Ok, so from the title this might sound like a teach yourself series, but it is more of a cautionary tale of what not to do. This is not to say that our launch party didn’t turn out well - it did, but just not as we’d first expected…

About 8 months ago, Becca and Myself (myself being Dave) met up with Will in Henry’s to discuss general Reynard City business, when Becca struck upon the fantastic idea of having a launch party for the first issue of the comic. Will, immediately taken by the idea went to purchase a bottle of Cava to celebrate, and the talk of what we could do at the party carried on into the night.

Things carried on as normal for a few weeks, with no one really thinking much of the party. Will then met through a friend of a friend (of a friend of a friend..) someone who worked at Po Na Na in Norwich, who told Will they could get us the venue for free.

Initially, Will organised a meeting with the people from Po Na Na to look around the club and discuss what they could do for us. The words he passed onto us from the meeting were as follows:

"If you pay £50, you'll have an OK night. If you pay £100 you'll have a good night. If you pay £150 you'll have a great night."

I was initially sceptical. What arbitrary and small figures to throw around when talking about booking a 300 capacity venue. I though I mentioned this to Will, who assured me it was all above board and he suggested he organise a meeting with all of us and the guys from Po Na Na to discuss the details and what they could do for us for the 3 seemingly random figures of money.

The date and time were set for a Saturday morning. Will, Becca and myself made our way down to the Pitcher and Piano - where we had organised to meet the guys - got ourselves comfortable and had a drink. Lucky that we’d got ourselves comfortable as we were in for a long wait. An hour and 2 phone calls later, our erstwhile contacts at Po Na Na finally turned up.

They turned out to be a charming pair, who after having some dinner (ie. keeping us waiting for another hour), put all our fears to rest and seemed very interested and into the idea of a comic book launch party.

"We can get you a guest list of 100, free flyers. We'll get some big cut outs of the characters made, we can do your 'Foxtail' (a cocktail concocted by Becca) at the bar. We can design your flyers, print out pages of the comic and posters to put up around the club. You can have a band playing - we have all of the equipment for that..."

The list went on and on and we were convinced. We’d pay £150 at the most and get the launch party of our dreams. We left the bar in high spirits, planning all the things we could do at our party, but things weren’t to turn out quite as we had expected…