This week my employers, The University Of Hertfordshire are dabbling their feet into the world of comics with Hertfordshire’s first full fledged comics festival, Uni Comics. Starting today and running until Sunday, there’s a veritable gaggle of events taking place and if you’re nearby (hint: if you live in London you’re more nearby than you think) I’d say it’s well worth popping along to a few of them.

As our own little contribution towards event, myself and Sean Azzopardi have organised Uni Con, the festival’s very own comics convention. Taking place this Saturday at the university’s de Havilland campus in Hatfield, the con is running from 10am to 5pm and will cost you the grand sum of zero English pounds to enter. The great and the good of the British comics scene will be on hand to sell their wares and shoot the breeze, plus the esteemed Mr. Noble has been drafted to organise a series of panel discussions that are sure to both enlighten and entertain. And what’s more, there’ll even be a brand new issue of The Rule Of Death on sale as a further incentive to attend – what further reason could you possibly need? See you all on Saturday!

So I think it’s time to make it official – Welcome ladies and gentlemen to E-merl 7.0! I know right now it may look a bit similar to the ol’ 6.0 design, but under the hood it’s an entirely different beast. Just one regular weekly webcomic series? Hell no! E-merl 7.0 is running three! Tune in on Mondays for the brand new 100 Planets, check us out on Wednesdays for the metafictional thrills of The Nile Journals and then pop back again every Friday for the latest episode of The Rule Of Death.

This new profundity of comics coolness was made possible by the excellent Webcomic suite for WordPress, which came via a recommendation from Jesus & Mo. It really leaves ComicPress in the dust in terms of functionality and ease of use – well worth a look if you’ve a webcomic site of your own to manage. I’m still banging around a bit behind the scenes so expect to see a few more changes and upgrades come online across the next few weeks. I might even give the old colour scheme a facelift if I can find a new one that takes my fancy – stay tuned!