Did you attend last weekend's Bristol comics expo? SFX's Nick Setchfield was there, as was our blogger Stacey Whittle who discusses the event below:

Bristol Comic Expo

Bristol has been a scaled back affair this year with the loss of the large railway shed that usually houses the dealer room; the Expo became confined to the Ramada Hotel. This had the dual effect of making the con much smaller physically and reducing the number of ticket sales for health and safety requirements. I think the organisers have made a pretty good job of it to be honest, the large panel room became the dealer room, and there was a much smaller panel room and a small room at the back of the hotel for the small amount of small press guys. The biggest problems I could see where this meant artists and writers were signing and sketching in the corridors - this had an impact on queuing for both the artists and access to the panel room, and general passing by became a bit problematic at the beginning and end of panels. If, as rumour has it, the Expo remains at this smaller venue next year, some minor tweaking could sort these problems out.

I saw three panels this year. Firstly the Vertigo panel with Bob Wayne from DC and a group of writers and artists - an interesting and informative panel with Mike Carey letting a few too many secrets out of the bag! Bob Wayne is a comedy genius and this panel flew past with all attendees receiving an ashcan copy of Mike Carey’s new comic due out at the end of the month.

I also saw the DC panel, again with Bob Wayne and also Dan Didio, plus a second lot of artists and writers; again very funny, very informative and as a girl who doesn’t read much DC material I found myself getting very excited for the launch of Wednesday Comics.

The third panel was entitled The Geek Syndicate Present Two Drunk Guys In A Panel With Tony Lee And Dan Boultwood, and the only thing I can tell you about this panel is that those bad men made David Monteith cry and I haven’t laughed so much… well since the night before, in the Ramada bar.

In addition to the main convention the Mercure hotel around the corner hosted the first Small Press Expo. This was very well run, nicely set up and spread out and had some major coups, for example Doug Bradley of Hellraiser fame signing his latest audio book, Hunt Emmerson (who very kindly did a fabulous Ratz sketch for my Beano-mad daughter) and Gilbert Shelton signing all day, the Geek Syndicate podcasting from the bar and (two of the biggest buzzes at the whole convention) the launch of Cancertown by Cy Dethan and Stephen Downey - which I have managed to read already and it is an awesome piece of work - plus Kevin O’Neill signing the latest instalment of The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, for which the queue was cyclopean (this Lovecraftian word is brought to you in honour of Ben Clark’s first ever signing at a convention!).

My only regret is that I missed the 2000AD panel, though Tharg did growl at me with his strangely pink hands on my way past, which filled me with thrill power.

If the con sticks to this format next year then I would suggest begging and pleading for a second panel room anywhere, as with less shopping to do more entertainment would be a good recompense. And also having a look at the layout to try and avoid the queue congestion and maybe more signage or posters about the SPX in the main expo. Overall though, I thought they did the best they could and it was still a wonderful convention.

This is a personal article by Stacey Whittle, one of our site contributors. Were you there? Will you go next year? Your Comic Expo thoughts welcome as always, in the comment thread below or on our forum.