Comics Salopia The festival with a difference!
Comics Salopia is a huge international, free entry festival taking over the entire town of Shrewsbury, celebrating the medium of comic art in all of it’s forms with some of the biggest names in comic art attending… speaking and drawing at an extensive range of fun, inclusive and inspiring events for all of the family.
Venues include the Castle Grounds, the Dana Prison, Shrewsbury University and the Museum and Art Gallery, which is hosting an incredible exhibition by local superstar artist Charlie Adlard of Walking Dead Fame.
Visitors can also enjoy film screenings, Jedi fight training, face painting, a small press comics market in the square, an interactive Judge Dredd event, live music, boat trips, a Zombie Walk, a Cosplay competition and live art events all weekend plus lots lots more!
Events
Be prepared for an International Comic Art Festival unlike anything you have experienced before.
Guests
There are too many guests to list here, so please click to see who has already confirmed.
Venues
We have a superb array of venues including the iconic Shrewsbury Castle.
Exhibitors
There will be a stunning array of options for those wanting to exhibit their work and their publications at Comics Salopia.
Latest News
World Famous Writer and Designer Chip Kidd Comes to Shrewsbury
The high standard of events being announced for the first Comics Salopia Festival in Shrewsbury is pretty staggering, but the latest event announcement is hitting another level of the creative stratosphere as legendary writer, book designer and public speaker Chip Kidd is confirmed to be delivering an inspiring talk to festival attendees at the University on Saturday 1st June at 14.45 pm.
TV Star Jamali Maddix is Coming To Shrewsbury to Find Out All About a Different Kind of Comic
He has also done a plethora of TV shows including The John Bishop Show, Live at the Apollo and 8 out of 10 Cats and Dara O’Brien’s Go 8 Bit. He has since been asked to host Live at the Apollo for this year’s series.
Inspiring Day Out
Today we visited the Debate-Ed event organised by our sponsors Lanyon Bowdler. Our Directors were invited to be judges, as school children from all over Shropshire were tasked with putting across their arguments on topical issues.
Prizes were awarded for best individual debaters and best groups. It was inspiring to see so many bright and intelligent children and young people engaging in so many issues and speaking with such confidence and eloquence.
Super-star Artist Frank Quitely Confirms for Comics Salopia
We are very proud to announce that we have now confirmed super star artist FRANK QUITELY as our headline guest for the festival joining our other big headline names.
Of course the artist known as Frank Quitely is now one of the most sought after comics artists in the business but he started out writing and drawing his own strips in indy comic Electric Soup.
DC Thomson Bring The Beano to Shrewsbury
It’s been quite some time since DC Thomson have been involved with a major Comics Festival in England. In fact if you cast your mind back 20 years to the now famous “Comics ’99” festival in Bristol you will possibly be remembering the last time.
We are therefore absolutely thrilled that the iconic publisher will be bringing the mischief and fun of their flagship comic The Beano to Comics Salopia this June as they join our partners Redan Publishing in making the free Kids Zone at the Library the go to destination for younger readers.
First Events Tickets Go On Sale for Comics Salopia
An Interview with Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard and Kid's Comic Art workshops with Sarah McIntrye are the first of many events to be rolled out for Shrewsbury's new International Comics Art Festival.
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Spectacular Venues
Our Guests
Former British Comics Laureate and local hero Charlie Adlard is not only one of the most talented artists in the industry, but without a doubt, one of the most hard working and dedicated.
Charlie has been a “veteran” of the comic industry for over 20 years. He’s spent the majority of his time since 2004 working on The Walking Dead for which he has received many industry awards. In his time as a cartoonist he has worked on many other projects as far reaching as Mars Attacks, the X-Files, Judge Dredd, Savage, Batman, X-Men, Superman etc and creator-owned projects closer to his heart like Astronauts In Trouble, Codeflesh, Rock Bottom, and White Death
Tyler Kirkham is an American Comic book artist/creator whose professional career stretches back almost 15 years.
