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If you weren't coming to SPX before, you are now: this year's edition will sotlight Fantagraphics' 40 year anniversary with a TRUE all-star line-up including: Joe Sacco, Trina Robbins, Daniel Clowes and The Hernandez Brothers, Carol Tyler, Jim Woodring, Drew Friedman and Ed Piskor.

Via the SPX tumblr, a reminder that once San Diego Comic-COn is over it’ll be straight to the fall show line-up including the annual Small Ppess Expo in Bethesda, the annual Camp Comics for the indie inclined. Visionary master Jim Woodring created this animated poster, and a 3D version will be available at the show. […]

As the Sunday of SPX got started, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ron Wimberly over "breakfast" in the mostly vacant hotel restaurant to discuss his work past, present, and future, what it means to foster community, and how we can adjust the Dream. Wimberly is known for Prince of Cats, She-Hulk, as well as Lighten Up on The Nib. As a note, this is more of a conversation, so expect depth and breadth, not release dates.

Posted by Small Press Expo on Saturday, September 19, 2015 I’ll have a longer write up and thoughts on SPX a bit later, but for now I’ll just share SPX’s photo gallery, because I was too darned busy having a good time and talking about great comics to take blurry Hipstamatic photos. I love the above […]

It was a clean seep for female creators in the 2015 Ignatz Awards. Sophia Foster-Dimino won three of the bricks for her comic Sex Fantasy while Sophie Goldstein won two for her SF graphic novel The Oven. The complete list of winners is below, marked with a *** Outstanding Artist ***Emily Carroll – Through The […]

Although this year’s Small Press Expo’s theme is “Cartoonists of the 21st Century,” they are allowing cartoonists older than 30 to be guests as well. Just announced, the international slate, which consists of Frederik Peeters, Dylan Horrocks and Brecht Vandenbroucke —with more to come. And peep the Gemma Correll drawn poster above. This will be […]

While the chance for SPX exhibitors to pitch cartoon ideas to Nickelodeon as announced yesterday sounds like a good opportunity, there was quite a bit of controversy about it on social, as seen in these tweets. Click on the Gillman and Gran links to go to much longer discussions, but the basic objection is that SPX is a small press show that celebrates the joy of small press comics, and formalizing the participation of a major cartoon network/corporate brand at the show goes against that philosophy.

Millennial comics superstars Kate Beaton, Luke Pearson and Noelle Stevenson have just been announced as the first guests at this year’s SPX which will spotlight creators who have only worked in the 21st Century. So get ready to write either your 6000-word think piece or your series of tweets on what this all means.

This year’s SPX will be held September 19-20, with over 650 creators, 280 exhibitor tables, 22 programming slots and countless rollaway beds. IT’s the annual Camp Comics on the schedule and this sounds like a real watershed year.

Her humorous, quirky takes on history, literature and famous people propelled Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant! series of webcomics into a New York Times bestseller, as well as winning both the Harvey and Ignatz Awards. SPX 2015 will see the debut of Ms. Beaton’s latest compendium of comics, Step Aside Pops! A Hark! A Vagrant Collection  for Drawn and Quarterly. She also just published her very first children’s book,  The Princess and The Pony from Scholastic Books.
 
Luke Pearson‘s Hildafolk series started as a single issue comic that expanded into three volumes of Scandinavian inspired, critically acclaimed children’s books for the artistically daring publisher Nobrow. Mr. Pearson’s notoriety with the Hilda series and his other comics have led him to storyboard episodes of Adventure Time, as well as illustration assignments for such prestigious outlets as The New York Times, The New Yorker and the New Republic.
 
Noelle Stevenson’s hit webcomic Nimona  has just been nominated for a 2015 Eisner Award for Best Digital/Web Comic, on top of having the first Nimona graphic novel released last month by Harpercollins. Ms. Stevenson was one of the primary writers of the hit series Lumberjanes from Boom! Studios, which has just been optioned for a movie. She is now writing for such Marvel titles as Thor and Runaways, as well for the Disney series Wander Over Yonder. SPX is honored to host Ms. Stevenson as guest for the first time.

 
Small Press Expo (SPX) is the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels, and alternative political cartoons. SPX is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit that brings together more than 650 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, and distributors each year. Graphic novels, mini comics, and alternative comics will all be on display and for sale by their authors and illustrators. The expo includes a series of panel discussions and interviews with this year’s guests.
 
