First off, apologies for the lack of blog and podcast updates. I haven’t been well and my partner has been hell busy. I have the latest podcast episode on my hard drive (and have done for about three weeks now) but editing it is a royal pain, so I haven’t gotten far. We recorded it in a different place and way to usual, so a lot of background noise and interruptions occurred. I’ll get it up eventually.

A few days ago it was International Read Comics in Public Day. In celebration of this,  the amazing lady behind dcwomenkickingass created the Women Read Comic in Public too! tumblr account to share photos of us ladies reading in public (and getting an awesome logo from Sarah Winifred).

My friends and I decided to join in the fun by meeting up in a park near the centre of our city and have a reading comics in public picnic event. A friend that couldn’t make it in person (due to flying to Europe) came along via a picture taken earlier of her reading comics. Another friend unable to make the picnic found time to take a quick picture of herself reading a comic outside the front of her house.

We had quite a fun time, and there was a pretty large variety of stuff there comics-wise. Interestingly, I was the only one who brought along any work by either of the big two (DC). Plenty of manga, indie stuff and Vertigo though. We will definitely be doing it again next year. The biggest hit of the afternoon definitely seemed to be The Walking Dead, though my copy of Secret Six also made a huge impression. People brought their own GN’s to read, or ones they had borrowed from the library or other friends, which was a pretty big relief to me, as I was a little worried about saying I’d providing my own for everyone.

Freak Angels, JLA: World Without Grownups, Gotham Central: Half a Life, Catwoman: Wild Ride, Secret Six: Unhinged, Terra, Birds of Prey: The Battle Within

On the way to the park I found a discount book store with a little comics corner .  I may have visited them, right before heading home with double the number of comics I left with.

The Aftershot: Terrible evening photography.

Not a bad score of things I’ve been meaning to get. Amusingly  the pile of The Boys trades was sitting right next to a whole pile of Tiny Titans, which made an amusing contrast. Particularly happy with finding a Rucka book and a JLU trade.

But back to the event. You can see all of the pictures I took of our little event on my flickr page. I submitted a few to the tumblr account too. As I’m really happy with how some turned out, I’m even putting some of my favourites behind the cut.

As you can see we had a typical Australian winter.

Some of the ladies.

Someone actually reading a comic!

Me in 90s sunnies and Terra, which was very cool.

I think a few people had left by the time we thought to take a photo of all the comics there. Warren Ellis I think got the most representation.

Anyway it was a small event, with about 8 people rocking up, but we all had a good time. We got a few odd looks, and hopefully next year we’ll have more people and draw even more attention! We were worried about guys gatecrashing but in the end only one guy turned up, and that was to help his partner with all her bags (she brought most of the snacks) and take a couple of photos of us all before leaving, which was pretty sweet.