toothycat.net - phoenix feathers

h o m e | s t r i p | w i k i | s t o r e | m o r e

Phoenix Feathers is updated on Tuesday and Friday

I spent three hours of today alternating looking down the microscope to position a slide (which I can't wear glasses for) with looking at the computer screen to take and manipulate the photo (for which I do need glasses). I hate taking photos anyway; they're really boring to do. I thought my CD player could play MP3s since it said it could on the top, but in fact it was lying, so I spent the time listening to 'DJ Maggutz Skylab Megamix,' which is quite fun, but only once through, really. Still, that's one and a half weeks' worth of photos, and it's my own fault for leaving it so late ^.^;;

The International Comic Festival was good fun. We were actually in the corridor not in the main hall, but that was OK since everyone went past us to get in and then out again, and the main hall smelt - worse than anime cons, apparently. I'm assuming I had a cold, since I couldn't smell much. Early on we sent two hapless delegates (one of whom is the founder of Sweatdrop, so it's all his fault anyway) to speak at the 'Meet the Publishers' brief introduction, which apparently went well. We didn't manage to catch the guy from Diamond, though :/ Among the attendees were a Desperate Dan (from the Dandy) who was cool, accompanied by two 'kids', presumably also from the Dandy, who I didn't recognise. One of them looked over the stacked Sweatdrop table, spotted the naked girl on the front of Revolution Baby Issue 7 and proceeded to make an utter nuisance of himself. Then he came back and did it again, miming disgust, picking the comic up and then throwing it down, and so on. Maybe his character was supposed to be a brat; he was certainly behaving like one. Apart from him, though, everyone was really nice, which was reassuring, since this was the big scary Western comic scene. One guy did spill coffee over about 11 comics >.< and neither myself nor the girl who was with me at the time mustered up the courage to ask him to pay for them. There were a fair few people who already knew of Sweatdrop who came - in fact, our first customer buzzed eagerly up to the table, grabbed Dragon Heir 4, paid for it and scooted away without stopping - she obviously knew what she wanted. She did come back later. We met a couple of people interested in manga, some who didn't know there was a UK anime/manga scene let alone an entire fandom, and at least one who was a stunning artist. Lots of people were surprised that Sweatdrop is composed mainly of girls, especially one lady who kept trying to get one particular member to agree to come to do a seminar (at some unmentioned point in the future) on women who do comics, completely ignoring the fact that said girl really obviously didn't want to talk to her, let alone a crowd of strangers, and that there were two girls standing right next to her showing plenty of interest. She acted very surprised indeed when we finally got introduced. Oh yes, and of all the small press independent tables there, we rocked. We had so much variety, such a range of products and such a brightly coloured table (due to the comics, not the tablecloth!), that we caught pretty much everyone's eye as they walked by, even if they hurried past and tried not to look interested ;) There were very few independent groups (as opposed to individuals), there, though, and the size of Sweatdrop is one of its strengths, so it's not too surprising, but very gratifying nonetheless. I got lots of Phoenix Feathers drawn, and we went for sushi afterwards, and my tickly evil bookmark made some people laugh, so everything was good.

- Sun Kitten, 26th October '04

a r c h i v e s

Wiki Discussion