The Ignatz Award is a festival prize held every year at SPX recognizing outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning, with the winners chosen by attendees at the show.

As in previous years, profits from the SPX will go to support the SPX Graphic Novel Gift Program, which funds graphic novel purchases for public and academic libraries, as well as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), which protects the First Amendment rights of comic book readers and professionals. For more information on the CBLDF, visit their website at http://www.cbldf.org. For more information on the Small Press Expo, please visit http://www.spxpo.com.
 

Swedish randos (aka Dongery) from SPX 2005

§ There’s been some chatter over the last week or so over this public FB thread by Stephen Bissette about what he sees as exclusion of certain creators at indie comics shows. It sprang out of an older thread, and the conversation eventually includes Bill Kartalopoulos, who works with SPX and MoCCA, as well as Zack Soto of the just concluded Lineworks NW, Tom Spurgeon of the upcoming CXC show, and a lot of exhibitors past and present. The main complaint, it seems, is that there isn’t enough room at shows like SPX (the one which hurt the most feelings) and TCAF and Lineworks NW and so on and this leads to exclusion. Or as one Carl Antonowicz puts it:

If one’s work doesn’t meet the unstated aesthetic of the committee, one is out of luck.

Which is…yeah. If you’re gonna spend the money to put on an indie comics show—an undertaking so bereft of big profits that many of them are crowdfunded—you do get to choose what kind of comics you want to showcase there, and it turns out that people dedicated enough to actuallly put on a show generally have a pretty clear idea of what kind of comics they want to promote.

There are some sad stories in the comments—veteran cartoonist turned educator Don Simpson can’t get into the local indy show in his native Pittsburgh, and 90s mainstay David Chelsea was denied a table at Linework but gets a free table at the local Wizard show. And other people can’t get in and so on and so forth.

I have my own comment there, but if you read this site at all you can probably guess what I say: there are a zillion small shows out there and more coming. If you can’t find a local place to get set up and show your wares, you must live in a very remote spot. And yes, tables are expensive at some of these shows (but see next couple of items), but guess what: NO ONE PROMISED YOU’D BE ABLE TO MAKE MONEY AT THIS THING. There are more good cartoonists than ever and old-timers do have to compete against the new kids, who often have strong support networks via social media and colleagues from art school. And even if you build it, they may very well not come because you could be set up between Todd McFarlane and Kate Beaton.

Is this a competition? Sort of. While comics people are generally inclusive to a fault, the moment you put your first line on paper/screen you started competing for attention and acclaim (which come in unlimited amounts) and for money and space (which come in more limited amounts.)

One aspect of CAFs/indie shows that gets thrown around a bit in the thread is how they have become an alternative distribution system. It’s true a lot of publishers rely on CAFs to make a lot of their profits. This is far from healthy, but we’re still talking work that is of a niche appeal, and we have an indie comics reading audience that really likes buying their comics at shows where they can get a signed edition, have a personal transaction and maybe even buy some other stuff they didn’t know about that is normally warehoused in a shoebox under the creator’s sofa.

So while I understand the frustration of people who can’t get in to certain very popular events, there are lots of other ways to get out there. And all of this is going to change more. A column by the late great Dylan Williams from 2011 where he’s rethinking his convention strategy shows now much the landscape has changed in a more four years..and in four years it will have changed some more.

I think another underlying aspect of this is the youth movement in comics, and older creators feeling very much left out of the picture. But that deserves a post all its own.

§ Meanwhile, Bissette himself was a guest of the Big Wow Con in San Jose and reunited with the old Swamp Thing crew of Rick Veitch, Tom Yeates and John Totleben.

