The Lakes International Comics Festival takes place in October here in the UK, one of the premier comics events in the country – early bird tickets have just been announced along with three great new guests, Rian Hughes, Oliver East, and Matthew Dooley.
LICAF poster designed by Sean Phillips
I’ve been to the Lakes Festival a few times now and it’s one of the most enjoyable comics festivals here in the UK, up there with Thought Bubble. In fact, those of us here in the UK would put both of those comic festivals up against most other global comics festivals in terms of a wonderful celebration of comics – and the Lakes is certainly ALL about comics.
Anyway, the Lakes happens in Bowness on Windermere during October this year and they’ve already announced some huge guests, including Alison Bechdel, Dave Gibbons, Jaime Hernandez, Bryan Hitch, Mick McMahon, and Posy Simmonds. There’s also going to be a new Lakeview Comics Marketplace, featuring even more comic creators and publishers – with the list of exhibitors here on the Festival web site.
The Lakes Festival has now opened up early bird tickets offering you 20% off ticket prices – but they’re only available until 20th April 2022. All you need to do is use the discount code LICAF20 at checkout, which is valid for day passes and weekend passes. Head to the Festival web site or EventBrite for tickets.
And on top of that, there’s another three great guests announced… Matthew Dooley, Oliver East, and Rian Hughes…
Matthew Dooley
Matthew Dooley won the Observer Graphic Short Story Prize and his debut Flake, published by Cape in 2020, went on to win the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize, the first time for a graphic novel. It was also a Guardian Book of the Year.
In the small seaside town of Dobbiston, Howard sells ice creams from his van, just like his father before him. But when he notices a downturn in trade, he soon realises its cause: Tony Augustus, Howard’s half-brother, whose ice-cream empire is expanding all over the North-West.
Flake, Matthew Dooley’s debut graphic novel, tells of how this epic battle turns out, a tale of a skirmish in the ice-cream wars that is worthy of Alan Bennett; and how Howard, helped by the Dobbiston Mountain Rescue team, overcomes every obstacle and triumphs in the end.
Oliver East
Oliver East is a comic artist, illustrator, public artist, and lecturer. His books include Trains Are… Mint, Proper Go Well High, Berlin And That, and Swear Down. East will be launching his new comic, You Can’t Draw the Same Tree Twice, a commission by LICAF, The Finnish Institute and Helsinki Comic Festival. He’ll also be presenting Blocks, a collection of architecture comics made during the nationally mandated daily exercise throughout lockdown, and Ill Architecture, a collection of independent public art.
Rian Hughes
Rian Hughes is a graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, writer, and typographer who has worked extensively for the British and American advertising, music and comic book industries. He’s written and drawn comics for 2000AD, Vertigo CMYK, and Batman: Black and White, and designed hundreds of logos for comics and books, including Batman, X-Men, Superman, James Bond, and more. In a wonderfully diverse career, he’s also produced Hawaiian shirts, ranges for Swatch, record sleeves for Ultravox, and designed a huge number of typefaces through his Device Fonts.
His illustrations have appeared in magazines in the UK, US and Japan, and a retrospective monograph collecting his work, Art, Commercial, was published in 2001. Rian has recently published his first and second novels, XX and The Black Locomotive, which he describes as novel, graphic. Other publications include Lifestyle Illustration of the ’50s and Custom Lettering of the ’20s and ’30s, while his comic strips have been collected in Yesterday’s Tomorrows and Tales from Beyond Science, and his burlesque portraits in Soho Dives, Soho Divas. Logo a Gogo collects all his logo designs for the comic-book world and beyond.
Announced guests for 2022 so far, in alphabetical order, are: Dimitris Anastasiou, Lucie Arnoux, Alison Bechdel, Matthew Dooley, Oliver East, Lina Ghabeih, Dave Gibbons, Jaime Hernandez, Bryan Hitch, Rian Hughes, Andrew Humphreys, Olivier Kugler, Mick McMahon, Bill Morrison, Bex Ollerton, Sean Phillips, Mike Perkins, Tim Pilcher, Greg Rucka, Posy Simmonds, Fiona Stephenson, Jorg Tittel, Twin Cartoons, and Andi Watson.
Exhibitors in the Lakeview Comics Marketplace will be: A&A Co., Amber Hsu, Art-Bubble, B7 Comics, Beatrice Mossman, Benjamin Dickson, Bryan Talbot, Bungaroosh, Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain, Catfood Comics, Clarice Tudor, Clark Bint, Comics Youth CIC, Coming Home – Re-Live, Drew Marr of Gold Lion Comics, Fanfare Presents, Gustaffo Vargas, ILYA GRAPHIC, J Webster Sharp, James Chapman, Joe Latham, Kate Mia White, Kev F Sutherland, Knockabout Comics, Lyndon White, Markosia Enterprises, Martin Geraghty, Matt Smith! (Smith vs Smith), Myriad Editions, NCS Fest, Nick Brokenshire, Olivia Sullivan (ZEB.KO), Peter Morey Comics, Rachael Smith, Roger Langridge, Schnumn, SelfMadeHero, Sula Hancock, Teesside University, The 77 Publications, The Cartoon Museum, Tom Ward, Twins Cartoons, and Una
The Lakes International Comics Festival takes place in October here in the UK, one of the premier comics events inCOMICONRead More