frazer Irving and David Hine who were also there which is always good as they're both top chaps, Liam, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, The DFC's Tom Fickling, John 'Manga's Mr Sex' Aggs and Al 'I'm writing Dredd, punk' Ewing who still seems surprised when people know him. We also bumped into Colin Morgan and Bradley James, Merlin and 'Prince' Arthur from the new BBC TV series – and of course, as I'm doing a King Arthur book for Walker Books, I had to have a photo.

Bradley, Tony, Colin...

And while we're at it...

The newly DC-Exclusive Liam Sharp in repose...

We chatted to Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman) and Brea Grant (the speedster Daphne) who were both quite stunned by the reaction by the UK – in a good way of course... And then I had a massive surprise, as Andre Royo appeared in the Green Room. Now Andre was there because he was recently in Heroes, but I knew him better as Bubbles on The Wire, as far as I'm concerned the best character in the entire series, even better in my eyes than McNulty. Andre was one of the friendliest guys I've seen at these things and of course we had the photo moment.

Tony and Andre...

Amusingly, when I went down and told Jamie McKelvie about this, he pointed at Kieron and said 'He's just said the exact same thing.' For Bubbles was the coolest character ever.

We stayed until the show ended and then made our way back to the Novotel where, after a quick change we made our way to the bar for drinks with Harry and Ian Sharman, Dave Montieth, Cass Conroy, HuwJ, Al, Andie Liam and a few others... But Liam had disappeared. He came back asking if I had a pen, as he'd bumped into Michael 'Tigh' Hogan at the bar and he was giving him a copy of his book. I gave him a pen and went over to take a picture of the two of them together – and while talking to Michael (who again is an incredibly nice and approachable character) and his wife we started talking about the New York Comic Con, he asked why I went, I told him about Doctor Who and he turns out to be a fan. So of course, we had a picture together...

Michael and Tony...

The Novotel bar was booked for a private function, the MCM Cosplay Ball, so we decamped once more to the Fox where we had some food and chatted – Andie Tong, who for the last fifteen years has shaved his head is randomly growing it again under his trademark beanie hat which unfortunately makes him look like Hikaru Sulu, and caused much merriment and we saw Al Ewing's Hulk Mask anger at the fourth Indiana Jones movie. HuwJ talked about his new Garth graphic novel (which sounds incredible) and everyone there were informed of a certain sexual foreplay move which was guaranteed – well, lets just say the term 'like a waterfall' was mentioned.

Tracy wasn't feeling so hot so disappeared around 10:30 p.m. and one by one the non hotel staying people went. And then around 11:30 p.m., we had cabaret. The police arrived.

And I mean police. There was at one point twelve squad cars, two vans, one ambulance, one medical car, two CID cars and a ton of stab-vest wearing policemen charging around the Excel's courtyards. 'Crap,' I thought 'Someone's thought that the cosplay guns are real.'

But it was worse than that. As I was a member of the NUJ until the start of the year, I still have my official PRESS card and wandered up to one of the policemen, flashing it and asking what was going on.

'Oh, there was just a little bust up' he mentioned as, behind him his colleague's radio crackled into life explaining that there had been at least one stabbing. It seems that that peace and love festival I mentioned? Yeah, not so much peace and love, kiddies. There had been a massive fight involving some vicious stabbings between the children of some of the people there, who'd turned up deliberately to cause trouble, gang verses gang style, and amongst a variety of Sailor Moons and Fullmetal Alchemists, they had turned the Excel centre into a mini war zone. Suffice to say that everything was closed very quickly and we made our way back to the hotel bar.

Long story short (as I'm already on 2000 words and still on Saturday) Saturday ended with me, Andre and MCM's Chip being the last three up in the bar sometime around 3 a.m...

Sunday was a relaxed day to be honest, Dan and I had checked out by 10 a.m. and were at the booth shortly after. Amusingly however, although the weapon-wielding Cosplayers were strolling in without a care, anyone at the Global Peace conference? They had this to look forward to.

And so we returned to out booth. But we knew we had nothing to sell, and so we were a bit not bothered about the whole selling thing. I had two copies of The Forgotten that had been asked for and thank you Incognito Comics for getting me them, so I passed them to Michael and Andre during the morning and I also did a small stint signing at The DFC booth. And then we were in the Green Room again, chatting to Lee 'Budgie' Barnett and his son Phil, Greg, Brea, Andre and Warwick Davies, who explained to me why his iphone was the best thing in the world and why I should dump this laptop for a mac...

And of course a final moment with Liam and Ben in a 'Three Amigos' esque photo...

Ben, Tony, Liam...

And then it was time to judge the Cosplay. But it was running late, so I had time to do a quick ten minute interview with the Sci Fi Guys before joining celebrity cosplay chum Kazz on the judge's desk.

These are always great fun and I'm now getting more recognised here, having done these now for two years – and the rapport by Anime's top presenter Stu Claw and yours truly is always fun. And, as ever? Kazz and I spent most of the judging in stitches, a leather clad harbinger of death Mickey Mouse pretty much killing us. Never will I ever be able to say 'It's Mickey!' without remembering...

And then it was over bar the farewells, a trip to the hotel and then a drive to Birmingham through an accident-delayed M4.

Did I enjoy it? Of course. I always do. And the people who came up to me with support about 'Poogate' made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And I'll talk more about that next week. As ever, apologies to the people I forgot to name check, and thanks to the usual crowd for making this one of the best of the year so far. Next week is a wedding and seeing Neil Gaiman, so I'll see you in seven...

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© 2008, Tony Lee

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