The Grand Comics Festival 2013!

Intimidation tactics

The Grand Comics Festival last weekend was stupendous. I used a thesaurus to find a word other than “awesome”, and “stupendous” seemed pretty good. Plus “Fred the Baker™” on my 1986 Dunkin’ Donuts Merchandising Training video uses the word, and I try to be like him in every way except the Hitler moustache. 

The show was small enough for anyone browsing to check out every table without being overwhelmed, and there was a good variety of style & subject matter. I had the good fortune to be flanked by Pat Dorian (the organizer of the show) whose clean brushwork and excellent character design I greatly admire and Jess Ruliffson, whose ongoing series of interviews with veterans is truly engrossing.

Saturday was very well attended (with a lot of other cartoonists stopping by to jibber-jabber and/or shop). Sunday was much slower, which can surely be attributed to a combination of hangovers and brunch plans, but it gave all of us time to go check out each others work and do some jibber-jabbering of our own. I imagine the show will be cut down to just one day if it happens again (Pat mentioned doing another in the future).

The proximity to Foodswings (vegan fast-food) proved irresistible, and I ended up eating there twice a day, both days. I only mention it because it's sometimes hard to find decent veg options at shows, so this was another feather in GCF's cap for me. 

It turns out that this white male was a minority at the show in that I didn’t go to SVA. Apparently SVA is cranking out talented cartoonists. I mean, I guess I already knew that, but it was interesting to see so many in one place. 

All in all, I would consider it a stupendous success. Stupendous. 

DIGESTATE contributors at SPX 2012

Turns out 18 of the Digestate contributors will be at SPX this year, so we've put together this handy map in case you'd like to get your book signed by them.

Victor Kerlow, Josh Burggraf & J.T. Dockery will be at SPX, although they don't have a table this year. But, if you want them to sign your book, you're in luck! Victor & Josh will be signing at the Birdcage Bottom Books table (H13) from 1:30 until 2:30 on Sunday and J.T. Dockery will be signing from 3:00 until 4:00 on Sunday.

We'll be handing out copies of this map with each book, so don't worry about trying to print out this lo-res version!

Shout-out: Box Brown

DIGESTATE CONTRIBUTOR: 

BOX BROWN!

Box Brown is a cartoonist, illustrator and comic publisher from Philadelphia.  His comics have been featured in Mad Magazine and his illustrations have been on Wired.com.  His web and print comic "Everything Dies" was named a notable comic of 2011 in the Best American Comics Anthology and was honored with two Ignatz Awards.  His comics publishing outfit, Retrofit launched in 2011.  He's currently working on a comic biography of pro wrestler Andre the Giant.  

 boxbrown.com, retrofitcomics.com

Page from "Best Friends 4 Ever"

Editor's Note: I think Box won a Xeric grant in the same cycle as Sophia Wiedeman and me, because I remember meeting him around the same time as her. I always look forward to seeing what new minis he'll have at the various comic conventions at which we both have tables. The man is incredibly prolific. I consider it an accomplishment if I have a new comic at each convention, but Box seems to always have at least two or more new ones! 


I love his work for the same reasons I love James Kochalka's work: he is able to pare his drawings down to the essentials without losing any emotional impact. Clean, simple and easy to read. 


Oh, and I should mention how much I love his Retrofit Comics outfit. By subscribing you'll have a new "floppy" comic sent to you about once every month. It seems that most everyone has switched over to putting out graphic novels, so it's refreshing to have this neglected format embraced once again. 

Page from "Everything Dies" series

Page from "Ghosts & Aliens" ("Everything Dies" series)

Shout-out: Sophia Wiedeman

DIGESTATE CONTRIBUTOR:

SOPHIA WIEDEMAN!

Sophia Wiedeman is a comic artist who lives, draws, toils, and does all sorts of other things in New York City.  Her work has been featured in TimeOut New York, LMagazine, Top Shelf 2.0, gUrl.com, The Daily Cross Hatch, and RabidRabbit amongst other awesome and amazing anthologies and publications. 

Drawing from "The Lettuce Girl"

She is the author of the Xeric Award winning The Deformitory as well as her current series of fairy-tale imbued minis, The Lettuce Girl.  She spends her days working in publishing and her evenings preoccupied with monsters, braids, nibs, ink, towers, paper, and pondering the way a thick turtleneck folds over.  

Heart Monster!

You can check out her work on her website, sophiadraws.com, her blog,sophiadrawscomics.blogspot.com and her tumblr, sophiadraws.tumblr.com. You can also see her personally at comics festivals all around the place, including this fall at SPX in Bethesda, and The Projects in Portland, OR.  