§ AAANNNNNNNDDDDD speaking of CAF/con economies, Barry and Leon, the Secret Acres boys, have posted their MoCCA Fest 2015 report and confront the money things head on. You’ll notice that MoCCA isn’t on the “dream list” for comics folks because tables are very expensive:

We’ve talked a bit about the con economy on this blog before. But let’s go there again. MoCCA has the highest table cost of any show we attend at $460 per table. That’s a whole $110 above SPX and a whopping $64.50 above TCAF. TCAF costs attendees nothing. MoCCA is five bucks. SPX is three times that, asking a whole fifteen dollar bill of everyone coming through the door. They look alike from here. Or do they? Tony Breed, a Chicago guy and our RIPE neighbor of a couple weeks ago, came by and said the most interesting thing: his sales at CAKE were slow, but he makes more money at that show than at any other. This year, we brought home something less than half of our take from MoCCA 2014. We made money. We can’t not make money. We live here.
Our most expensive show, by far, is TCAF. Believe us, if we could afford to skip customs and ship our books to Canada, we sure as shit would. Depending on the exchange rate, food and shelter and gas, we need to clean up every year or we go broke. We’re pretty sure Annie Koyama is making more money at TCAF than she could at any other show and, at any other show, break-even has got to be way up there for Koyama Press. We’ve enjoyed a couple of years of making more money at TCAF than we have at MoCCA, but we took home less money every time. And we’re a publishing company, micro or no. If you’re an artist making mini-comics, you’re not making table at MoCCA without a gang to split costs – and profits – and if you can’t make it there, you’re not making it anywhere else, either. How much are you saving traveling to Toronto or booking a room at the SPX Marriott? If not for the money, why bother with shows at all? Do we really need to answer that question?

§ Speaking of Secret Acres, they’ve joined the gang of small presses (Koyama, Uncivilized, Alternative, Nobrow, Enchanted Lion Arsenal Pulp, etc) that are being distributed by Consortium. Consortium seems to do good things for small comics publishers so good for them.

§ And speaking of Linework NW, it sounds like it went well:
And it’s a good one at that. In its first year, last year, Linework packed 3,000 people into the Norse Hall in northeast Portland. This year they expanded the festival to two days in an effort to thin the crowds, but if Saturday was any indication the event is only getting bigger. “I love it,” Portland artist John Black said at his booth. “It’s more of an illustrator’s (event), you know what I mean? It’s for people who make stuff.”

Standing room only in the @danielclowes panel! #lwnw2015

A photo posted by @lineworknw on Apr 19, 2015 at 3:37pm PDT

HASHTAG BLESSED pic.twitter.com/SwMlXZvX17

— Melanie Gillman (@melgillman) April 19, 2015

§ BUT over in Binghamton, NY, everything was coming up Milhouse for the local comic con:

More than one thousand people attended the River Road Comic Expo Sunday at Tioga Downs. The event was free and open to the public, and featured industry artists as well as local independent artists. “It’s great to have a place to come and be able to get a little face-to-face time and shake hands with the guys who make your day,” said illustrator Mike Capprotti. There were also vendors selling both new and old books and related products. “One of the great things about the pop culture community is that everyone’s really enthusiastic,” said expo organizer Jared Aiosa.

§ George Lucas has felt a tingling in the force and thinks Marvel might reboot Howard the Duck for the screen!!!

During the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, Lucas commented on negative movie reviews, noting how even the worst reviewed films can “float up to the surface of the lake, and then they become cult classics. … It means you made an interesting movie or a weird movie, and a small group of people love it.” He continued by saying, “Even Howard the Duck is a cult classic. I have a feeling that Marvel’s gonna redo it because of the technology they have today.”

§ In less frightening news, John Ridley, showrunner of American Drime and OSar winner for 12 Years a Slave, may be working on a show for Marvel/ABC reinventing an existing Marvel superhero character or property.” Vague as hell so it could be anything, even Howard the Duck.

§ Reminder, Bart Beaty and co. are analyzing the hell ouf of comics over at What Were Comics? including Fun Home and more.

§ I forgot to link to this cool of page of interviews from the pages of Frontier Hellen Jo, Sascha Hommer, Ping Zhu and Sam Alden.

§ Here’s an old link I had to an investigation of a crappy scraper site.

§ And an interview with Keith Knight who has seen it all and then made a funny comic strip about it. .

