As you may or may not be aware, last weekend was Caption, the small press comics convention, which also happens to be the longest running convention in the UK right about now. Anyway, this was a pretty exciting weekend for me, not only because Strip for Me #21 was making its debut, but also because I’d managed to con my way into three other comics, oh, and the programme for Caption itself. Pretty good going, I thought, and an excellent way to start the weekend.

Well, it was the first convention that I’ve been to where I was on a panel, so obviously by the end of Saturday, I had found myself on two by the end of the first day, discussing Comics Reviewing and Cutting Edge Comics, though obviously not at the same time. I like to think that it went over pretty well, and certainly no-one tried to punch me afterward, which I think has to be an indication of some success.

The first panel was on Comics Reviewing where I joined the sterling group of Matt Badham, Leon Hewitt, Daniel Goodbrey and the incomparable Andrew Luke in a discussion of the finer points of reviewing comics. Great fun, though the pre-panel run-through was possibly even more illuminating, and reminded me that I've been meaning to do a bit more writing for the site. Expect a words icon to appear at the top at some point in the future. Probably the distant future, to be honest.

The second panel of the day was Daniel Goodbrey's Cutting Edge Comics panel, for which the two of us were joined by Kieron Gillen, for a wide-ranging talk that took in everything from hyper-text to story structure. Kieron's comic Phonogram should be out from Image in the next week and is more than worth a look, by the way. I should review it or something, I suppose. It's real good.

There are lots of people I saw and was pleased to see, and more that I was sorry that I didn’t get a chance to speak to for a bit longer, or at all in a couple of cases. Still – we grind onwards. I could name all the people that help make the weekend so much fun, but to be honest, I’m sure they already know who they are, and to the rest of you it would seem like name-dropping. You’ll be able to find them all on my links page soon enough.

I also ate noodles.

I look forward to next year for much more of the same.

Plus! You can also find a new story by me entitled David and Duprey Sing Songs from the Shows in Dan Lester’s new anthology, The Crap Your Pants Anthology, which does exactly what it says on the tin. This one’s full of good people too, including K. Thor Jensen, Adam Casey, Matthew Craig, plus Dan himself and many more. It looks like this:

Oh, and while I'm about: this week's new pages are here and here.