Currently well known for his dynamic cover art on titles like Vemon and Deadpool for Marvel Comics he has also worked for DC, Image, and others on titles like Amazing Spider-man, Superman, Deathstroke and Green Lantern.
Christian Ward is a Shrewsbury-based illustrator, comic artist and writer.
Some of his clients include Marvel Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, The Guardian, Fence Records and Forbidden Planet amongst others.
Past comic-book projects include Image Comics’ best seller The Infinite Vacation with Nick Spencer. He’s also worked with Matt Fraction on ‘The Time Ben Fell In Love’ a DHP Short, Kieron Gillen on Young Avengers and previously with Nathan Edmondson on his debut Image mini Olympus.
John’s career in comics began in the late 1960’s as a member of the editorial staff with D. C. Thomson & Co. before becoming a freelance writer and a staff editor at IPC in the 1970s.
In that decade he wrote an immeasurable amount of material and established himself as a highly sought after and talented writer.
Most well known for the creation of the iconic Judge Dredd along with artist Carlos Ezquerra, Wagner also created other great characters like Strondium Dog and Robo Hunter for 2000ad.
Sarah McIntyre loves making books and comics set in places she knows well, such as her neighbourhood in south London. But then she takes out the people and replaces them with unusual inhabitants. The animal tower block setting inspired her Vern & Lettuce comic, and she went on to make a picture book set in the same block, called The New Neighbours. She’s also created a fictional town for dinosaurs, featured in her picture books Dinosaur Firefighters and Dinosaur Police. Her Shark & Unicorn strip ran for several years in The Funday Times section of The Sunday Times.
Dan Berry is an illustrator, designer, cartoonist and lecturer based in the town of Shrewsbury, UK. He is the Programme Leader for the BA/MDES Illustration, Graphic Novels and Children’s Publishing degree courses at the School of Creative Arts, Wrexham Glyndwr University. Since 2012 he has produced the podcast Make It Then Tell Everybody in which he has spoken to over a hundred other artists about what they do and how they do it. He also records a comedy podcast with Hannah Berry (no relation) entitled No YOU Hang Up. He has produced illustration work for The NME, Michael Rosen, The National Union of Teachers and more.
Al Ewing began his career writing stories in the five-page Future Shocks format for 2000 AD and eventually moved on to regular stints on Judge Dredd where he wrote a story, “Doctor What?” that marked Brendan McCarthy’s return to 2000 AD. The two would go on to work together on a new series The Zaucer of Zilk. Recent work includes Damnation Station and Zombo.
Kieron’s fruitful partnership with Jamie McKelvie has grown in the last few years bringing us the hugely acclaimed “The Wicked + The Divine series” and his prolific output of stories continues with current series ‘DIE’ with artist Stephanie Hans and the recent collaboration with Caspar Wijngaard On ‘Peter Cannon, Thundebolt’ which we recommend you take a look at!
Of course he rose to the levels of super stardom over the last few years when he took the reigns on the popular Darth Vader series for Marvel and then eventually taking over writing duties for a stint on the main Star Wars title, were he had lots of fun playing in the Lucasfilm character Sandbox.
Eric Stephenson is the Publisher and Chief Creative Officer at the third largest comics publisher Image Comics. The publisher behind such massive hits as The Walking Dead and The Wicked + The Divine.
Eric will be taking part in an exclusive Image Comics Panel, joined by some of the biggest stars in creator owned comics working today.
Yanick Paquette is Shuster award winner Canadian penciller. He has worked for Topps, Marvel and DC, wildstorm and Vertigo Comics and since 1994.
Among the titles Paquette contributed to are Wonder Woman, Superman, Avengers, Codename: Knockout, Gambit, JLA, Civil War: X-Men, Wolverine Weapon X, Terra Obscura with Alan Moore and Seven Soldiers: The Bulleteer with Grant Morrison.
Paquette was the regular artist on Ultimate X-Men. He later supplied the art for Morrison's Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #3 and Batman Incorporated. He was the artist on the relaunch of the acclaimed New 52 Swamp Thing, with writer Scott Snyder.
Yanick is currently drawing Superman stories with writer Brian Bendis and Batman with Tom King.
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