On a day where the mercury was already smacking 30 degrees by noon the Melbourne Town Hall was a pleasant place to be. A line of punters was all ready to enter before the kick off and when I entered it was evident that this event had come a long way since my first visit in 2008 when it was held on a Saturday morning in the Degraves Street subway out front of the Sticky Institute. Today there were rows of keen artists and activists all willing to show off their wares as well as publishers and comic artists.
Highlights were of course catching up with Glen and his collected works. We met artist Tim Molloy and bought his Ledger Award winning Mister Unpronounceable for a bargain. Having a pleasant conversation with horror print legends Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr (SCAR Studios). I also caught up with the lady embroiled in last year’s Supanova controversy when her book was removed from sale (mind you it was on open display today and no one gave a shit) Scarlette Baccini and bought her beautiful (and totally inoffensive) little book BUG, a mini comic dedicated to her little sister. All up it was a wonderful couple of hours and when we left it was great to see the crowds had swelled immeasurably with local comic anthology Oi Oi Oi! winning a prize for something I just didn’t catch. I’ll update later.
My thanks to Danny Nolan for allowing me to reprint his Report on the Festival of the Photocopier, taken from his original Blog, that you can read by clicking here....