Top digital comic creators from both sides of the Atlantic are set to form part of this year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival line-up, at Kendall in the United Kingdom this October thanks to support from SEQUENTIAL the digital graphic novel app.

Now in it’s 2nd year the Lakes International Comic Art Festival has a stellar line up of guests and events and based in the market town of Kendall in the north wastern United Kingdom. This year, they are focusing several of their events on the rapidly-evolving world of digital comics, and how best to make the most of this constantly growing audience.

Those involved include American Scott McCloud, whose first comics work was the acclaimed Zot! and was an early (and noisy) advocate of digital comics in the 1990s and early ’00s. He is one of the major guests in the field at this year’s weekend-long event, opening the Festival with a talk titled “The Magic of Comics” on Friday night.

While on Sunday, he will join the critically-acclaimed, award-winning British web comics creator Daniel Merlin Goodbrey on stage for “To Boldly Go… A Journey Into Digital Comics”, a panel hosted by Russell Willis, who runs the digital publishing house Panel Nine, whose SEQUENTIAL comics app features a wide and impressive range of comic creators’ work. It also created the app that delivers the digital version of Britain’s weekly The Phoenix comic for iPad users.

“Depending on who you ask, I’m either comics’ leading theorist or a deranged lunatic,” says Scott McCloud of his work, “but life continues to be very interesting for me and the ideas that I’ve raised continue to provoke reactions throughout the comics community and – increasingly – beyond it.”

Scott and Daniel are just two comic creators – including many more digital comic creators – that form a huge line-up of talent attending this year’s Festival, including acclaimed comics creator and newspaper strip artist Nick Abadzis (author of Laika); Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard; Fables and Sandman artist Mark Buckingham; The Mire and Wolves creator Becky Cloonan; Alec and From Hell artist Eddie Campbell; Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons; 2000AD artist Jock; Japanese artist Junko Mizuno; Drowntown co-creator Robbie Morrison; leading US comics writer Gail Simone; the creator of the multi-award winning Bone Jeff Smith; Grandville and Luther Arkwright author Bryan Talbot, one of the Festival’s patrons alongside Sean Phillips and Mary Talbot; and Emma Vieceli will also join other comic creators for Kendal’s second comics extravaganza.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival  will be held on 17th – 19th October 2014 in the market town of Kendal, on the edge of the Lake District. Events include a 24 Hour Comic Marathon, children’s comic workshops, talks, signings, Great War in Comics art exhibition and a Comics Markteplace.

Tickets for all the events at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival are on sale now. For the full guest list, details of events and bookings visit: www.comicartfestival.com