MCM Birmingham Comic Con

Visiting Memorabilia has always been a must do activity in my events year but merging this with the Comic Con event has really boosted attendance and livened up the atmosphere making for a memorable day out.
It’s become a great day out for the whole family, little ones will love some of the spectacular cosplay (costume play) that is taken to the event, heck they can join in too if they have their own costume and it’s a great sight when you can see mum and dad have got involved too and you spy little families in similar themed costumes.
If you plan a trip my first piece of advice is plan to leave early and then maybe set off even earlier. The rapidly expanding popularity of this event means that the queue for tickets on the day is brutal. We arrived just after half twelve and it was nearly two before we made it into the hall. All of this then impacted our experience as factor in time to eat (which in hindsight we could have ticked off this activity during queue time) and we were getting pretty tight on having enough time to get around and see all there was to see.
The stalls were standard fodder, plenty of well memorabilia from Film, TV and video games. There is a reassuring Japanese presence each time, my spoils from this visit were some beautiful Japanese noodle bowls and spoons but there are some great food stores and my personal favourite from this visit a stand contained of all things from Japan that are cute — think fruit with faces, cuddly alpacas and hello panda nibbles and you are there!
A few less retro gaming stands than previous events and next to no board game vendors made for a little disappointment but all the same plenty to keep us entertained and mesmerized. We didn’t have time to invesitgate the large inflatable tent at the back of the hall which I’m told was full of cosplay activity and celebrity talks from the world of comics. Had we got into the hall a bit earlier we might have enjoyed some of this for ourselves.
The infamous celebrity signings was another good show, shows were well represented and a nice range of films and TV shows were on hand to meet and greet with eager fans. You can’t knock the range, fans of Red Dwarf, Eastenders and Allo Allo?! would have all walked away happy. Organisers may want to reconsider the positioning though, it was a complete bottleneck walking straight into this part of the show so maybe placing a bit further along would have remedied the stress of pushing through people who were doing what come naturally and having a good gawp at those familiar faces, but getting in the way of the upcoming footfall in the process.
I still think this is a great event, my only ask would be for a slightly bigger hall next time to lessen the claustrophobic atmosphere from squeezing into a space the event has outgrown.
Pre-​paid tickets for us next time too as the extra long queue meant that for us, sadly, our visit was over in too much of a flash (pun intended).

I really wanted to enjoy MCM Birmingham Comic Con, but sadly it did not live up to my expectations.
The biggest issue was the venue– two halls was simply not enough for the amount of people attending, and having other large shows on at the same time made public transport a nightmare. Being in a permanent crush made it difficult for me to see anything, but from what I could see there were little comics and board games. The majority of stalls were selling overpriced kawaii toys, and I left empty handed with no regrets whatsoever.
The special guests held little appeal for me. I felt the autographs were over priced and I was particularly baffled by the presence of Eastenders actors Shane Ritchie and Jessie Wallace. I didn’t feel they fit at all and honestly I would have rather they weren’t taking up the already limited space. Still, some people must have wanted to see them as I could barely reach the bar thanks to the long queue right outside it.
The events were similarly meh with the exception of the cosplay masquerade. The cosplayers are what made it in my opinion. The amount of effort they put into their costumes was astounding, and some were even in character which resulted in some funny moments. Unfortunately it just wasn’t practical to ask/​pose for photos in the crowds, and looking at the photos now I see I missed some amazing costumes.
Until they improve their line up, I will not be attending again. I foolishly purchased a weekend ticket but was left so exhausted I couldn’t face going again. If you do go, get a priority ticket and go early so you can leave before the crowds hit. I’ve been to cons before and I’m used to queues, but I don’t see the point when you’re queuing for a substandard con that offers very little.

