Britt's Blog: MCM Expo

So, as you may or may not know last weekend I went to the MCM Expo. It was a great load of fun.

We started off on the Friday to give us plenty of time to get there and settle down, we were just leaving York when I let out an exclamation that should not be heard by young ears. I had left my DSLR camera at home, the charger was in my bag but the camera itself was not. I have never been more glad for my ancient compact in my life! I'd stuck it into my case the night before as a backup and partially to record video with. It became my camera for the weekend, this is partially why I have less photos than last year as the camera in question takes about 2 minutes to realise you want it to take a photo.

So anyway on the Friday night we hung out with a bunch of people who were messing on outside the Excel centre, was quite funny as my sister seemed to turn it into some sort of basic fight game.

None shall be spared in her quest to take over the Expo!

It wasn't long before the effects of the long train ride were felt and we retired to our room for the night.

So then came Saturday, despite early entry tickets we didn't get into the Expo until 10, which worked out okay considering people without tickets had to wait even longer! There was a queue for the queue, so you can imagine the fun time we spent all lined up.

We finally got in and were greeted with the usual mixture of bright shiny things, scary tall things and very fun, very loud things. The day was full of fun and much comic buying! I spent a lot of time hanging around the small press tables, buying things. I saw a few panels and generally had fun. We were there all day really, as were most of the table holders. I made the mistake at breakfast that thinking the man sat about 5 tables away was John Allison, when it was actually Marc Ellerby, in my defence they were wearing the same shirt and glasses, it was an easy mistake, they really shouldn't cosplay as each other so often.

But the real question is, where's Wally?

The ranks started to thin out towards the end of the day, everyone was headed to the pub, by the time I got there I saw a very large amount of glasses around Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith (what do you expect), who were deep in conversation, I dared not interrupt them, it seemed very important. So as you can imagine the bar was filled with comic creators, it was all very very fun, had a jolly time chatting with Jon Scrivens, Ian Sharman, David Wynne, Stephan Burn and many others who I am very sorry if I have missed you out, give me a prod and I shall correct this oversight. We soon moved on from the pub (as it closed) to the bar at the hotel, where we seemed to mutate into a strange impromptu karaoke group. What was in those drinks?

Sunday. I woke up feeling rather tired, my feet hurt and I really needed a shower. So once I had grabbed a shower and had some breakfast we were queued up for Expo day two. The line was nowhere near as long this time, thankfully, and we were soon inside. My sister celebrated this fact with high fives.

And when we got in well... there were just so many amazing cosplays, not sure why but it seemed like there were more cosplays on the Sunday, it could just be that we could see them better because there were less people, I don't know.

And of course there were the panels, an amazing set this time, really enjoyed the artists vs writers, was great fun and we were bribed with a free comic!

Then there was the Sweatdrop Panel, these guys had a new book out for Expo called Telling Tales, it's an amazing book, the cover is so shiny, the art is so nice and the whole thing just fits together so well! You should pick it up from their website!