The five best things about Kapow!

Posted on May 29, 2012 in Uncategorized

On 19-20 May SYP Chair Andrew Turner was lucky enough to attend Kapow! Comic Con at the London Business Design Centre. He’s jotted down some of his thoughts on Kapow! and what turned out to be an amazing weekend.

Most of the weekend was spent at DC panels with news of the future of Vertigo (imprint of DC) and Before Watchmen plus the New 52. The New 52 is a very exciting revamp of all of DC comics which saw the cancellation of all of their existing lines and the launch of 52 new titles starting at issue #1 and featuring some favourite DC characters as well as some surprises, Swamp Thing anyone? Every month one issue of each of the 52 titles will be launched in both digital and physical form simultaneously as we see a new take on the classic DC Universe. But these weren’t the only highlights. So here is my top five favourite things that happened during Kapow!:

5.    Co-Publisher Dan Didio and Senior Vice President Bob Wayne of DC have an amazing synergy when they talk together which makes for entertaining listening. They are a great ‘twosome’ who play off each other to keep a light, informal tone and made for one of the best Q&A sessions at the event.

4.    Breaking news! Before Watchmen may actually be pretty good. I will admit I was one of the doubters who wasn’t sure that the concept would work, especially without Alan Moore’s involvement or approval. But the artwork looked amazing and there was genuine excitement, especially from Dan Didio, which has managed to sell me on the idea.

3.    I still love a bit of wrestling. If we are honest we all watched and loved wrestling as we grew up. At this year’s convention Lucha Britannia were putting on matches in the main hall and I have to say they really did entertain me whilst I queued for panels.  Not all of the wrestling was good, some was awful, but all of it was brash and fun and I honestly found myself looking forward to seeing matches.

2.    MillarWorld. This was by far the best panel. It started as any other as Mark Millar, Dave Gibbons, Frank Quitely and Nacho Vigalondo talked about upcoming projects. This lasted for 10 minutes at the most and then Mark Millar said a sentence I will always love him for, ‘So we have just over 50 minutes left and we thought it might be more fun if we gave all that time to your questions.’ Wow. Every topic imaginable was covered and as great as all the speakers were Mark Millar has an amazing personality and was great in front of an audience. I enjoyed over 50 minutes of very funny and honest answers given to an audience which was eating out of the palm of Mr Millar’s hand.

1.    Mark Buckingham, who has drawn for Fables and Hellblazer to name only two, sketched me and my friend pictures of a character of our choosing and my word are they beautiful. I went for Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan and my friend chose Prince Charming from Fables and I have to say they are the best sketches I have ever seen and Mark was a very nice, chatty guy. I cannot thank him enough for doing this for us, and for free, it made our weekend!

Our next event on Thursday will be The Graphic Novel: a life cycle. So if you missed out on attending Kapow! this year, be sure not to miss out on this brilliant event held at Gosh! comics.