London Underground Comics announces: No Barcodes 31st May 2008
As part of London Underground Comic’s campaign of bringing comics back to the underground by making small press cheap, cheerful and accessible, we are proud to announce our first mini-con: No Barcodes, the first of two events planned over the summer.

An indoor area of Camden Lock Market has been set aside for us and we plan to fill it with at least six or seven stalls. The whole event will work exactly as the stall does with groups of people on different tables splitting the £30 rent between them equally- the rest is theirs. The whole event will cost no more than £7 per person exhibiting, and the more people come the cheaper it will be.

We are looking for groups of people to man essentially themed tables, for example a web comics table, a caption table for oxford creators and, say, an autobiography table etc. Each table will be given a sketchbook at the beginning of the day to hopefully fill and at closing time each table’s book will be auctioned off to help pay for LUC’s expenses in printing banners, posters, fliers etc. any profit will be put towards the next mini-con.

Depending on how many creators wish to exhibit we also plan to put aside a separate table for visitors to sketch, as well as a rotating ‘featured artist’ who can charge for portraits.

The hall is situated in the heart of Camden amongst an indoor and outdoor market with a steady flow of tourists passing through. I’m sure I don’t need to state that entry to No Barcodes will be free. This means that not only will there be plenty of room in the outdoor seating area to catch up with fellow creators, but we will also be selling to the comics-virgin tourists of Camden who will be wondering what the event is all about. I’m not even going to touch on the quantities of food and alcohol outlets around the area, most providing discounts for stall-mannees.

Also, if you are lucky, once the market closes at six, we should have an entire pub laid on near Mornington Crescent tube station to host the after-con drinks.

LUC needs you:
We want small press creators of any sort to get in touch with us via the facebook group or by emailing camdencomics@hotmail.co.uk telling us that they wish to take part.
Bring your comics, a tablecloth and any kind of merchandise or posters you wish. LUC has some banners and posters but we want to display your work.
The market opens at ten so if you could arrive in the area before then to set up we would appreciate it.
The point of the event is an excuse to bring comic creators from around the country together to socialise and sell comics to an unsaturated market without huge expense. So most of all, we want you to have a good time and bring your mates!

Confirmed exhibitors so far…

It’s been a crazy four months here in Camden, we’ve hustled, frozen, danced, ate food, smoked an awful lot of cigarettes and now it’s time we got something to show for it (apart from the whole getting our comics out there to anyone who looked at us thing). As such we would like to get the stall nominated for an Eagle award, in fact we’d love to get it nominated for two, but we need your help:

1. Go to Eagle awards and fill in a couple of details about yourself.

2.Please write ‘london underground comics, camden 08′ in the box for nominations in the ‘favourite comics based movie or tv’ section- we want batman begins to get beaten by youtube.

3.Scroll further down to the ‘roll of honour’ section and choose ‘Oli Smith’ from the list of possible nominees… in terms of getting comics out there to a wider audience and having a bloody good time doing so, we think we’re the best entrepreneurs out there, lets make sure everyone else knows it.

To at the very least get through to the voting stage would be fantastic publicity for the stall as well as a wake-up call to the rest of the bubble industry that makes up comics. It’s time to come out of our shells and shout to the world that comics are back, and London Underground Comics is leading by example.

Thank you for your support.
Oli Smith