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It's national biscuit day and the first thing I thought of was the excellence of this thread.

I raise a biscuit (own brand custard cream, of course) to you all!

Thanks all! Simon Fraser had two or three folders of art, yes! Dante and Doctor Who stuff mainly - I was over budget or I might have also gone for a cool Kaleb Daark picture.

The Keith Burns stuff was indeed fantastic and imo so much better in b&w. I was quite nervous asking him if they were for sale. Just getting the chance to look over some original pages by some of the artists there was a great experience. 

I live near some woods and badgers totally do look like that!

That – as I'm sure you know –  is a Fieseler Storch.

FFS, it totally is. I nearly bought a Nina page and have got a bit mixed up.
Captain Hurricane would be ashamed of me.

Last up this absolute stunner of a Thistlebone page. This is one of those pages you can look at and keep seeing new stuff all the time. It's creepy as hell and absolutely gorgeous.

Also my wife bought this page - I'm so proud!

Second I was incredibly excited to get this art from Johnny Red: The Hurricane from Keith Burns. I would have loved one with the Hurricane itself, but still delighted with this: Nina's Polikarpov in flight, Jakob in the top panel and Johnny shouting at some pencil-pushing officer geek at the bottom! The detail on this page is insane and I'm so excited for the upcoming Ennis / Burns Johnny Red collaboration.

I set myself strict limits on original art this year but couldn't miss up on getting a few bits. First off this Dante page from Sword of the Tsar. I was swung on this one from the brilliant expression work from Simon Fraser: first Dante's look of incredible regret, then his bitter look at the Tsar himself than promises retribution. Also we've got the Tsar in his cool dressing gown (his tsarevich just out of sight)*, naked lady statues and the Lord Protector literally with blood on his hands.



* just realised this is the second Dante page I have where the Tsar's gentlemanly parts are cleverly obscured. Not sure what that says about me and my choices of art.

The C stands for Collated list incoming!

Enjoy the Expo - I'm there also this weekend.

I wish. The art exhibition was practically worth it on its own - for some reason it never occured to me to take any pics.

Here's one last sketch:

[Dredd]

Agree that this is a 'midpoint' Prog where all the thrills focus on moving forward without a big set piece. Difficult to pick a top thrill this week as Dredd aside this is all consistenly cool stuff.

Dredd – Not clicking for me at all, although the urban legend stuff was quite interesting.

Intestinauts – Enjoyably daft stuff as the threat shifts and we learn evil tiny robot can do real damage and Intestinauts UltraMax are deployed. The highlight here has to be the Ro-Jaws tale pastiche: lovely old colours and crazy credits. The storytelling approach in this strip has been really uniuqe and fun, its a delight.

3riller – Superb move to switch up the POV for the middle episode and an excellent way to deliver som exposition. This has been superb so far: looks great, real air of mystery instead of predictability. Can't wait to see the final part.

Brink – Take page 4 out, and this issue Bridget gets a phone call and then speaks to Bonner and Lind without any major revelations. There's a real skill in taking what another strip could have done in a few panels and making it feel interesting and natural. Page 4 is the interesting one however: I'd assumed the unseen victim was the body we saw a couple of episodes ago, but it seems not. Are we seeing those frames as flashback from the sleeper (Regina)? I notice she has heterochromia going on and would guess this is significant.

Vex – More expositiony and less dramatic moments than the last couple of episodes. A little surpried to see Vex and Tiorn ally up so quickly. There's some major plot reveal here and yes, I think we're about to see some old friends reunited.

Great seeing these. That Cornwell Dredd is so good.

McFad! Fink! Boots!
Kings of the dancefloor!

There was actually some talk amongst these fellows (and Colin too) of hitting the dancefloor but luckily for all in attendance this didn't come to fruition.

Three quick snaps of some cool con sketches - first off a lovely Dante / Jena smooch scene from Simon Fraser:



An incredible Book Cook Dredd - was blown away by this:



And finally a gloriously manky Skaven from the excellent Pye Parr:

I'm in a weird space where I don't want to see it because of how good Fury Road is.

Funnily enough this is my feeling as well. Fury Road is incredible.

That is stunning sir!

I'm late to post here but can only echo what a brilliant weekend this was. I can only echo what everyone else has said about friendly creators, entertaining panels and David Roach's mind-blowing exhibition. Lovely friendly atmosphere as ever, free ice cream, real community feel that is missing from larger events - huge thanks to the organisers.

Chatted to some very lovely droids, too many to list really but especially cool to meet the esteemable Mr. Simon Fraser and Edie / Ilyana, who is completely awesome, and had a proper fanboy moment talking about Johnny Red and that ending to The Hurricane with Garth Ennis and Keith Burns.

The very best part for me was spending time with some wonderful folk from here - always a massive pleasure to spend time with McFad and his good lady and fantastic to be able to spend time hanging out with Le Fink and Colin for the first time - both brilliant guys. Plus had a great chat with Hawk and DDD, even very brief meetings with Jim and Eamonn. You guys are the best and I hope we can do it again!

Back in the office now but I'll post some sketches and stuff in a bit. Some great stuff on this thread already - Fink's Hershey is magnificent.