UK Web & Minicomix Thing, East London, 20th March 2004
Well, from the punters' point of view, this event was a success. There were a reasonable number of people attending, with a good buzz as old acquaintances met up, intended to go for a drink, got chatting in the corridor, and didn't get much further; or spotted new comics previously unknown and showed them round. The panel item (yes, just the one, talking about -- you guessed it -- UK web and minicomics) was cheery, goodnatured, informative, and reasonably well-attended. And at the end of the day, just down the road there was a pub with very nice cider*, good food, and plenty of big tables for us to gather round.

Not that there weren't downsides, churlish though it is to quibble. The day was billed as being 9 am to 6 pm, which is frankly a ludicrous time for a comics event given that a) people normally come from some distance -- even the other side of London takes some time to travel from; and b) most comics people aren't natural early birds. Us Oxford lot, arriving at 11:30 or so, surfed the wave of the first attendees not being the exhibitors themselves. Also, the panel was held in the ante-chamber of the main event, meaning that you had to walk through the panel itself to get in and out; due to noise levels, the door to the main room was eventually closed, meaning that the punters inside the main room felt trapped. And while the room itself was beautiful (an octagon previously used as a library, it featured busts of major writers -- Shakespeare, Byron, Scott -- and a fantastic skylight with eight further classic names inscribed -- Plato, Aristotle) there was no tea & coffee facilities within the precinct, and only fizzy drinks & crisps on offer inside.

All in all, despite the negative aspects, a day well worth repeating -- we all came away cheery and with sackfuls of comics. The organizer, Patrick Findlay, was disappointed with attendance figures and possibly a little burned out with the amount of work that these things take, but that will hopefully be remedied by word of mouth promotion over the next year and a good old rest on his part. Not that he's committed to another year; but hell, after the first CAPTION in 1992 we all swore blind we'd never do another one again...

* I'm not even normally a cider drinker, but the way the eyes of the cider drinker amongst us lit up when the name 'Addlestones' was mentioned inclined me to give it a go.