§ Juliet Kahn offers a list of The Best Anime And Manga For Beginners and i think it’s pretty solid, but she left out …..(enter a list of 1000 names)

§ Finally, Zainab Akhtar reviews Jillian Tamaki’s SexCoven, the small press book of the year thus far.

by Zachary Clemente

While at SPX this year, I was able to grab a quick word with seven amazing cartoonists about their work in Hana Doki Kira, a Shōjo comic and illustration anthology released earlier this year after a rather successful Kickstarter campaign. Not only filled with gorgeous work inspired by Shōjo – a sub-genre of manga covering a wide variety of subjects, often with a strong focus on human and romantic relationships. As the anthology itself describes:

Shōjo is known for its distinctive use of flowery imagery, magical plot devices, and romantic themes. Out book takes its title from three key elements of the Shōjo world: Hana meaning flower, Doki echoing the sound of a pounding heart, and Kira – the impression of sparkling beauty.

Contributors to Hana Doki Kira in attendance at SPX were: Alice Meichi Li, Carey Pietsch, Kris Mukai, Megan Brennan, Rebecca Mock, Tim Ferrara, and Annie Stoll – who served as “art director” on the project. I asked each their introduction to Shōjo, how it has influenced their work, and what working on an anthology was like.

Captive of the Roses by Alice Meichi Li

One of the most popular and influential Shōjo series, Sailor Moon was named as a gateway for many not only into the genre, but into comics in general.

When I was very young, one of my babysitters introduced me to Sailor Moon and at the time I had a serious need for stories about ladies and stories about girls who are fully-realized characters who got to be silly and dumb and got to express their wants and needs; but also be powerful and have agency in their own world. That started a life-long love affair. [...] I love stories about girls, about things girls love by women – it’s a wonderful thing. – Carey Pietsch

Megan Brennan: I wasn’t really into comics until some of my friends started reading Sailor Moon and other Shōjo comics and I realized that comics could be something completely different and I connected with it [Shōjo] really strongly. It was the only comics I read for a really long time because it was telling these stories I couldn’t get elsewhere; girls were the main characters, girl-things were important, and the things they cared would we life-changing and monumental; it was great. – Megan Brennan

Someone handed me Sailor Moon volume 10 in middle school at a school dance; I sat down, read the whole thing, my life was changed forever and I never looked back. – Rebecca Mock

It’s an understatement that there’s a drought in comics for stories starring or aimed at girls and it seems that many readers left wanted found what they needed in Shōjo such as Sailor Moon. Though he didn’t interact directly with Shōjo until later, Tim Ferrara remarked on how it informs his current work:

I didn’t actually grow up reading Shōjo; it was always a genre I thought should exist but I never knew that it did. [...] I’m glad it exists; it’s a needed genre – especially here in the States where we don’t have a lot of things that are representative for that demographic. – Tim Ferrara

Art by Janet Sung

Each artist is influenced or at least informed by Shōjo, many in the depiction of specific themes or use of ornate illustration.

There’s a lot of tropes that I use – a lot of decorative elements, lots of flowers, lots of sparkly things. [...] I also focus a lot on the clothing design and the hair. In Shōjo manga, there’s always beautiful, gorgeous, flowing hair. I love putting that in my art. – Alice Meichi Li

An untranslated copy of Candy Candy volume 10 was one of the earliest comics that I read and absorbed – and since I couldn’t read it, all I could do was look at their facial expressions and try to understand what was going on through the artwork alone. [...] One of the earliest things I learned from that was how to do was how to convey an emotion in a comic. – Kris Mukai

I think the themes and the beautiful linework have always been a big influence on me. My style is very sketchy and bold – you might think I would be more drawn to Shōnen, but there’s something beautiful about personal relationships as well as flowing lines that have always captured my heart. You may not think I’m a very Shōjo-inspired person, but I’m always thinking about beautiful lines and interesting stories. – Annie Stoll

It’s easy to latch onto the evocative beauty of how the work, but the influence Shōjo has had goes beyond that – granting an underserved readership access a necessary more.

It’s made me more conscious of writing all characters with agency; that’s something Shōjo manga does well – expanding beyond a traditional, mainstream narrative. I think some of the aesthetic seeps into my work too, I’m a fan of expressive faces and the ability to show emotion very clearly. – Carey Pietsch

It was a way for me to connect with comics. There’s a void in comics. [...] There’s comics for young kids and comics for young adults; but theres a gap there for pre-teens and young teens; there aren’t comics that speak to them and specifically not a lot of American comics that speak to girls. Shōjo fills that void, even if it’s cultural appropriation. These comics are coming from Japan – it’s an entirely different culture, we don’t really understand it, but even then there’s something there that we connect to viscerally and you can see how much they’ve caught on in a culture that they weren’t made for; there was such a hunger for that kind of comic. – Rebecca Mock

Art by Joyce Lee

Lastly, I was happy to hear that all were pleased with the process of working towards an anthology and though many only had the responsibility of working on their own pieces, they came together and pulled off the project with aplomb, befitting an homage a spectrum of manga.

