Bristol Expo 2008

[Nigel Dobbyn]

I greatly enjoyed the Saturday I spent at Bristol this year, despite almost losing my voice by the end of the day. I did more sketches than I have in years at the Classical Comics, Panini and Futurequake stands ranging over my whole career. The nicest thing is still Sonic fans telling me how much they were influenced by the comic and inspired to create their own.

Things of note:
Finding out about new weekly comic The DFC from the Etherington brothers - I've ordered a subscription purely because of their Monkey Nuts strip, but I'm hoping there'll be more to it than that. We badly need new outlets for originated material in this country so I hope this suceeds. Check out the previews and ordering information at www.thedfc.co.uk

Getting asked to draw a cover for Jack Staff by Paul Grist - I've been pestering him for a while to let me colour something, but this was completely unexpected.

Chatting to Andie Tong sketching on the Panini stand and finding out about blue line pencil leads, which have transformed the way I go about pencilling. OK, it's not earth shattering, but it's made a big difference to me!

Deciding to keep a 'sketch blog', posting at least a sketch a day. Go to my website www.nigeldobbyn.com and follow the links if you're interested.

Discovering amongst my usual haul of small press stuff the sublime "Video Nasties" by Chris Doherty. Wonderful in pretty well every way and looking to get better judging by the 'rough copy' second issue. Hope it carries on. Go to http://www.lulu.com/content/1353768 to order a copy. More of Chris' art can be seen at his website www.christopherdoherty.co.uk

[John Freeman]

Hi Nigel, there's loads of strips running in The DFC -- just do a search for DFC on the downthetubes blog for news items. They're having their launch party this week which Joel Meadows should be reporting on for me.