IGNCC18: Bournemouth
Really enjoyed myself at the Bournemouth event: my paper went well (must put it on the Jinty blog), I met lots of interesting people thinking in interesting ways about comics, and I saw three very different and very special talks the opportunity for which only arises very rarely.
On the Wednesday I arrived just about lunchtime as far as my stomach was concerned, but the scheduled lunch break was a little later (1:15), so I sat through the last minutes of a talk and the questions arising before I had a chance to check where I was supposed to register and what the lunch situation was. It all turned out to be on the 7th floor rather than the 2nd floor where one set of talks was, so up I went and snagged myself some lunch and a programme booklet. By heck there was a lot on! Each slot normally consisted of three 20 minute talks grouped together with time for questions at the end; but there were three sets of talks running in parallel, so lots to choose between.
I bumped into several old friends - Selina was doing a talk in the same group as I was assigned to, which made sense as our talks meshed well. Guy Lawley was there - he’s doing a PhD in comics! - and Roger Sabin, but I didn’t really get much of a chance to catch up with either of them. Alex Fitch was likewise there and I said a brief hi but didn’t catch up properly. But at the end of day yesterday Woodrow and Bridget were there and I did get time to properly chat with them about life the universe and everything. So lovely to see them and both as sharply-dressed as ever.
After lunch on that first day there were a couple of talks about how time works in comics - how do you depict time, what does a reader have to do to understand that time is passing. They were quite interesting but a bit larded with some academic jargon which I found a bit tedious in places. But after that there was a super session with two really engaging speakers, both women, talking with verve and enthusiasm and not too much jargon (and anyway I was prepared to forgive them). Barbara Chamberlin talked about horror comics and the revisiting of the Sabrina the Witch title, whereby Archie Comics have redone it as a knowing horrror comic with lots of referential nods to eg Rosemary’s Baby. I’m not massively interested in horror comics but I like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and as I say Barbara was an engaging speaker. She also had on an excellent top, with a gigantic print on it that mashed up images from The Cure with retro horror cover images. Very enjoyable! And she was followed by Olivia Hicks, a new comics scholar based in Dundee and therefore focusing primarily on the D C Thomson titles. She did an interesting comparison between boys’ comics character Wilson and girls comics character Valda. Both are sports-based stories about sporting prowess and beating rivals, but Wilson is clearly rather more Imperialist in ways I’d not thought of before. And again Olivia was very engaging to listen to, as well as talking about something I’m familiar with and interested in, so bonus.
The keynote talk that day was Anne Digby being interviewed by Mel Gibson - lovely to meet Anne Digby for the first time as I have interviewed her for the Jinty blog but not actually met her before. Afterwards we went to a local Caribbean restaurant for cocktails and food: pleasant but a bit stressful as it was very noisy, the food took a long time to arrive, and I was trying to work out if it fell to me to entertain Anne Digby despite the less than ideal circumstances for making polite conversation. (I did, but I think that the noise was offputting for all of us.) And then to my hotel to check in. I had been going to do a bit more bloggery-pokery once I had peace and quiet, but instead I just went slump.
This entry was originally posted at https://jinty.dreamwidth.org/1046595.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
On the Wednesday I arrived just about lunchtime as far as my stomach was concerned, but the scheduled lunch break was a little later (1:15), so I sat through the last minutes of a talk and the questions arising before I had a chance to check where I was supposed to register and what the lunch situation was. It all turned out to be on the 7th floor rather than the 2nd floor where one set of talks was, so up I went and snagged myself some lunch and a programme booklet. By heck there was a lot on! Each slot normally consisted of three 20 minute talks grouped together with time for questions at the end; but there were three sets of talks running in parallel, so lots to choose between.
I bumped into several old friends - Selina was doing a talk in the same group as I was assigned to, which made sense as our talks meshed well. Guy Lawley was there - he’s doing a PhD in comics! - and Roger Sabin, but I didn’t really get much of a chance to catch up with either of them. Alex Fitch was likewise there and I said a brief hi but didn’t catch up properly. But at the end of day yesterday Woodrow and Bridget were there and I did get time to properly chat with them about life the universe and everything. So lovely to see them and both as sharply-dressed as ever.
After lunch on that first day there were a couple of talks about how time works in comics - how do you depict time, what does a reader have to do to understand that time is passing. They were quite interesting but a bit larded with some academic jargon which I found a bit tedious in places. But after that there was a super session with two really engaging speakers, both women, talking with verve and enthusiasm and not too much jargon (and anyway I was prepared to forgive them). Barbara Chamberlin talked about horror comics and the revisiting of the Sabrina the Witch title, whereby Archie Comics have redone it as a knowing horrror comic with lots of referential nods to eg Rosemary’s Baby. I’m not massively interested in horror comics but I like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and as I say Barbara was an engaging speaker. She also had on an excellent top, with a gigantic print on it that mashed up images from The Cure with retro horror cover images. Very enjoyable! And she was followed by Olivia Hicks, a new comics scholar based in Dundee and therefore focusing primarily on the D C Thomson titles. She did an interesting comparison between boys’ comics character Wilson and girls comics character Valda. Both are sports-based stories about sporting prowess and beating rivals, but Wilson is clearly rather more Imperialist in ways I’d not thought of before. And again Olivia was very engaging to listen to, as well as talking about something I’m familiar with and interested in, so bonus.
The keynote talk that day was Anne Digby being interviewed by Mel Gibson - lovely to meet Anne Digby for the first time as I have interviewed her for the Jinty blog but not actually met her before. Afterwards we went to a local Caribbean restaurant for cocktails and food: pleasant but a bit stressful as it was very noisy, the food took a long time to arrive, and I was trying to work out if it fell to me to entertain Anne Digby despite the less than ideal circumstances for making polite conversation. (I did, but I think that the noise was offputting for all of us.) And then to my hotel to check in. I had been going to do a bit more bloggery-pokery once I had peace and quiet, but instead I just went slump.
This entry was originally posted at https://jinty.dreamwidth.org/1046595.html. Please comment there using OpenID.