I do participate in a lot of anthologies; I take it as a way of making new friends. I love getting to know new artists and just getting to be part of that group is an honor. – Alice Meichi Li

It was so cool seeing the final book come together because everybody else’s stories fit together but they were all so different. You could see completely different perspectives of the same basic ideas. – Megan Brennan

It was at times exhilarating; we felt very powerful with all the possibilities available to us. At other times, it was very stressful because we were taking on a huge responsibility for no reason other than we sat down one day and decided we wanted to do this. We had to commit to this idea that you just come up with without any set due date, nobody backing you; it was really empowering to know that we were able to create something from nothing. – Rebecca Mock

It was so much fun; we really lucked out with Rebecca [Mock] and Annie [Stoll], and the Year 85 Group is so wonderful. It was so excited to get to see other artists talk about their themes and show sneak-peaks of their process along the way, and they did a wonderful job putting it all together. – Carey Pietsch

It was good having that initial group of six people who were really interested in helping out; everyone had a very unique job or position – it was a little bit like a Shōjo manga honestly. [...] It was a really good balance of personalities that all worked together – it never felt like a competition. – Annie Stoll

On the actual process of putting together the Hana Doki Kira anthology, Stoll described how it was born out of love for Shōjo.

There was a core six of us who hung out and drew and once we realized that we all loved Shōjo manga and started talking about making some kind of anthology. We ended up structuring it kind of like a pyramid scheme where each of us would invite two or three more people into it, so before you knew it, we had 26 amazing artists that were all making new friends and talking about Shōjo. – Annie Stoll

Stoll is a seasoned veteran in the world of comic anthologies, contributing in the astronomically successful Valor campaign, actively working on the second volume of Hana Doki Kira, and launching an extraordinarily ambitious project, 1001 Knights - a people-positive, feminist bent collection, aimed at making a tome of illustrations, comics, and unconventional art representing no less than 1001 characters.

Here is the full list of the Hana Doki Kira contributing artists: Aimee Fleck, Alex Bahena, Alice U. Cheong, Alice Meichi Li, Anna Rose, Annie Stoll, Becca Hillburn, Carey PIetsch, Catarina Sarmento, Catherine, Chelsie Sutherland, Elisa Lau, Endy, Janet Sung, Kaitlin Reid, Kelly / Hkezza, Kris Mukai, Lindsay Cannizzaro, Megan Brennan, Rebecca Mock, Sarah O’Donell, Shelly Rodriquez, Sloane Leong, Stefanie Morin, and Tim Ferrara. For more, check out their Facebook and Tumblr pages!

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Following the hilarity of Fart Party and the hilarity tinged with self-examination of Drinking at the Movies and The Infinite Wait, cartoonist Julia Wertz proved herself one of the sharpest observers out there. However she’s been in hiatus from making new comics for the last two years, while getting a new reputation as an urban explorer. (If you want creepy, follow Wertz on Instagram.)

However, good news: Wertz is cartooning again and will have a new mini at SPX this one dealing with “girlie subjects.” And she’ll have plenty of other stuff as well:

I’ll be with Atomic Books from SPX opening until 4pm, then I’ll be with Koyama Press from 5-7. I’m signing with Renee French at Atomic, who I adore, so I’ll be more excited to be there than you will, I’m sure. To buy Museum of Mistakes, come by Atomic. To buy The Infinite Wait & Other Stories, come to Koyama. At both tables you’ll be able to buy this mini, but I will have tons of other stuff at Atomic, like original art, hand made trinkets, photos, posters, etc…so if you want all that hot garbage, swing by Atomic before 4pm. If you want both books, don’t worry, I won’t make you wait, I can totally sell you both at the same time.