Sample Illustration

Editor's note: I met Sophia through a friend of mine, Eric Collins, and because we both received a Xeric grant in the same cycle. Her Xeric comic, The Deformitory, is stunningly sad, adorable, funny and poignant all in one package. But, I have to say, her latest ongoing series, The Lettuce Girl, is even better. We are usually table buddies at SPX and King Con, where she also sells panties and onesies featuring that adorable little Heart Monster dude up there. Did I just say 'adorable' twice in one paragraph? I guess I did.

Sample pages from "The Lettuce Girl"

It's on!

Okay, so international playboy Victor Kerlow and myself will once again be sharing a table at the MoCCA indie-comic fest this year. Hopefully we will NOT be sharing any communicable diseases this year (last time I accept an offer to "take a pull" from his Rockstar Pink energy drink for ladies).

Sadly, me and Sophia Wiedeman didn't get our application for SPX in in time to get a table. BUT my local neighborhood comic buddy Jonathan Baylis has been kind enough to offer to share his half-table with me. I'm not sure how I'll fit everything on 1/4 table, but I'm more than willing to go vertical.

I'm moving full-steam-ahead on the third issue of 'Losers Weepers'. Just finished inking the whole thing, and now I'm starting the tedious task of coloring and laying it out. Here's a peek at the cover (uplifting as always!!)...

King Con II

Been a while since I rapped at ya.
King Con 2010 has come and gone. Sales weren't too great for me this year (they were the first year of King Con, though), but I met some more great folks so I can't complain. The NY Art Book Fair and the NY Marathon were both on the same weekend (I played human Frogger to get to the venue, barely avoiding being crushed by throngs of runners), so I think that put a little damper on attendance. I heard that a lot of small press comic publishers had tables at the Art Book Fair, and the Marathon caused a lot of disruption in bus/subway service.

I'd be lying if I said that sales aren't a part of why I do these comic conventions. So far (knock on wood) I've always made back what I paid for the table, sometimes even making a bit of profit. That's not easy to do selling comics that average about $3 or $4 each. This year I tried adding a "high dollar" item...$20 silk-screened t-shirts. Unfortunately, only one sold at the convention (although I've almost sold out of the first run using Etsy).

That said, the most important aspect of these shows for me is meeting other cartoonists, reviewers and the people that read my comics. As always it was a pleasure to share a table with Sophia Wiedeman. I was dismayed that L. Nichols wasn't in attendance, as she's been a welcome friendly face at every con I've tabled so far. Jonathan Baylis (So Buttons) and Jamie Tanner (The Aviary) are two talented dudes I had the pleasure to meet. For me, the true highlight of the whole con was running into Danny Hellman at a pizza place across the street after the first night. I recognized him from his self-portraits and we ended up flappin' our gums for quite a while as Danny's pizza grew colder and colder. I've followed his work since I moved to New York in 2001 (although he's been active since the late '80s). You can tell how much effort he puts into every illustration he does. The man never skimps, never takes a shortcut. It's always great when an artist you admire turns out to be a nice person as well.

Anyhow, that's my take on this year's King Con. See you at the next one!

SPX 2010

The somewhat bitter-sweet SPX was last weekend, and having a little distance from it now I think it went pretty damn well!

I say "bitter-sweet" because although I love almost every aspect of the Small Press Expo, I felt like people weren't buying many of our comics. Apparently it was an optical illusion, 'cause when I went home and tallied up the sales they were pretty much in line with previous cons. That is to say, we made back what we paid for the table, but lost money once you figure in gas, tolls, parking and food.

Luckily, comics aren't about money. If they were, these conventions would look like the Texas hill-country. I can't stress enough how nice it is to be in a room full of like-minded people. I spend the majority of my (working) time isolated, hunched over a drawing table. When I emerge from my dingy cavern squinting and shielding my pale face from the sun, I have to explain to people that, no, I don't draw comic strips like Garfield or Family Circus. Mine are generally populated by degenerates and addicts (who may or may not hate Mondays). There's no need to explain at SPX. Everyone gets it.

I got to catch up with a lot of old friends. I shared a table with Sophia Wiedeman again. Frienemy Ulises Farinas was to my left and L. Nichols was directly behind me. A surprising number of folks from my past (mostly Richmond era) stopped by the actual convention: A.Thomas Crawley, 'Becca & Jon, Webb and Vinnie Panizo. Even Lulu stopped by to help sell comics.

