Blog: To Leicester And (eventually) Back Again

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I spent a big chunk of last week in Leicester, there to attend The International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference. I have been going to this conference for TEN YEARS now and it is always a lovely event, but this one was ESPECIALLY lovely as it involved going back to my old ALMA MATER (DeMontfort University, formerly known as Leicester Poly) and indeed my old home town.

In case any OLD PALS are reading this thinking "Why didn't you let me know so that I could have plied you with BEER?" the reason is that I was going to be spending my evenings involved in heady discussions, intellectual debates and plotting the furtherance of the scholarly field with other delegates, and also BEER, so wouldn't really be around. However, I did get to see ONE pal because the actual building where the conference was happening also contained the actual OFFICE of Dr N Brown (formerly known as Neil from Voon) so we met up for a delightful and sophisticated LUNCH one day. We also bumped into each other on Bede Island (formerly known as Vic Berry's scrapyard), just as I was thinking "I always used to bump into Neil here, oh there he is".

The conference itself was GRATE - it's always GOOD but this time there were LOADS of interesting panels and talks with lots of people who these days ALSO qualify as OLD PALS, and also various NEW pals, so there was much hugging and also the aforesaid heady discussions etc. I was v happy that my panel was with two such PALS - Ms C Searle and Dr M Nguyen - who did amazing talks about a) funnny drawing workshops and b) whether reading superhero comics makes you more tolerant. I won't spoil either, for hopefully they will be available in some form in the future, except to say that the latter panel featured one of the GREATEST GRAPHS EVER answering the question decisively and also not necessarily how we would have wanted it to!

There was also a marvelous Conference Dinner in Trinity Gardens - yet another bit of Leicester that I had previously been entirely unaware of - trips to two EXCELLENT pubs in the shape of The Blue Boar and The Castle, and an evening spent with Professor I Horton and Dr P Williams trying to watch the England game with the sound unreliably out of sync, so it was always either ten seconds behind or ten seconds ahead of what we could see, but we were never sure which!

I had a lovely time, and it was a very happy Hibbett who strolled off to get the train home, finding a nice double seat for myself and relaxing with a BIRTHDAY BEER (for LO! it was my birthday) ... until we got to Market Harborough and were told there was an Incident ahead - as it turns out, a very big and serious one too. We went back to Leicester where I bumped into Dr M Nguyen again, which led to me and Mike spending the entire rest of the day on an ADVENTURE together trying to get back to London. This involved a train to Hinkley, where we got detrained AGAIN due to an entirely OTHER signals problem, and then into a taxi with a supremely nice chap and his lad who we'd got talking to while stuck earlier. The four of us then had nearly four hours getting to Golders Green, where Mike and I then got TOOBS to our respective home/hotel. It was all a bit much, but I was a) highly conscious it could have been a lot worse b) glad to be spending the time getting to know the excellent Mike a lot better and c) very VERY happen to finally make it home just after midnight. PHEW!

posted 20/6/2026 by MJ Hibbett

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