Malachi Ward has been building up steam in the small press comics world the last few years. His latest release, Ritual 3: Vile Decay, has been met with critical acclaim, and he continues his strong creative collaboration with writer/artist/friend Matt Sheean on their self-published title, Expansion, and Prophet from Image Comics. His earliest works, Utu & Scout, introduced his distinctive character-driven, surreal, sci-fi stories to readers, and you can find similar themes explored in his paintings, as well.

Malachi Ward was raised in Yucaipa, California, and studied drawing & painting in college. Some of his biggest influences growing up included Calvin and Hobbes, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Spider-man comics. He currently lives in South Pasadena, CA with his wife Keiko.

Malachi will be attending the San Francisco Zine Fest this coming Labor Day weekend, Small Press Expo in North Bethesda, MD on September 13th & 14th, and Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco on October 4th & 5th. His work with Matt Sheean continues in Prophet Strikefile, hitting comics shops in the next few weeks.

You can order a copy of Ritual 3: Vile Decay at the Alternative Comics website.

You can follow Malachi Ward on his tumblr site here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

The post Comics Illustrator of the Week :: Malachi Ward appeared first on Illustration Friday.

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The 2013 edition of SPX has already kicked off with a radically enlarged show floor—the number of tables has been raised to 280, meaning there are an estimated 600+ exhibitors at the show. That is a lot of staples. Just how this bigger show floor translates into sales will be the big story of the year.

I’ll say one thing: the exhibitors definitely made a dint in the free pizza at last night’s Exhibitor’s Reception. Indie cartoonists are to free pizza what army ants are to Irina Spalko.

For a list of debut books, go here. Programming is here. We’ll be updating throughout the weekend with all the breaking news and blurry Hipstamatic photos you could possibly want.

Photo via the SPXcomics Instagram account.

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….so come on down!

Seriously…no pressure.

WHY am I giving a talk? Because I donated a bunch of my mini-comics from the 90s on to the Library of Congress, and as part of the SPX festivities, I get to give a little talk.

I’ve been pondering my subject—notable books in the evolution of the graphic novel that aren’t as much remembered as they could be—for a long time. But I’m still putting it together.

What’s on the list?

You’ll have to come to find out. (Because I haven’t finished the list yet.)

The talk is free and open to the public. More info here.

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Jeebus, its getting so you can’t even throw a SMALL press show without melting servers and frustrated tweets.

Table registration for this year’s Small Press Expo went live yesterday at noon, EDT. And it seems that the servers promptly crashed due to the overwhelming demand. While we missed the actual event due to a brunch obligation, it’s pretty easy to follow the trail of the tweets:

I stopped drawing my comic so I could look at a new comic online called “database error”. Ahhh. #SPXanxiety.

— dtamblyn (@dtamblyn) March 17, 2013

Has ANYONE successfully paid for a @spxcomics table yet? I haven’t even gotten the main page to load since noon.

— Alisa Harris (@CookingUpComics) March 17, 2013

This is getting intense, you guys. #spxcrash

— AtomicBooks (@atomicbooks) March 17, 2013

Gah, foiled. Trying to register for an@spxcomics table on my phone. #techfail

— Amy Chu (@AmyChu) March 17, 2013

Ok guys, we’re going to call it.Even with all the problems you guys sold out the show in minutes. I cannot apologize enough for the issues

— The Small Press Expo (@SPXcomics) March 17, 2013

It’ll be a weird spx w/out fantagraphics, i heard Gary Groth got pissed & gave up after 45 min of beachballs at checkout.

— SACK ZOTO (@zacksoto) March 17, 2013

All the tables sold out despite the glitches within an hour. The SPX executive team sent out a letter of apology later in the day which read in part:

After literally weeks of testing and refinement and getting the software to run perfectly, (we SWEAR it works, REALLY!), it came to being let own because our ISP refused to help us.

Last week, after describing the flood of people that would hit this morning, they told us to upgrade the account and they would move our web site to a bigger server that would allow more connections, CPU and memory. 

Which we did.

Then, when faced with still sub-par response time, they told us to upgrade to their better caching service.

Which we did.

But when the tsunami wave of people wanting tables hit at about 11:50AM today, the site immediately collapsed anyway.

Our host then steadfastly refused to help us by upping our service, even briefly, to help us process your requests.

We were appalled.

