At the Comic Messe

At the end of April, the comics, so popular in Berlin, were celebrated with different events and fairs held in various locations all over the city. As usual, I rather preferred to cover my side of the city, taking part to the Comic Fair held at the elegant Ellington Hotel close to the KaDeWe. It lasted for six hours and was attended by an impressive number of people, most of them with a clear aim in mind: to find out new collections and complete their current ones. 

The decorations were made in the pure 'Eastern' style so the location did not matter too much once you entered the location and paid your ticket. As I was looking around, I noticed that there were more adults than children, with the same curious eyes when it comes to browsing the offers put on sale.

Most of the publications were old ones, in German. The prices were more than affordable for the casual collection, with significant discount if interested in more. By special request, I bought a couple of old Garfield issues - end of the 1980s - for less than 3 Euro. 

But there was a special section too, without too many visitors anyway, selling collection comics. The price for a 1984 Garfield drawing was 1,790 Euro and a George Harriman Crazy Cat drawing from 1922 nothing less than 15,800. 

As in the case of Manga events I attended recently at the Leipzig Book Fair, my favourite part of attending such events is watching authors drawing live and there were many such tables where authors were making their happy job under the curious and some jealous eyes of the visitors. 

It took me a long time to accept comics into my intellectual life, but I must say that I took the right decision, as there is another way to express feelings and imagination, but I also dare to say a kind of literary style. Matching words with images can be as difficult as setting up a documentary, and this comparison helped me to understand the richness of this genre. I left the fair with some interesting comics from Carlsen Edition House, about politics and history, that will keep me entertained for sure this probably sunny Sunday.