We stayed with our good buddy Sara Markese, and she showered the whole family with presents (I got a sweet pigeon shirt and a "#1 Pop Pop" hat). I had dinner with my old roommate Patrick Cavanagh and his new lady-friend Crystal, good buddy from Austin Paul Petersan & his lady-friend Kamber (chef extraordinaire at Sticky Fingers vegan bakery) and another VCU alumni Anna West.

All in all, it was a great success. My new comic (available here) didn't sell as well as I'd hoped, but you can't win 'em all.

SPX & New Comic!!

Oh man, it's been a while since I've written anything here. But that's for good reason. I've been working sun up to sun down to finish a new mini comic in time for SPX this weekend. I just now handed it over to the printer, so hopefully I'll be able to get them assembled, stapled and trimmed in time before we leave for Maryland tomorrow.

I'll be sharing a table (B13 - see map) with Sophia Wiedeman again. Unfortunately she hasn't had time to complete the next chapter of her "Lettuce Girl" story, which I was really looking forward to reading. That said, if you don't have the first chapter (or her other comics), c'mon by and pick it up!

My new one is sort of, but not really, a sequel to the "Tales of Good Ol' Snoop Doggy Dogg" mini. It is another collection of dreams (one of which features Snoop...again!), but this time there all sorts of celebrities (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dick Cheney, Roseanne Barr, Henry Rollins and Snoop) and the stories are longer and more developed. It's 20 pages and only a piddling four dollars. Oh, and it's called "It's Dream Time, Snoop Doggy Dogg". I know he goes by the abbridged "Snoop Dogg" these days, but "Snoop Doggy Dogg" sounds better in this context, I think.

Major thanks are due to Karen. The last few days she's done the lion's share of watching Lulu, and I suppose she'll do a little more of that while I'm selling at SPX. We're staying with our old pal Dr. Sara Markese, so Karen gets to hang out with her BFF while I'm at the convention.

Reviews in High Low / Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival

Rob Clough reviews a bunch of comics he picked up at SPX including "Old Man Winter & Other Sordid Tales", "Tales of Good Ol' Snoop Doggy Dogg" and "Losers Weepers #1" on High Low (click to read it).

He also reviews my table-mate Sophia Wiedeman's "My Terrible Tearable Heart", new comic friend L. Nichol's "Jumbly Junkery #7" and "J J #8", both of which I just picked up this weekend at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, as well as Julia Wertz's excellent "Legend of Rebob Mountain", Noah Van Sciver's depressingly funny eponymous mini comic and Jeff Zwirek's beautifully designed "Pinstriped Bloodbath" anthology of Chicago artists, all of which I also picked up at SPX.

The Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival was the first local fest that I haven't had a table at this year, and I was very upset by that fact. Of all the cons I've attended, this one seemed to jibe with my personal aesthetic the most. Nothing against traditional super-hero comics, but they're just not my bag and there were none to be found at this particular con. There were only about fifty or so exhibitors, and they seemed to all be really great. The place was packed the entire three hours I was there, and I almost couldn't make it to the next table without running into friends. There was no fee to get in, which undoubtedly helped combat the fact that it was sort of hailing outside.

I picked up some wonderful looking new (to me, anyway) comics at the con including a bunch of new ones from Matt Wiegle, an absolutely insane looking one called "I Want You" by Lisa Hanawalt that features lots of anthropomorphic animals wearing human clothing (one of my own favorite things to draw) and a new anthology featuring a two-pager about pigeons by yours truly. The anthology is called "SuperTalk", and it has pieces by some really really great artists that I've had the pleasure of working with in the past.

SPX mayhem / Losers Weepers #1 now available

The Small Press Expo was this weekend, and it was a sh*t-ton of fun. I shared half a table with Sophia Wiedeman, and the other half of the table housed the incredibly talented Josh Neufeld.

He's done a ton of comic work including several pieces for Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor", and most recently, "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge". While volunteering for Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Josh interviewed six residents of New Orleans affected by the destruction. He's turned their stories into an incredibly dense comic that I can't wait to read (it's next on my list, but I've got to finish a couple of library books before they're due!).

I debuted a new 44 page comic called "Losers Weepers #1" (first chapter in a series) which is now available on the Birdcage Bottom Books website along with my other books.

"Tales of Good Ol' Snoop Doggy Dogg" was once again my best selling item. Ulises Farinas of The Bear Party Collective told me a relevant joke that I then told to any and everybody who was within speaking distance. I will now tell it to you because it is awesome:
Q: What's brown and rhymes with 'Snoop'? A: Dr. Dre