Comica at the Japanese Embassy

Feels like all I have are leaflets and postcards lately to take photos of for these posts :) On Wednesday night, right after work, I’d made my way to the Japanese Embassy for an end of event gathering I’d been invited to. The event in question was called Lingua Comica -

Comica director Paul Gravett introduces the Lingua Comica comics lab, gathering 14 young creators from Asia and Europe and renowned Japanese expert Kosei Ono who reveals the rich exchanges between manga and comics in the rest of Asia, Europe and beyond

Generally, the artwork displayed was quite indie in my opinion, but we won’t get into the whole manga/comic debate over this ^^;

The event itself wasn’t really focussed enough on the artists/writers and their work, but all in all, it was a pleasant evening. Once again, I found myself amongst a lot of the crowd from the London Expo. Had lots of lovely chats with other random people in general too, such as a gentleman named Sing, who was studying law. It was a mixed crowd.

I also managed to catch up with Gillian and her brother (who’s name I either forgot or may have never actually been told), who I’d met very briefly at Expo. Lovely girl with a unique art style. She’d recently been one of the winners of the NEO Mag. Manga competition, along with Wing Yun Man.

One of the guys on the Expo panel (which I had the pleasure to be a part of), was Mr. Lee Townsend, who I’d stolen from Nana during a conversation she was having with him (sorry XD). I was having a wonderful discussion about how he got into mainstream comic writing (he currently writes SPAWN).

It seems he too had released an independent book a while back, which unfortunately, didn’t do as well as he’d hoped. It was his make-or-break title for him, as he’d said that if this doesn’t go anywhere, he’d probably just quit the business. A while later, his book had made its way into the hands of an Editor at Image Comics who in turn got in touch with Lee and asked him if he’d consider writing for SPAWN. Funny thing is, me and him both had the same reaction to such a proposition, which is that both of us could not see ourselves writing super/anti hero comics. He was hesitant at first, he told me, but obviously he’d finally agreed.

I guess that’s just the way it is in this business. You never know what’s around the corner and sometimes, even if you’re reluctant, you should never pass up a solid gig.