For starters I have been heading to what was just called Memorabilia for many years now and have loved it every single time. This was now my second time at the event after it has merged with MCM Comic Con.
My first visit after the merge, I was really pleased to see how Comic Con had increased the atmosphere by bringing to it lots of people taking part in Cosplay. Memorabilia had always had people dressed up but never on this level. The biggest let down was the sheer size of the queue you need to wait in in order to get in, literally around an entire hall.
On THIS visit to Comic Con the queue was twice the size as the year before. Given we had turned up a little later than intended but then obviously so had a lot of other people considering the size of the queue. Standing in the queue i thought to myself that it must mean that the size of Comic Con was bigger than before. I was wrong, it was the same size but with twice the amount of people. This was my biggest let down, there was WAY too many people in the hall at one time in order to be able to actually see anything or get to any stalls. I found myself just stuck in a jam of people every 10 min or so either due to a Q&A session just finishing and flurry of people exiting all in one go, lots of tired teenagers sat in the middle of the floor (which no staff moved at all) or just badly planned layouts which gave no room for a walkway.
Another gripe was the NEC staff, we stood in a queue for food (after having stood in the hour long queue to get in) only to be presented with serving staff with a horrible attitude. My partner ordered some food while I found a seat and she asked for an Oasis drink from the fridge whilst pointing at the fridge, the staff member then returned with a pint of Budweiser for some reason (not sure how that got misheard). My partner explained that she didn’t want a pint of Budweiser she asked for an Oasis and the server came back with «Well what am I supposed to do with this now?». Very rude indeed.
Finally, it saddens me to see that slowly the stalls that were synonymous with Memorabilia are disappearing. There are less stalls with board games on there used to be, there aren’t as many comic stalls as there used to be and for some un known reason there was a scattering of stalls that had nothing to do with Comics or Memorabilia whatsoever, examples: a Kids Party Entertainment company and the oddest of all a Cat Insurance stand (bearing in mind this was on the same day that a cat show was literally in the hall next door?).
I started off giving this review with 3 stars but the more I’ve gone on, the more I’ve thought about my experience and I have removed another star as a result. I came away feeling really disappointed as I love this event usually but i feel like its gotten really bad now. Unless they expand to using another hall for more space i won’t be going next year. Theres way too much queueing now leaving you next to no time at all to explore the stalls and too many people around to prevent you getting even near the stalls.

This weekend was my second visit to MCM Comic Convention in Birmingham. Strange really, that I should travel halfway across the country to Wales to go to SciFi Weekender in Wales, but only my second visit to the Birmingham edition of this event (which is also held in Manchester, London, Telford, Belfast and Glasgow). I can only put it down to the fact that I wasn’t actually aware of the event or when it was until last year when I saw some advertising online and knew that I had to go and check it out…
Now, I really like graphic novels, animé, SciFi and fantasy. This place is a mecca for buying the perfect accessories to go with that obscure cosplay and incredibly cute toys and collectables. Unfortunately this year there seemed to be less actual comic stands, but this was more than made up for by the fantastic line up of guests and talks.
The best reason to go (whether you are necessarily a fan of comic books or not) is the amount of effort that attendees go to, to create their costumes. I spotted characters from films, books and TV shows (some mainstream, some obscure) but there was more than your fair share of «caped crusaders» and Marvel/​DC characters which was inevitable since the classic hero on paper was transformed into blockbusting big screen action stars.
This year I was very impressed by the addition of two popular animé voice stars which were doing signings for free (well, for £3 with the purchase of a magazine). I am a fan of both of these guys and ended up getting their autographs without too much queueing or trouble. They also had talks from Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) and RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad) and it seems they had really upped their game with (almost) the complete cast of Red Dwarf and Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) along for the fun as well.
Now, one thing I did notice this year was how busy it was. Luckily, my partner had bought an advance ticket (highly recommended) and thus we were into the venue within a couple of minutes of approaching the hall. The wait to buy a ticket and get in was ridiculous and I can imagine some people queued for at least an hour to actually enter the event. This also meant there was hoards of people in the hall, which made it difficult to browse the stalls at some point.
Again, this event is busy and you will probably end up spending a fortune if you are with/​are a comic book/​animé/​superhero fan… However, if you can deal with the queues and the crush, it’s well worth checking out MCM Birmingham (which takes place in both March and November each year).

This was my second visit to MCM so I knew much of what to expect. It’s busy, there are stalls and stalls selling everything from ‘con-​safe’ replica weaponry to collectables from all branches of animé, manga, comics, tv and film. Being an avid reader of graphic novels I couldn’t wait to get my mitts into flicking through boxes and boxes for that elusive find. However this year I was largely disappointed. There were plenty of stalls selling comics but predominately single issues, and the vast majority were Marvel/​DC with little or no thought towards other publishing horses such as Dark Horse, Vertigo, Image and the like. I barely even saw any manga on sale and considering that animé/​manga and it’s associated cosplay is seemingly the direction in which MCM is going that was quite a surprise.
But that’s enough of my moanings. MCM/​memorabilia is spread across two halls in the NEC and is a bit of a beast to navigate, it’s easy to get lost in amongst the stalls and crowds of people and spend an afternoon immersed in comic book and geek culture is great. There’s panels about all sorts of things, signings from authors and actors as well as the all important cosplay.
I’d whole heartedly recommend buying tickets in advance as the queue to buy tickets on the day was absolutely nuts.
Yes, it’s crowded. Yes, it’s expensive and yes, I would like to see more comics and less tat for sale but it’s still worth a visit.