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Part 3: To The Point and Black Panel Tour

Comics are distributed in and out of Ireland by small pressers visiting different festival cities on tour. In Part 1 of this column I've recounted our experiences at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast and in Part 2, at the 2D Comics festival in Derry.

At the 2D Festival I'd picked up Phil Barrett's Blackshapes, Ger Hankey's Short Sharp Socks and three new Tommie Kelly titles for sell at our stall.

Also, probable liver damage.

(Above: Tommie Kelly's new book From Rags To Rockstars and a piece from the new Something Wonderful series. If you're funds are low on the ground, Tommie has made Something Wonderful available as a legal torrent: see the second link above for details)

6th June

It's a two hour scenic beauty ride to Belfast by Translink's Bus service. I'd taken the insomnia ticket the night before. It had come in at a few seconds. The Black Box is a fifteen minute walk from the Europa Bus Station. Paddy's mum had the car out, and dropped me off to set up our monthly stall. Paddy wisely went home to Doctor Who. While I performed the gargantuan feat-breaker two comics festivals in a row without a stop?

Nay. It was "dead".

Not a single sale. Barely a look.

The market looked finer than it ever had. Stalls were front loaded with a variety of miscellany, a harem of printed papers, silks, badges, poi staffs and knitted wear. Ben Allen afforded me a few words of comfort. Ben is great like that. He's a regular fixture at the market who plays around with pop art and printmaking. He takes his inspiration from artists who are fans of music, Peter Blake, Robert Crumb...
If you're on Facebook, take a look at his profile or read an interview about his work on Northern Irish iconography.

Above: Ben Allen's drypoint etching of Cara Cowan, from his workings out of The Creative Exchange.

As it turned out, everyone in Belfast may have been recovering from festivals. The Hay Festival and Belfast Titanic Maritime Festival. Would it be too much to ask of my home city to get over flogging a dead ship?

June 9th

Alice Quigley, Black Market organiser mentions new creative academic and bursary opportunities in Belfast. She seems keen I give it a go, but it's worth a mention for other interested parties.

The weekend has left me feeling spiritually drained so perhaps it's time I started thinking seriously about this

(Continued on Page 2 with The Point Village gig)