The Geek Girl Panel dinner was chaired by Judith Lewis (a founder of the Geek Girl Dinners and a veteran of anime conventions) and featured three self styled Geek Girl speakers, Karen Rubins, Emma Vieceli and Kate Brown, who all work in the comic book industry and were very lovely.
Karen Rubins was the resident artist at the V&A Museum and recently penned a set of playing cards in comic book style, tying in with tarot themes (they were awesome, fyi). She found early acclaim for her self-published graphic novel The Dark and is currently attempting to finish a 120 page graphic novel for the next big comic Expo.
Emma Vieceli is a very accomplished comic book illustrator and draws online Manga story, Dragon Heir. Excitingly, Emma has also recently worked for the mighty Marvel in it's new series, Girl Comics (no, we’re not feeling the brand name either – but Emma’s work is truly fantastic!).
Kate Brown illustrated the Manga Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She sketches with pencil and uses Photoshop to colour in over her etchings. She predominently works in self-publishing (freelance) and illustrates for DFC comics. She has recently completed illustrating for Spider Moon (available to buy now kids!).
As comic book newbs, we were thankfully given an overview of the history of comics and the situation now – especially from a UK market perspective. Up for discussion was the recent influx of female graphic artists into the comic book industry and if Manga has been the main contributing reason.
We had no idea there were so many different comic book styles and so many different genres (alternative/esoteric, Manga, science fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, horror, humour, romance, childrens, and adult). We loved it - we’re throwing ourselves into comic book land with abandon – any suggestions to get us going would be greatly appreciated!
The festival featured film premiers, workshops, panels and lots of other events and was more about getting people involved and breaking down the barriers to enter the sci-fi genre with an open mind. But we suppose we’re rather preaching to the choir here; you're already following our blog!
We urge you to go next year!
