"In life, Majeh was a gifted swordsman. In Death, he acts as a whimsical reaper for the King of Hell”

It’s been ten years since the release of this epic series, and it’s still in the top favourites of its genre. Although, unlike most of the top action/fantasy Manga, King of Hell comes straight out of South Korea. Written by Ra In-Soo, this series would be the only which he’s written to date and is still going strong with 37 released volumes so far.

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Link: http://www.londonexpo.com/

I had an absolutely great time at the MCM Expo 2010. One of the things that really made it, other than the things discussed by Gavin here, was the Cosplayers. They were an absolutely permanent fixture of the 3 day event, so much so that when on the way back from the Expo I found it weird to look around and not see them brightening up people's days.

So hat's off to all of the Cosplayers that made it to MCM Expo 2010. I didn't manage to make it to the Euro Cosplay finals like I'd wanted to but these folk certainly made up for it. The love and attention to detail that went into these guys' and gals' costumes really needed to be seen first hand to be believed, I just hope that these pics I snapped whilst wandering around do them justice.

If you see yourself here, post a comment at the end - it'd be great to hear from you and also the perfect opportunity for you to inform me that you are in fact Kurosaki Ichigo from Bleach and not Aunt May from Spiderman.

Ladies and gents I present to you, and in no particular order, the Cosplayers of MCM Expo 2010!

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So much went on at this weekend's MCM Expo at London Dockland's Excel centre that the only way to sum it up was to make some kind of list. So here are my ten most memorable thoughts/moments/things I learnt from the weekend:

1. Nearly 50,000 people went through the doors of the London MCM Expo this year; a pretty titanic effort by anyone's standards and easily making it the UK's biggest comic con, are you listening Mr Millar.

2. There are cosplayers out there for everything, from Resident Evil to Naruto to Bannanas in Pyjamas. You name it and somebody out there will dress up like it and tredge down to the Excel centre to display their chosen ploomage. Don't believe me? Fellow Sidekick, Ned will be along soon with his rundown of all the cosplay action.

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So about two years back a mate of mine was giving me some playful grief about the fact I wasn’t, in his eyes, very experimental with regards the comics I was reading. I always kept in my safety zone of superheroes apparently which made me a BAD COMIC NERD! So I decided to pick up three graphic novels I would otherwise have never bothered with and give them all a full read.

Firstly I went for the “Slice of life/relationships/the one people recommend to girls” comic and read the first Strangers in Paradise pocketbook which was 360 pages of people whining about their feelings while looking longingly at that person they loved, but couldn’t tell, and who didn’t fully appreciate the wonderful human being right in front of them and blah blah fucking blah. Why this book is so popular when you can just watch daytime soaps for free I’ll never know.

My second pick was a true life/autobiographical book and I went for the multi award winning Fun Home which was AWFUL. Well, it was well done technically, but the central character was such a pretentious, self centered tosser that you just wanted her to get hit by a car or get shot all the way through. Knowing of course that it wouldn’t happen as otherwise who would have written the book?

My last pick… Manga.
Now my exposure to manga is very limited. I read the first few volumes of Akira and didn’t love it, though I do like the animated version which is of course much reduced. I’d also read and loved some Hideshi Hino horror books which were amazing. But all these were library borrows, never purchases. Also like a lot of people I was very wary of buying Manga as a lot of it has the deserved reputation of being a bit pervy. Way too many schoolgirls who cant blink hard without their skirts flying up around their necks, that kind of thing.

But as I knew a few people who were into and watching the ongoing cartoon and who assured me it was “people looking over your shoulder safe” I picked up the first volume of Death Note and was immediately hooked.

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Link: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40131

Caught this trailer for the Live Action version of Blood: The Last Vampire on AICN and I am very excited. I really enjoyed the original completely digital anime from 2000 but couldn't help feel a little cheated by the brevity of the story. It's left me itching for more and foolishly I missed the manga 2001 sequel Blood: The Last Vampire 2000 so this film is filling the 'Blood' shaped hole in my life.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4370072/New-pornography-laws-could-make-comic-books-illegal-claim-campaigners.html

Thanks to two new pieces of UK legislation your comic book collection could become illegal and titles you've been collecting for a long time could become banned. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act and the Coroners and Justice Bill are set to ban images that are considered to be 'extreme', those that contain any kind of sexually violent or obscene acts from being published, esepecially those with children. At the outset this seems fair enough especially when you bring kids into the equation but it's the definitions of 'obscene' and 'sexually violent' that cause problems. How far does this go?

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