Comic Cuts — 20 October 2023

There seems to be a problem with uploading images to Blogger, so for a while I thought the above might be the only picture this week. But it's a good 'un, taken by Mel at last weekend's comic swap meet.

It's the first swap meet to be held in Colchester for thirty or so years—I remember there was an attempt to hold one back in the days when I was editing Comic World, so around 1994, which was held next to the Town Hall... the room might even have been part of the Town Hall, although that wasn't the most memorable thing about the day. Which was that nobody turned up.

My memories of the event are vague, but I think we were there just to give away copies of the magazine. I wonder what we did with all the leftover copies? It was only a walk along the High Street to get to the Aceville office, so maybe we just drove them back. Who knows; I seem to have blanked the whole event.

The latest was far more memorable and way more successful. This was the first time Bear Alley Books has made a public appearance;  I don't drive or have any other way of getting around except public transport, so lugging around a few dozen books isn't something that I can easily manage. But when I heard that the Commando and British Weekly Comics Swap Meet was coming to Colchester, it was an opportunity I didn't want to miss.

I gather this was the 12th Swap Meet run by the group, which began running meets six years ago. I was late to the game as usual but organiser Karl Kennedy told me that I was in luck as a table was available after someone had dropped out. I borrowed a shopping trolley from my Mum (only Mums and Grans have them!), which was the perfect size to fit my large (A4-sized) books; I already had a large bag that I could fit a small box into, which protected the copies of Trials of Hank Janson and other trade paperback format books I've done.

The idea was to bring as wide a selection as possible, so people could see what Bear Alley has published over the past twelve years. Also, I don't carry much stock, so this was pretty much everything I had to hand, including a couple of copies of Arena and Frontline UK—both out of print—that I had on my shelf.

Because I generally sell direct, I had to compile a price list for the books I was taking and make sure I had plenty of change. A visit to the bank after I had my Covid and flu shots last week fixed that problem. We were all ready to go.

And it all worked out incredibly well. Mel was in charge of the trolley, I had the bag slung over my shoulder, the bus wasn't crowded and was on time, we got to the venue (the Baptist Church in the town centre) with plenty of time to spare and had the table set up without incident.

How do you measure success at these kind of events? I didn't expect to sell a lot of the books as a comic mart was unlikely to attract a Hank Janson crowd. But you can't measure the good it can do to let people see the full range of titles we have published. A back-of-a-fag-packet calculation told me that I wouldn't need to sell that many books to cover my costs (the tables were a usefully cheap £15, plus £4 bus fare, plus what I spent on the day).

To make a reasonable living out of Bear Alley, I've always said I would need to sell forty books a day. However, I set my bar low for Saturday and said that I'd count it as a good day if I sold ten. Well, the good news is that I doubled that and sold twenty-one books! I offered most with a "swap meet discount", but I still took £287—although probably half of that was from the other dealers in the room. (Just to show you how the economics of self-publishing works, I put in an order to restock on Sunday and spent £223. The margins are pretty tight! 

Even better than a useful handful of sales was the chance to chat to everyone. Apart from Martin Averre and Kerrie of ACE Comics, I only knew a few people by name, so it was nice to put faces to names; had some fascinating chats with many of the other dealers and signed quite a few books, too. I was amazed to see so many of the old Prion war library collections still in circulation! Commando writers Stephen Walsh and James Swallow were on hand to sign copies of their books.

There was a terrific gallery of original artwork including many war library covers by Graham Coton, Oliver Frey and others, a really nice couple of pieces by Keith Burns, Paddy Payne artwork by Joe Colquhoun, and much, much more. The art was curated by Stuart Steele and Edward Walker, with the help of James Bacon, Stephen Hume and Bruce Scott, and it was a joy to see it well displayed in the hall.

I stupidly forgot to charge my camera, so I only had my phone to take pictures with, and by the time I got around to it, the light was streaming through the ceiling windows, meaning that most of the shots I took aren't that good, with bands of light and shade angling across the artwork. I should also say that my attempts to capture some of the excitement of the day didn't quite work out, as the only chance I had to take photos of the dealer's tables was when the hall was virtually empty and everyone was wandering around looking at each other's stock, using the loo or buying bacon sandwiches. I'll add a couple of the most OK-ish pictures from the day below.

All in all I had a fantastic time. For most of the books it was a day out and they've yet to find their forever homes, but, you never know, maybe next time...