This September – Sunday 25th to be exact – sees the launch of the Chester Comic Con, held at Chester Racecourse and running between 11am – 5pm, giving our intrepid reporter Olly MacNamee plenty of time to get up there from Birmingham without missing out too much of the day.

The city of Chester, as anyone can attest who has been there, is a beautiful backdrop for any event, made up as it is with mock Tudor buildings (mostly build in the 19th century, but fooling tourist for over 100 years now) and the real thing; here and there. And there’s a Roman wall too! But, I am bias, having grown up just a stone’s throw away in North Wales. It was always a treat to cross the border as a kid and enter the land of electricity and magic lanterns for a grand day out before hitching our carts to our horses back to our caves in the valleys and whatever we could hunt and gather on the slopes of Snowdonia. Halcyon days indeed. Nowadays, I hear Wales has even got the internet. Although a recent trip to see my sister cast a shadow on this as being actual fact.

But I digress.

This comic con promises the likes of artists Dave Taylor, Phil Winslade and local boy Neil Edwards, who has provided the art on an exclusive variant cover for DC’s Suicide Squad No.1 which, of course, can easily be signed by the man himself should you pop along. In fact, I have heard that there may well be issues pre-signed by Suicide Squad writer, Rob Williams, but these will be limited, so you might want to get there quickly if you’re after a copy signed by both Williams and Edwards, the variant cover’s artists. This cover was specially commissioned by Rhyl Comic and Disc Co’s Stuart Stevenson, the organiser behind the convention and I managed to bag an autograph from Williams last week at the ICE con here in Brum.

And, just recently announced, John Wagner, Judge Dredd co-creator, will be there too. The chance to meet the man behind the legend, and a guiding force for the character even today, nearly 40 years later, so go see him!

And, as is the way of the world, there will be guests from such magic lantern offerings as Guardians of The Galaxy (Spencer Wilding), Game of Thrones (Ross Mullan), Star Wars (Ken Colley) and the like. Of course, a full and up to date list can be read by clicking here.

Alongside these appearances will be a mini-funfair (not many – if any – comic cons can boast that), retro gaming (Mario Karts on the SNES please) and … well, take a look for yourselves here. I’m not your dad you know! I can’t do everything for you.

Keeping tickets low – a smart move given this is a new event in a small city – you’ll be paying either £7 in advance, or £9 on the day. Again, click here for advance tickets.

From what I can gather, this is a sensibly smaller comic con but I am sure, if it does succeed, it can only grow in future years.