It’s been a whirlwind of a year for me. The last 8 months without a full blog update on here has honestly flown by. I’d love to be able to make these posts more regular but the reality is I’d either be reaching for topics or I’m just too busy/tired with newsworthy stuff to write about it.
I haven’t posted about it on here, but if you follow the social media (aka Instagram) you’ve seen that I’ve been a busy, busy bee. Since my last post on here I’ve tabled at a grand total of FOUR real-life, in-person indie comic conventions. Many highs, a few lows, and invaluable lessons learned. As you can guess from the title, I’ll be chatting all about that here today, as well as a few notable gigs with my band!
COCO COMIC CON 2024
April 6th 2024 @ The Storey, Lancaster.
This was a neat little indie con run by a couple of guys who do what I do and it was very kind of them to accept me in with basically no track record, just my work to go on (which I guess is the point!) I admire these guys for what they’re trying to do with this, and it was awesome to meet some fellow creatives, some of whom I’ve now met 2 or 3 times since at my other conventions – it’s a very close-knit little squad!
I intended this to be a trial run, a learning opportunity, so I didn’t set expectations anywhere really. By this point I already knew I’d be tabling at Thought Bubble 2024 7 months down the line, so I was keen to learn fast, and get any and all mistakes out of my system! It was also a lot of fun just to chill and feel out the process, y’know?
I’d like to do this con again next year, if it goes ahead, but Lancaster was a hella long way to go for me and I hear the next one might be even further away… So that might be a dealbreaker.
INKBLOT COMIC FESTIVAL – NOTTINGHAM 2024
May 18th 2024 @ The Vat & Fiddle, Nottingham.
InkBlot is a super new festival, having had their very first event in Manchester in February 2024. Unfortunately, I only found out about InkBlot on the day it ran, so I couldn’t apply. But I kept a close eye and when they announced a follow-up event for only 3 months later, I shot them an application immediately.
This con was awesome to be a part of. Perfect size for my kind of thing, great general vibe between creators, a really nice variety of work, and it was a ticketed event, so the attendees were more than window-shopping: they were there to grab some comics.
I met a lot of really nice people who had genuine interest in my work, and I got a whole bunch of comics into real, physical hands, that belonged to a person that didn’t know me and felt no obligation to support my work apart from just really wanting to. This was a very nice feeling.
The turnout was amazing, the event went smoothly and very successfully, and I had an incredible time. This was also the launch of ‘The Black Mist: Summit’, the first issue of my brand new series – now available to buy in physical form on the store! To call it a successful launch would be an understatement – I was blown away with the reception, the great feedback, and getting copies of it out there into the world.
So, when InkBlot went on to announce a third event in 2024, set for October, I made sure to get straight on that as well.
But first:
BLOODSTOCK OPEN AIR 2024
August 8th-11th 2024 @ Catton Park, Derby.
I’ve skipped past a few small pub gigs and wannabe-festival flops that I played with my band Awake By Design. Because this was the big one, the one looming over me since November 2023 and had me feeling like I had no business holding drumsticks…
We did great. I did great. We had a blast. People loved us. The crowd was insane. I’d do it again tomorrow.
I won’t go too into detail with my experiences at the festival or we’d be here all day – ultimately, it was a metal festival. I was basically an attendee with a VIP pass until the Sunday morning that we played, which is when I became a rockstar for about 2 hours – full dressing room treatment, crew setting my stuff up for me, red carpet treatment (as red carpet as it can get for being a gazebo in a field), and everyone was amazing. It’s such a smooth operation they run at the Sophie Lancaster stage. I’d heard good things beforehand but that crew was really undersold to me. What an awesome time!
Here’s some footage of us playing (I’m drums.)
What a really wacky year so far, eh?
INKBLOT COMIC FESTIVAL – COVENTRY 2024
October 19th 2024 @ The Box, FarGo Village, Coventry.
Another really fun InkBlot – a ton of familiar faces tabling alongside me, it’s really cool catching up with these guys at the conventions, it makes me feel like I’m part of some travelling circus troupe like something out of Darren Shan.
This one was, admittedly, a little quieter than Nottingham, but to be fair, it’s Coventry, so…
Despite that, it all ran like clockwork again (as far as I could tell, which I guess means it did or else I’d have noticed something?) but there were some factors in the organisers making the decision not to come back to Coventry again… I won’t go into those here.
Some more people grabbed copies of ‘The Black Mist: Summit’, which is awesome – I had to order another print run after the last con!
There was talk of another InkBlot taking place in 2024 but I think they’re done for the year, which is absolutely fine. 3 conventions in a year for a brand new event is so impressive! Stay tuned for 2025!
THOUGHT BUBBLE COMIC CONVENTION 2024
November 16th-17th 2024 @ Harrogate Convention Centre, Harrogate.
I attended Thought Bubble as a punter in 2023 because I had a gig up in the area with ABD the day before, so I wanted to check out this huge indie comic convention and see if it would be my vibe at all. I was stunned with how busy it was, and the scale of talent on show across 4 MASSIVE halls. I chatted shop with a couple of creators while I was there, just feeling for some info on logistics and the application process. It all sounded pretty easy, and so I applied as soon as it opened up in 2023.
Now, in 2024, going as a creator this time around, I was feeling a lot of pressure, a lot of nerves, I had several varieties of Doomsday Scenario running through my head. In the months prior to the con, I was grinding away at a brand new comic – I unfortunately had nothing new to show at InkBlot Coventry, and I felt like I really should have, so I really knuckled down for Thought Bubble and managed to scrape together a “Beta Edition” of my newest project, ‘Evokado!’ I just about hit the print deadline to get the delivery from Mixam in time for the day I was travelling up, but it was SO VERY close to falling apart.
