Post 2 of 3 - the Footprint Zine Fair

Last weekend, Leeds University Student Union, I did my first ever solo zine stall, yay! It was the first time I've ever asked for money for my zines, but it was a very loose thing and I still gave most of mine away.

I fashioned a stand out of a biscuit box, and borrowed my house's radiator hangers to help make my stall.

I made a series of 3 cut-out comics from a gaelic language guide (highlands & islands, not Ireland) , on the themes of drinking, women, and work and enveloped them up.

I was happy to be REPRESENTING Newcastle and the North East, with Mayday and Classwar Classix pamphlets from County Durham (sold a few, gave more away); anarcha-feminist zines advertised from Newcastle (several people copied down the details and I feel good that I've helped spread that); small press comics from Newcastle and Teesside, borrowed from the Paper Jam Comics Collective; William Pilgrim's latest and a few spares that I found left over, which people had sent me for DIYAye 2010 (Lather Rinse Repeat; ).

I also gave out some of the out of date mars bars that my housemate liberated from a skip, and had my collection of North East zines available for any real fans. Interestingly, I met a lot of people who at one point had been in Teesside and I learnt a lot about the shit that went down there in the late '90s, and how the DIY scene has recently re-emerged with a smile and youthly beauty, yay! I also realised I have NO zines from Sunderland. Durham, check, Ashington, check, Sunderland, no. Am I missing out?

(I did an interview for Dissident radio which is here, in which for some reason I totally misrepresent the guy who started the Wor Diary project, as if he was incapable and trapped in his house, when he so isn't. Beware mouths running away with themselves! Other than that I don't mind what i said, oh, except I also gave a way-too-low estimate of the costs of printing wor diary it's at least twice as much.)

I had some great conversations with other people at the fair, swapped contacts, got offers, got a load of zine and comic swaps, and then I did a comic drawing workshop.

8 of us drew a page each around the theme of 'making tea' and then passed our page to our left, giggled at what we saw and tried to do a follow-on page. Some of the random results are below, each page done in less than 5 minutes! Great fun.

Here's a page from one:

This one was called "Copper Tea is Theft":

This one went down a politicised surrealist avenue:

This one featured the adventures of Grannny Smedley:

This one featured the hero, "Random Dude":

And finally: