Much of my weekend has been spent at the Bristol Comics Expo. It all seemed to be going very smoothly, and from talking to friends like Simon Gurr and Simon Breeze who had tables in the Small Press section people seemed to do decent business. Next year it looks like we’ll be back in the big shed at Temple Meads (now apparently renamed the Brunel Hall), which is great news. Exciting things may also be happening in the Ramada. Watch this space.

I arrived too late for the women in comics panel, but my friend Marjorie went and she said it was good. What I can do, however, is note that there were many fine women comics creators in the Small Press section. Here are a few.

I’ll start with my Greek friend, Sissy Pantelis. She doesn’t have much out in print at the moment, but she has a bunch of projects underway, including one with Markosia. There’s a review of the one-shot, Dream Lover, which Sissy did with her artist friend, Valia Kapadai, over at Geek Syndicate.

Sissy pointed me at UK-based manga artist, Sonia Leong. You can find her website here. Kevin, if you haven’t clicked through yet, do so now. Everyone else, I can particularly recommend this and this.

Not exactly comics, but a great female artist, is Anne Stokes. If you are into dragons and goth women you will absolutely love this. If I was still doing Salon Futura I would have been talking to Anne about a cover (though I probably couldn’t afford her).

In a very different vein my next shout-out is to local Bristol illustrator, Katie Green. I’m impressed with anyone who has degrees in both biology and sequential art. Most of what she has out at the moment is fairly lightweight in terms of themes, but I’m looking forward to seeing Lighter Than My Shadow, a graphic novel that Katie has sold to Jonathan Cape, which is a memoir of her struggle with eating disorders.

Finally in the round-up of ladies we have another Bristol-based artist: political cartoonist BlueLou. She’s already had work in The Guardian. And she’s the only woman political cartoonist that I know of.

I’d also like to make brief mention of a couple of guys. First up is Geof Banyard who does the wonderfully silly Fetishman comic, and also a fair amount of steampunk stuff. Anyone whose stall includes zeppelins, squid and a comic full of spoof Daily Malice outrage articles is OK by me.

And last but by no means least I have finally, after much prodding by Joe Gordon, got hold of all four issues of Spandex, a small press comic about a group of gay superheroes from Brighton. This deserves a proper review, for which you will have to wait. Sorry.