My new work is something I haven’t really seen done before, so I knew it would be an intriguing point of interest for my con table – a small booklet-sized comic packaged in an actual CD jewelcase.
Due to it being a very rough version of a yet unfinished comic, I only got a small run printed, something I thought would be quite a modest stock level for a convention like Thought Bubble – I wanted to sell out of them. I wanted them to be a Thought Bubble-exclusive little item (of course I kept one for myself, naturally.) However…
This was not the con for me, it seems! I think I’m just too small, and the convention is so big. I felt a little drowned by the competition – I use that word reluctantly because we’re all a very supportive community for sure, but when attendees come with a budget, and every artist is there to sell their work, it IS kind of a competition, sorta. You are essentially hoping the public will reserve some of their budget for your work over others’ work. It’s nothing personal at all, and is the core of this entire thing. But, yeah, ultimately, Meridian Six isn’t quite at the level it needs to be for Thought Bubble! Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact I’m not even surprised. And I will also add that the team of organisers at Thought Bubble do an incredible job, speaking as an attendee and as an exhibitor – incredibly organised, so communicative, friendly and helpful, and they deserve all the success they get! I’d love to attend again at some point down the line when I’ve got a little bit more traction – back to the grind!
But, the key thing to keep in mind here is: I learned a heck of a lot again. I had a really nice time up that way again, I enjoyed talking to people about my comics, I got a few more copies of my work and a shit ton of business cards out into the world, and that’s what this is all about.
Being an artist and a musician is just like this – a ton of effort for a not-so-heavy reward, and that reward just gets recycled back into the grinder for the next high-effort event anyway. But I’ve had so, so much fun this year lugging around my gigantic human-body-sized case, whether it’s packed with comics or stuffed to the brim with drum equipment. I know what I signed up for, dammit!
If I met you at a con and you’re reading this, even if you didn’t end up grabbing my work at the time, I appreciate you spending some time checking out what I do! (Use code M8SR8SS in the Store for discount on ‘Evokado! Farewell [Beta Edition]’ – Don’t tell anyone!)
Now, then…
Onto the future…
WHAT DOES 2025 HOLD FOR MERIDIAN SIX?
Hard to say.
While I perfectly called what my 2024 would be like back in 2023 – let’s call it “wanting it and making it happen” – next year is a bit more of a blur. I’ve done a lot of thinking in the wake of my cons – each one was a very different experience for me. When I tried to predict how they’d go, I think I was wrong 100% of the time.
Last year, I was still online everywhere: my comics could be found (for free mostly) in a myriad of webcomic hotspots – Tapas, Webtoon, ComicFury… I even tried out that Flowfo thing for a while. When I got a big bunch of them printed in the run-up to the cons, I thought it would be super silly to expect people to buy comics that they could just go online and read for free, so I made the decision to take everything down – years of posting, gone.
I’m not saying I regret that, because maybe that did help with my conventions this year. But maybe there’s room for both of these things to coexist… So far, newcomers to Meridian Six only know the front covers. The story is pretty much locked behind a paywall right? I don’t really like that. I’d rather people have unrestricted access to the stories and characters so that these comics can do the talking for me.
In the wake of Thought Bubble, I find myself thinking a lot about how best to be more seen. I’d love for people to know my work before the conventions and make a point to swing by my table, with purpose. I’d love for my reader-base to be pre-established, not just strangers I pitch to at these cons. I think the best and only way to do that is to just put everything up online.
So, 2025, to me, right now, looks like a return to regular weekly pages.
My passion and drive for Meridian Six has been boosted tremendously by the success of these conventions and the great feedback I’ve received, as well as being surrounded and constantly inspired by people just like me. It’ll take me a bit of time to feel out the schedule and assess what weekly target is feasible for me but I imagine it’ll be one page per week. And I think a steady rotation between series’ while I work on the next is healthy – I tend to burn myself out if I draw one story for too long.
This is also a great opportunity for me to reintroduce online readers to Meridian Six, but properly – not with intermittent gaps between posts for weeks or months at a time, but with a regular schedule that’s reliable and strict.
I’m in love with the process and I am so eager to get these stories out of my head and into some hands. I’ll keep thinking, but this is kinda what I’m feeling right now, as of November 2024…
SO WHAT’S COMING OUT NEXT?
Right now, I’m continuing to work on Evokado! with the goal of finishing off the first chapter – I already have some ideas for edits and reworks of the new Beta Edition comic, so be sure to grab one of those to see what it looked like before I went and messed around with it more.
I’m also reorganising my main site – I have some goals for mid-2025 that I’ll talk about closer to the time, but there are a few things I need to sort out to reach them. I’m also just getting things ready for this return to weekly posting!
When Evokado! is looking pretty and has reached my first designated cut-off point, I’m gonna carry on with Cold Reset, because it’s my first-born and is currently very neglected! The most recent full chapter came out in 2021… (not counting the brand new preview chapter only available on the Store – for now – which I actually finished this year!)
And then I’ll look back into The Black Mist, and rotate as so? Maybe?
My head’s a swirling mess of all these stories, characters and lore. It’s chaos trying to get them out in an orderly fashion, but I’m working on it every day.
Good to check in here again, it’s been too long.
Until the next one!
>Din
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