The last time we stayed away over night was last years Thought Bubble. I don’t know if I can explain how excited we were to be off to Glasgow. Neither of us had ever been, but as soon as we arrived we felt at home. Possibly it was all the big sandstone buildings but we relaxed straight away.
Our table overlooked the bar, and was near to long time convention pals AccentUK who we snagged four volumes of Western Noir from. Four volumes! It has been a while since we’ve seen them but wow.
We signed and sold and pulled faces at Gail Simone and That Guy Scott across the way, until four, when we had a panel with the lovely Rufus Dayglo, and the mighty Howard Chaykin. We were discussing characters, and how you build them, how you bring them to life, but to be honest we all wavered from the point a fair bit. There were a few salient points to glean from the discussion:
1. Comic Creators are irregularly employed and paid. As much as we all wish we had long hours to create magical worlds, quite often we just have to get something thought up that afternoon. We still really care, and love our job, but it’s actually more on a knife-edge than anybody really admits to.
2. Drawing the Nesquik bunny makes you morally bankrupt right off the bat.
3. Howard Chaykin does not give one single dry miniscule fuck. An invigorating co-panellist.
Once we extricated ourselves from the gym-shoe-like furnace of the panels theatre, we packed up and went for food. Cocktail&Burger had really nice food, really nice staff, and cool library wallpaper.
We went back to the hotel to change and drink coffee and Sit Still Without Children which was heavenly and then we went in search of two things. People and Beer.
We found Stacey Whittle and Alex Ronald in Cocktail&Burger, and she alerted us to the cheaper beer 2mins down the road. Also, the music had started, leaving us all cupping one ear and shouting at one another like a geriatric away day. We walked back up to the CCA and had a beer on the terrace, before magically summoning lovely people with Twitter. Emma Vieceli (who gave us a copy of her Breaks prologue, which is stunning as one might expect!) Gary Erskine, Mhairi Stewart, and Hannah Berry all arrived like a cheery mob of awesome, and we moved downstairs away from noise and people so we could talk and catch up.
We had a wonderful evening, and stumble bumbled off back to Novotel.
We actually enjoyed having small hangovers because NO CHILDREN, and we especially liked breakfast. Hannah showed me the wonder that is the Automatic Pancake Machine and I ate tiny cakes. It was beautiful!
We had a bit of time before our signing slot, so we went and found Gary Erskine’s table and bought three amazing Roller Grrrls prints and a sketch book, Yishan Li was sat next to him so we got a print from her, and then a book from Hannah. We cast longing glances at Rufus Dayglo’s table but as per usual he had a queue a mile long, and we had to run away. We actually managed to scoot through the dealer’s room on our way downstairs and made it for our signing.
We saw so many adorable cosplayers, including tiny-little-girl-hulk a whole family of Green Lanterns, a baby ewok with his Luke and Leia siblings, Batgirl on her mobile, big Finn from Adventure Time, and lots of characters we are just not cool enough to recognise.
We sold and signed and then said our goodbyes, and walked back down Sauchiehall Street in the sunshine.
Would we go again? Definitely. Would we recommend it to you? Hells Yeah.
Bring on GCC2015!
