Thing '09 Report

After some fun on the tube, Steve and I made it to the Thing by about 9:30am. The first task was to pick up our supply of Massacre For Boys In Colour from printer and fellow exhibitor The Fallen Angel Media. That done, we promptly set up our table like so:



Doors opened to visitors at 10am and we waited for our first sale.

And waited.

And waited.

The table was right by the door and visitor numbers seemed to be well up on last year, but very few people seemed interested in our wares. To be honest we started to think that maybe our display was perhaps a little too reliant on irony and that what people were seeing was a potentially neo-fascist table they were not keen to approach.

In fact each time someone did stop and take a look it was almost an event:



Our first sale came a good two hours into the show and by that time we were about ready to call it a day. Fortunately we held on because the turnaround in the afternoon was somewhat dramatic. People started seeking us out having bought our work at previous Things and enjoyed it. New visitors arrived, much more interested in checking us out than their early-bird predecessors.

Even the poster, a source of early neurosis, started to attract a lot of positive interest:



In fact we had several requests to buy it as a print. That was both fantastic and pretty much entirely unexpected, so is something we will definitely be following up on in the neat future.

Business continued to be brisk as the afternoon wore on, then our fellow contributor Matthew Hunt dropped by:



Matthew's arrival livened things up even more, aided somewhat by his generous supply of "lime cordial" and the hall was properly buzzing as the event entered it's final phase.

Although generally tied to the table, we all managed to wander around to check out the work of our fellow creators, which looked to be a bumper crop. I was very happy to pick up a beautiful looking collection of Odd Fish. Matthew sought out and obtained both issues of the London Horror Comic. To be honest though this was the tip of a very large iceberg of great stuff. No wonder many people were wandering around not knowing how best to distribute their funds.



I am looking forward to going through the Thing Anthology (beautiful as ever) and checking out the work of many many more writers and artists.

Well 5pm rolled around and there was just time to press a copy of MFBIC on Paul Gravett before heading to the local Wetherspoon's to imbibe some extremely cheap and fairly potent cocktails with our many fellow creators.

All in all, a fabulous day out.