Bristol Comic Events -Is that wishful thinking?

I had the unfortunate experience of having to listen to the local radio station. Typically playing only 1980s tunes with the occasional 6-10 years 'up to date" song.

The idiot talking then reported how a big event touring the country would play in Cardiff and Bath. Again. If you look at a  map of England you will notice a whacking great "City and County of Bristol" stuck between Cardiff in Wales and Bath. We have a couple big stadiums but are we getting any major acts or events?  Ridiculous.

But the one thing it reminded me about is the total lack of comic events in Bristol. During the !980s we had two Bristol comic marts -David A. Johnson's West Comics which organised similar events in Bath and Swindon- and one organised later that went on to become the Bristol International Comic Expo.  As soon as the 1990s got into full swing the comic expo became the event.  It went on to become the comic event everyone wanted to attend until the fateful year when the reigns were handed to a new team who killed it immediately and it then lasted two more years by which time the attendance was low. 

Since then the only events in the City have been Small Press. Advertised as Small Press and Comics events no one was involved in comics or selling them and as I discovered most attending (I was told one does not label them as traders or publishers but exhibitors) had no idea about comics -Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and other names just created confused looking faces.

A couple of events in Bath have been Small Press.  So why has Bristol got no regular comic event? Look at these figures

"Bristol is a city and county in South West England with a population of 463,400. The wider district has the 10th-largest population in England. The urban area population of 724,000 is the 8th-largest in the UK."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol

Bristol had diversity before it became a hip thing. One thing I loved about walking around the City were the languages spoken -on one trip alone I heard three African dialects, Russian, Polish, French, German, Finnish, Italian and Spanish. Just look at the stats regarding 'ethnicity':

84.0% white (77.9% white British) 6.0% black 5.5% Asian 3.6% mixed-race 0.3% Arab 0.6% other

Surely a perfect City to hold an event in? I tried in the late 1980s but as has been discussed elsewhere, the local comic shop did everything possible to saboutage it. Ahh, the 'comic community'!

But we are in 2020 and still nothing coming to the City -and I do not mean a big money maker like the MCM events that are more merchandise and entertainment than comics. Also, an event that does now cow-tow to the comics 'nice guys' who always want free entry and star billing while privately stabbing events and event organisers in the back.

Things have changed a lot but there are still genuine comic fans out there who would like to see events again. 

Is that wishful thinking?

Small Press and Comics....whatever a comic is?