So that was Birmingham!

A lot has happened since the last mail, we've made a big decision on where we want to be by the time we set up shop at Bristol 2009, which we'll come to later. And some exciting news about C2D4 being stocked in another fine retail outlet.

But first...well C2D4 has now got its first Birmingham International Comic Show under its belt, and in addition to Bristol earlier in the year, we now feel we are becoming part of "The Scene".

The show had a very different feel to Bristol, which to me always seems to be split almost equally between trade and publishers, BICS did seem to have a more publisher-orientated skew to it.

Tony got back into doing some non-Intuos sketching, and was asked to do sketches, and I managed to get the scripts for Jack in the Box four and five written, with issue six planned summarised and ready to go.

So, all in all, even without selling anything we had a pretty productive weekend creatively.

We got to meet several new people, put a few faces to names and catch up with some people we already knew. We even got a visit and some words of wisdom and support from Tony's old tutor and comic art legend David Lloyd.

While not having the mad sporadic periods of frenzied activity that was Bristol, Birmingham instead featured a steady stream of visitors to the table.

At first we were convinced we'd had a slower event than May's, and had peaked before we knew it, but when we added everything up at the end of the day, we had several surprises.

The first being that we had done just as well without realising it. Unlike Bristol we didn't keep track of exactly each issue sold, but when we worked it out, we were pleasantly pleased.

The other big surprise was that Jack in the Box, which sold relatively few copies in May, seemed to walk off the table into people's hands. It was by far the best seller of the weekend, outselling Chickenheads and Crowman by around two to one.

A result we were very pleased with it, as we have both felt for a long time that Jack was a bit unappreciated, our unloved masterpiece, but the one that we both felt the most passionately about and have the most fun creating.

The thing is the story has always been meant to be read as a whole self contained story, it will have six issues and then end, no Infinite, Ultimate or even Zombie Jack in the Box.

As a result, we took an executive decision to put everything else on the back burner and to get the Jack in the Box saga finished as soon as we can so that people can appreciate what it is we are trying to say.

While this may take a year, we feel this is the right thing to do, both for Jack and C2D4.

And finally...

On our return from the show we were also delighted to hear that we had been approached by The Comic Shop Ormskirk, asking if we could send them some copies to stock. Six copies of each issue one!!!

We're still in the process of sorting this deal out, but hopefully we'll have some more to say soon.

So until the next time.

Best wishes

C2D4
(Many thanks to David Goodman for the picture!)