ComicBitsOnline.com

The more observant of you will note that the Bristol Comic Expo link on the blog roll is gone.

I have pushed and promoted the event like mad since 2004 and many visited CBO to find out what was going on at the Expo, guests, panels and so on.

But I still don’t get a reciprocal link on the Expo site to CBO. Okay, their site.

I have tried for three years now to actually get listed as a guest. I’ve tried humour, “suggested” it and pimped the idea. Nothing. I’m not going to beg.

Just read the below (posted last year) and it’ll explain a lot.

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You know, I was email chatting with someone in France yesterday and they mentioned having seen me, in my full beard days, at the first Bristol Comic Expo.  I vaguely recalled going the second day (?).  Luc then pointed out that was in November 2004.

November 2004???!!! What? The last printed Comic Bits was published in 2004 so I checked….yep, a full page ad for the Expo.  I set up my online version of Comic Bits that Summer on the Yahoo 360 blog.  That means CBO has been going nine (9) years??  I must be going gah-gah because I swore it was later but all my notebooks say “2004″.  I think I’ve wasted my life.

That means I’ve been pushing the Expo that long.  Yes, from 2008 on I started getting a free ticket from Mike Allwood for all the promoting I do which is very nice.  However, I have only ever been a guest with a guest badge once in that time.

I’m getting to that age when I think that I’ve done enough to be invited as a guest rather than a freeloader!

From 1984 right up to this year I have pushed and promoted and even helped the UK Small Press and I have never once asked for anything in return because it was something I believed in.  I promoted UK zines to Europe the USA (remember the UK Small Press Invasion in the late 1980s?) and beyond.  And I promoted German, Swiss, Austrian, French and zines from even further afield.

I’ve worked in comics as a scripter, editor (freelance), creators agent, artist and publisher since 1983 and Black Tower titles first appeared in 1984 -today Black Tower Comics and Books is the UKs largest Independent comics publisher (you know what gets inserted here -if you don’t its none of your business! !)

I am on European BD data bases, US Universities have me on their data bases, I have an entry on Comics Vine, and entry on Lambiek (of which I am very proud), I get askede to vote as a professional in the Eisner Awards (and others). I could go on and on but do I ever get an official guest invite to UK events? No. Europe and even two in the US but not my home country.

I have given a lot to UK comics and some well known names in comics got their break through me.  I’ve taken a lot of shit from the morons in comics.  I’ve done a great  deal as a UK comics historian (a lot of that being, uh, ‘borrowed’ by others).  Over 30 years of promoting the Small Press must count for something, too?

Yes, people have put entries on me for both on Wikipedia and those entries get deleted within a couple of days because I’ve “contributed nothing of significance” to either. Fuck Wikipedia.

About time what is supposed to be an industry (but isn’t) actually started showing some appreciation.

Let’s see how long it takes the morons to blog about my egotistic rant!