Microcombobulated at SPX

Posted on September 26, 2014 by James Romberger

When I first came to live in New York City in the early 1980s, I worked for a while as a low-paid xerox temp at the World Trade Center. It wasn’t a job I loved. The WTC elevators were unnerving, the vertiginous stairwells even worse and both towers swayed perceptibly in the wind—and I wasn’t overly thrilled with my fellow laborers, at least not with the male “suits” who tended to elbow past the female workers to direct me to do their copy orders first. But in my off-time, I managed to do a little surreptitious production, of several street posters for bands and of art that would find its home in my roommate Seth’s then-new political comics zine World War 3 Illustrated—and also to print a few minicomics (well, I didn’t call them that, but that is what they were), which I consigned to St. Mark’s Comics for a dollar or two. I was eventually fired for serving secretaries before executives and after the WTC blew up the first time, I never went near the place again. That was the end of minicomics for me for some years.

A few weekends ago, I roadtripped with several cartoonists to Bethesda, Maryland for the Small Press Expo (SPX). Besides my usual occupation of Tom Kaczynski’s Uncivilized Books table to flog the ebbing supply of my collaboration with my son Crosby, Post York, I was there to debut my minicomic called “Daddy” written by the very, very scary Josh Simmons and published in two colors by Oily Comics. Also, I wanted to be present for the premiere of the print magazine Study Group #3D, for which I contributed a way-too-personally revealing essay/comics adaptation of a William Burroughs piece, a project that had its genesis in an aborted posting for this site. And these things I did do.

SPX resembles the MOCCA Festival and Comic Arts Brooklyn in that like them, it is bereft of the fetishistic superheroes that taint the American mainstream comics industry and also of the Hollywood movies, wrestlers and porn stars that tend to drown out comics at mainstream ComicCons. SPX and other alternative/literary comics gatherings are comprised of people who do comics apparently for the sheer love of the artform rather than to advance obviously mercantile impulses. A significant percentage of the audience at these shows is comprised of the vendors, who patronize each other and form mutual support networks. A good part of the product of these shows are minicomics, quite small xeroxed or offset pamphlets much like the ones I made at the WTC, but often printed on a copier called a risograph which allows for multiple colors. Occasionally, these budding talents will print a comic book “floppy” in full color on slick paper just like the slick output of DC, Marvel or Image, but the effect of alt/lit concept in mainstream drag can be disconcerting. As well, many publishers seem to do well with small prints, limited edition silkscreen booklets and also, many surprisingly young artists have completed graphic novels in a variety of styles, genres and formats.

Lord knows that I held back from long-form efforts for many years—I preferred to hone my skills in short stories. However, publishers balk at anthologies these days. “They don’t sell” is the mantra they chant, despite a comics history that includes such anthology “failures” as decades of romance, war and horror comics at many publishers, all of E.C.’s output including Mad, Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, Zap and other underground titles, Heavy Metal, Weirdo, Raw, MOME, Kramer’s Ergot, etc…in other words, many publications that not only sold well for extended runs, but moved the artform ahead. So people are expected to labor for years in isolation (since the default mode in the alternative is for cartoonists to work solo as auteurs) to make 100-page-plus books, for which they have few sounding boards and little or no income in the process.

At any rate, after an period spent in the mainstream in which I drew a few long books but under restrictive circumstances and unhappy with the results, I have forsaken page rates to regain control over my work. In order to immerse oneself in this brave new world of long or short literate art comics for the small press, one needs to frequent shows like SPX, and of course being who I am, I feel the need to share the details with everyone. And so, I present the following set of minireviews of minicomics and books, which represent but a fraction of what I came back with from my trip to Bethesda.
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It Never Happened Again: two stories by Sam Alden
Uncivilized Books $11.99

I didn’t buy the book by this young cartoonist that won the Ignatz award at the show, Wicked Chicken Queen from Retrofit, but I got two of his earlier efforts, Haunter from Study Group and It Never Happened Again from Uncivilized Books. Both books have an improvisational feel; the bright yet moody watercolors of Haunter carry a large part of the impact of the narrative and the sweet and loose-appearing, but apparently lightboxed, pencil drawings of It Never Happened Again provide atmospheric effects that enhance the delicacy of Alden’s stories.
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Houses of the Holy by Caitlan Skaalrud
Uncivilized Books $6.00

