The Four Color Media Monitor

Nottingham World wrote about the first InkBlot comics and cartooning convention, and why it was established:

Comic book and graphics artists travelled from around the country to be part of the first-ever InkBlot Festival in Nottingham over the weekend.

Artists from a range of genres took over the Vat & Fiddle Pub near Nottingham Railway Station for the convention, to show and sell their works to members of the public.

The new festival is the creation of artists Andy Williams, from Nottingham, and Tom Wilson, from Manchester, as a reaction against high-priced corporate comic conventions which they say are excluding emerging talent.

Speaking to Nottingham World in March, Williams said that InkBlot was about making festivals “accessible again”.

No doubt, this is telling what's gone wrong with mainstream conventions, and corporate-owned too. Goodness knows how many independent creators with potential are being obscured, presumably because they're not even PC enough for the tastes of modern gatekeepers. And of course, if the cons cost money, that's got to be a huge problem, especially if they're as expensive as admission could be for a long time now.

So if this new convention in the UK is run the right way, good luck to the founders in running it. We all need something to relieve our senses from the awful mess mainstream conglomerate cons have become.

Labels: conventions, Europe and Asia