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A London San Diego For 2011? Mark Millar Says We'll Find Out In Weeks

Published Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:15:22 -0500

Mark Millar has teased a couple of times about an upcoming comics-and-media show for London next year and his possible involvement in it.

Well, in an email to selected industry individuals, it just got real. He states that his partner runs an event organising company in London and is planning a "huge San Diego style show" for next year.

The location would be the Business Design Centre in Islington in North London for the 9th and 10th of April 2011.

The aim is to create a European equivalent of the Comic Con International: San Diego event. He promises that "we've got all the big studios behind it to pimp their superhero and sci fi movies for next year and I want to make sure there's a brilliant comic attendance too."

Millar also acknowledges other shows in London but states that they cover "all the retro stuff" and that they "tend not to focus on UPCOMING movies and the comic presence is very small for the most part."

Intriguingly of course this seems to ignore the biannual London MCM Expo, which most definitely covers new comics, the newer the better, also definitely focuses on upcoming movies, and whose comics industry presence has been exponentially growing each show so that it is currently the largest comics convention in the country, with an attendance of around 35,000 over two days. For comparison;'s sake, the New York Comic Con has around 100,000 over two-and-a-half days and San Diego, a quarter of a million over four-and-a-half days. Meanwhile a quick call to the Business Design Centre and I'm told their full capacity for an event is five thousand, three hundred people, which doesn't quite put it in the same league.

The MCM's autumn show is on this weekend, and will be hosting the Eagle Awards. And its spring show is currently scheduled for the end of May next year.

With Millar's show planned for six weeks before, could this be the beginning of British Con Wars?

Millar promises a website for the new show next month, along with comic industry guest announcements, with movie and TV names to be dropped in a video presentation in February. Any more details will be kept under wraps until the website launch.

It's Millar's world, we just live on it.

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