Comics News
Tony Lee Talks About London Film And Comic Con
Celebrating Comics Talent In The Big Smoke
London Film And Comic Con comic zone organiser Tony Lee just spoke to Tripwire about Spring’s show happening 28 Feb-1 March at Olympia…
TRIPWIRE: Talk us through this spring’s guest list.TONY LEE: Honestly for 2026 we’ve decided to go for comfortable and familiar. It’s not just a budget decision. Olympia is still moving things around in their building works and we didn’t want to cause any major issues. We wanted to go for guests that we knew could work while at the same time shaking it up a little bit.
We have old familiars like Stephen Baskerville, Lee Bradley, Lee Townsend and Nigel Parkinson, while at the same time we’re bringing back people who haven’t been for the last couple of events. People like Rachael Smith, Geoff Senior, Mike Perkins, Sam Hart, as well as several others.
We’re bringing in magazines and publishers like Tripwire, The 77, Cutaway Comics, and they themselves are bringing a variety of interesting new guests, including people like Steve MacManus, the legendary editor of Crisis, and of course Philip Hinchcliffe, who was a legendary producer of Doctor Who in the 80s when I was growing up.
There are other guests and obviously people like CGC there to grade your comics, but we wanted to keep to around twenty spaces.
TW: You have quite a few regulars at the show. What does having this do for the show?
TL: Unfortunately there’s a tightrope that must be walked when you run an event like this. Half the people who see our guest list complain that we have people who have returned time and time again, and then the other half ask for the same guests who are turning up time and time again. We once had Lee Townsend miss an event, and we actually had more complaints about him not being there than any other guest we’ve ever had to cancel!
A lot of the familiar guests have become almost traditions for many of our attendees. They’ll turn up and catch up with them and there’s an element of familiarity that I think the comic guests provide, that some of the media guests can’t.
Yes, having the same guests as regulars does help us. Many of the regulars are London based and it saves us costs for hotels and travel. If I can bring in five regular guests from London and save enough money to bring in somebody bigger from abroad, either at this show or perhaps in summer, well I’m going to do that, because you’re getting the best of both worlds.
TW: It’s become a regular fixture in the London and UK comic con calendar. How do you see it fitting in with other comic shows?
Again this is something that irritates me quite a lot. I regularly see people saying, “Oh well, x convention has these people” or “Oh well you’re not doing as good as y convention” and I don’t understand why people can be tribalistic about this.
We’re a comic convention that provides comic guests. If you want to go to MCM or any of the Monopoly comic events or smaller more local events or Thought Bubble or Macc Pow or whichever ones you want to do, there’s no element of being a traitor or picking sides. If you’re going to a comic convention and seeing a comic artist, then the job is done. I would rather we were classed as one of the many rather than someone fighting against the others.
It’s one of the reasons why several years ago we turned the Summer Convention into the London Comic Festival rather than just the Comic Zone, because as a festival we’re celebrating comics rather than trying to financially prove that we’re better than other people.
Comics doesn’t make Showmasters any money. In fact if anything we are an absolute cash drain on them, because they provide us a budget that we don’t give back. Media guests give percentages of their signing fees or they have set agreements put in stone that make money, but with comic creators? Well, they sell their comics, they sell their art, they sell their prints and books and none of that goes to Showmasters.
As far as I’m concerned we fit in with every other comic-specific comic con.
TW: Which guest from the spring show are you most proud of for this show?
TL: All of them. I don’t play favourites. The fact that they trust us to attend our event is enough for me.
TW: Do you have any guests confirmed for summer and autumn as yet?
TL: Yes, but we’re not telling you! I prefer to announce after the con ends, so you’re not focusing on the wrong thing!
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