On Friday evening I headed into Bristol for my first event in this year’s Bristol Festival of Literature. It was a comics-themed event featuring Mike Carey, Paul Cornell, Cavan Scott and Jess Bradley, and it took place in the Bristol Waterstones.

The basic idea of the event was to talk about the process of making comics, and about the comics business. Hopefully some of the audience went away inspired to make their own comics. My panel did a fine job of talking through the issues. I’d given them a list of questions I wanted to address in advance, and in several cases they moved effortlessly from one topic to another without my having to prompt them. Special thanks to Paul who often managed to do the moderator things I wanted to do before I could get a word in to do them.

Paul and Mike are, of course, very high profile. I was delighted to see Mike so happy about the film of The Girl with All The Gifts, which should be in cinemas this time next year. But we all agreed that Cav had the best job in the world — writing Minnie the Minx — and of course he’ll be a superstar next year when his World Book Day Star Wars novel comes out. Nevertheless, when we all got together for dinner after the event, it was Jess’s creations that we ended up talking about. She’s very funny. Check out her website, and the Squid Bits strip she does for The Phoenix. (Warning, may contain farts.)