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Wednesday, 30 May 2012

London's BD & Comics Passion Festival a huge success

Jonathan Ross at BD and Comics Passion 2012
Photo: BD and Comics Passion
The weekend has passed, the temperatures soared and London's BD & Comics Passion's second festival came and went with an enormous bang.

The extended weekend of celebrations saw some of the biggest names in European Comics pass through L'Institut francais to offer the public some exceptional events. The Friday night's drawing duo between Tom Gauld and Guy Delisle was truly heart warming. With a play list created by the two illustrators, attendees found themselves following pages of funny narrative and free hand sketches that led us into their strange but wonderful minds. What a way to kick start the festival!

And what a festival it was. Grzegorz Rosinski let people into the very personal world of Thorgal, Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill talked about London’s architecture and the back drop of the city in comics, Jonathan Ross was both “refreshing and self deprecating” as he spoke about the medium, Alessandro Barbucci and Luke Pearson fought monsters to the sound of orchestral crescendo’s, the Trolls animated corridors as they amble about L’Institut, Christophe Arleston lit the way for young writers on their quest to comics stardom, David B. gave insightful commentary on his works The Best of Enemies and Karrie Fransman excited a lot of up and coming illustrators though her ideas and input on their work.

Paul Gravett and Dominique Poncet enjoy a glass of wine at the Festival.
Looks it's a French festival - of course there was wine!
Photo: BD and Comics Passion
And that’s not even the half of it. There were more talks, workshops, signings, the concert (which we will no doubt have to do again) the party, screenings, Q & A’s and generally a lot of fun and laughter.

Guy DeLisle on stage.
Photo: BD and Comics Passion
"We are so thrilled to have been able to create and host something of this scale and cannot thank enough all the brilliant authors, journalists, publishers, bloggers, students, teachers and fans who made this festival absolutely spectacular," Joséphine Seblon told DownTheTubes. "So, after a very long weekend, we are getting ready to re-build, re-vamp and start anew for the next!"

• Have a look at the Festival's Facebook page for all the pictures, sketches, comments and updates on the weekend just been: https://www.facebook.com/BDandComicsPassion
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1 comment:

  1. Rebecca Burgess8:13 am

    Why oh why did they have to make BD and comics festival on the same weekend as London Expo?! This festival looks amazing and I would've LOVED to of gone, but I already had commitments as a seller at Expo, which was an equally enjoyable event, although very different :( It seems a shame for them to both be put in the same weekend, especially as both have some amazing artists attending- Expo has a wonderful array of UK small press artists too. (I think) last year the small press fair was on the same weekend as Expo too. I know there are only so many months/weeks you can do these in, but you'd think they'd try and organise so that people can make the most of all the events going on. Oh, the heart wrenching decisions we have to make as comic fans now haha!

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