Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2017 at various venues

It’s the only one of its kind in the UK, and 2017 marks the fifth year for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Taking place over a weekend, and taking over the Cumbrian market town of Kendal, LICAF is aimed at both fans and creators of comic art and graphic novels.

There’s loads on – from the Quick On The Draw gala opening event on Friday night to Sunday’s Big Comic Draw, hosted by Titan Comics’ Chris Thompson and featuring live drawing from Charlie Adlard, Jason Latour, Sean Phillips and Christian Ward. And the festival caters for all ages – this time round sees a special side programme of free events aimed at families (including, excitingly, Moomins).

One event that caught the beady eye of the Literature Editor is Manchester’s own Oliver East putting in an appearance. Like us, he loves a good story and we’ve popped him on your radar before – when he retraced the footsteps of the legendary elephant Maharajah, walking 200 miles from Edinburgh to Belle Vue Zoo, turning it into a book and a film co-directed by our author friend and live literature scene regular Simon Sylvester.

This time, the ‘walking comic artist’ has been inspired by the Lancaster Canal, made impassable in the 60s when the M6 was built, leaving weird pockets of water dotted about and bridges randomly high and dry in the middle of fields. Oliver is launching his new book The Lanky on Sunday 1t 12.30 in the Comics Clock Tower with a signing, followed by a derive at 3.30pm to explore the canal landscapes around Kendal, hear more about the stories in The Lanky and take part in a drawing masterclass – which, if we could draw, we’d be well up for. But we can’t, so we’ll make do with listening to the stories.