While certain legacy tables — the big publishers at the show — are grandfathered in to tables, as you can see from the above, a lot of people were wishing and hoping for a table and got denied. The show added more space last year, but demand keeps growing. Even indie comics are big business now. Is it time to scale back these “golden tickets to kiss One Direction and pat San Lee on the back will go on sale at 1:01 pm Tuesday” type announcements? Maybe, but there doesn’t seem to be any other way to put these much-desired elements on sale either.

The Small Press Expo will be held September 14-15 in North Bethesda, MD. It isn’t a juried show—hence the excitement to buy a table—but now it’s kind of a lottery.

UPDATE: here’s Roger Langridge’s recreation of the registration experience:

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Over the weekend this year’s Small Press rolled out their first poster by Jeremy Sorese, and the first hint ogf this year’s guests: Lisa Hanawalt, Gene Yang, Frank Santoro, Gary Panter and Seth.

Great guests, great poster, great show.

This year’s Small Press Expo, to be held September 15-16 in Bethesda, has one of the most amazing guest line-ups in forever, with Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Francois Mouly, Adrian Tomine and MORE. Programming director Bill Kartalopoulos has out done him self with a program that covers all the bases and more. Suffice to say we’ll be glued to the two programming tracks.

British Comics: Does it Translate?
11:30 am | White Flint Auditorium
The UK has a deep comics tradition of both mainstream and alternative production, and has seen a recent resurgence in the hands of enterprising young artists and a new breed of publishers with an international outlook. Panelists Nick Abadzis (Laika, Hugo Tate), Sam Arthur (Nobrow), Glyn Dillon (The Nao of Brown), Ellen Lindner (Undertow), and Luke Pearson (Everything We Miss) will discuss the British comics landscape and its connections to European and American comics culture with critic Rob Clough.
 
Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby and the American Clear Line School
12:00 pm | Brookside Conference Room
In a canny mix of fantasy and satire, amplified by the clean minimalism of Crockett Johnson’s line, Barnaby (1942-1952) expanded our sense of what comics can do. Though it never had a mass following, this tale of a five-year-old boy and his endearing con-artist of a fairy godfather influenced many. To mark the launch of The Complete Barnaby, Dan Clowes, Mark Newgarden, Chris Ware, and the book’s two co-editors — Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds and Crockett Johnson biographer Philip Nel — discuss the wit, the art, and the genius of Barnaby.
 
Jaime Hernandez: The Love Bunglers
12:30 pm | White Flint Auditorium
Jaime Hernandez and his brothers launched the alternative comics era with their epoch-defining series Love and Rockets. From 1981 to the present, Hernandez has produced a singular body of work tracing the life of Maggie Chascarillo and her vast network of friends, family, neighbors, rivals and lovers. In recent years, Jaime has, again, broken new ground with brilliant comics novellas that remain accessible to new readers while building upon years of narrative to invest his stories with a profound emotionality. He will discuss his work with artist Frank Santoro.
 
Publishing During the Apocalypse
1:00 pm | Brookside Conference Room
It is the best and worst of times for small press publishers. As the greater publishing industry faces major economic contractions and challenges from new media, smaller publishers must navigate the same difficult waters with fewer resources, while taking advantage of the opportunities that arise in times of turmoil. Leon Avelino (Secret Acres), Box Brown (Retrofit Comics), Anne Koyama (Koyama Press), and John Porcellino (King-Cat/Spit and a Half) will discuss the current publishing landscape with comics journalist Heidi MacDonald.
 
Françoise Mouly: A Groundbreaking Career
1:30 pm | White Flint Auditorium
In 1980 Françoise Mouly co-founded RAW Magazine, the groundbreaking avant-garde comics anthology she co-edited with Art Speigelman. In 1993 she became Art Editor of The New Yorker, choosing and developing the iconic magazine’s cover images in an ongoing national conversation on the issues of the day. In 2008 she launched TOON Books: an

2 Comments on SPX announces incredible programming slate, last added: 8/17/2012

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Chris Rice said, on 8/17/2012 12:12:00 PM

Oh my god, that’s an amazing line-up of panels. It’s literally the best of indie talent. I hope it all gets recorded and made available somewhere.

Marc Arsenault said, on 8/17/2012 1:23:00 PM

“Life after Alternative Comics” Hmmmm.

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