This mini is made up of a series of full-page, nicely rendered surreal drawings accompanied by poetic snatches of text and punctuated by regularly-paced numbered panels. They tell an oblique narrative that despite its title, doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Led Zeppelin. It is a dark fever dream, sort of on the order of The Cage, Martin Vaughn-James’s nightmarish masterwork that was recently reissued by Coach House Books. Tom K tells me that the artist of Houses of the Holy was an outstanding student of his at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and that this is an excerpt from a much longer work that Skaalrud has in process. Uncivilized Books will publish it upon completion and I will be anticipating it.
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Reptile Museum by Cody Pickrodt
RayRay Books #2: $4.00 #4: $2.00

Cody Pickrodt’s post-apocalyptic saga Reptile Museum reflects the artist’s knowledge of martial arts and his effective storytelling is comprised of pages that take the form of fluid series of free-hanging vignettes. The precise lines and rubbery high-speed physicality of Cody’s comics remind me of nothing so much as the frenetic crime stories of the tragic Plastic Man creator Jack Cole.
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Eye Sees Eye by Kate Lacour
self-published $8.00

One of several people who felt the need to inform me of how fucked-up they found “Daddy” to be (I’m totally aware of this and in fact, it is why one would work with Josh Simmons!), this artist came to the Oily table to eyeball me and give me a creepy body-revulsion pamphlet called Hole/Human. Later I passed by her table and examined this book. I didn’t buy it, but it has stuck in my head enough to include it here because it reveals Lacour to be quite accomplished; her anatomical renderings are striking.
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Little Tommy Lost by Cole Closser
Koyama Press $15.00

I got a copy of this at SPX, but I had perused it earlier this year when I was an Eisner judge. It ended up as a nominee and deservedly so: Little Tommy Lost replicates the look and tone of clippings of a daily/Sunday strip from the late 1930s quite beautifully. The story of abused urchins does seem as if it might well have been someone’s grampa’s favorite serial strip, now lovingly preserved for posterity.
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Jesus Christ, Jared! by Rainy
self published $10.00

This comic is an example of slick printing applied to alternative content to odd effect, but the cover is a compelling use of Photoshop. Of course I am known to be not much of a fan of digital color; still, if it must be done, let it be used to render tears in such an extremely visceral way! The comic is a highly emotional reaction to the persecution of Middle American gay youth by fundamentalist Christians. It is disconcerting to see teenagers who are drawn to look otherwise hip ostracizing the protagonist for furthering the “gay agenda.” This also reflects a phenomena that I saw at SPX that I hadn’t noted at previous comics events: a preponderance of overtly LGBT participants who are finally welcomed to this most intimate and personal of mediums. Rainy and her also talented partner F. Lee positively glowed at their table. SPX’s aura of inclusivity was extended when later, the Ignatz awards ceremony was officiated by a host in drag.
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Fuff #9 by Jeffrey Lewis
self published $2.50

I first met Jeffrey Lewis in the early 2000s, when he would visit my partner Marguerite Van Cook and I in our old studio in our building’s basement, a refuge that we lost when our landlord freaked out after 9/11 and decided that restaurants were preferable tenants. Even then, Jeffrey’s work had a fully developed sense of place and he would draw some of the most carefully-rendered buildings in comics. In the time since, Jeffrey has stayed the course to produce one of the last standing alt floppy comic books Fuff, while simultaneously pursuing a healthy career in music with his band The Jrams. His strong grasp of the urban landscape is on display, as well as an acute ability for self-caricature, as in the current issue wherein he engages in pitched discourse with his drawing table and imparts the complexities of his love life, in the grand tradition of revelatory alternative autobiographics.
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It Will All Hurt #2 by Farel Dalrymple
Study Group Comics $8.00

Farel Dalrymple was selling the original art for his First Second book The Wrenchies at SPX and they are very pretty efforts indeed, complete in ink and watercolor. It Will All Hurt is a floppy edition of his ongoing webcomic at Zack Soto’s studygroupcomics.com, also executed in watercolors, but with a very extemporaneous storyline. Farel also did the art for a few of the most effective issues of Brandon Graham’s version of the Rob Liefeld Image Comics title Prophet, or at least I found them so; my feeling is that kids would totally love to pour over these comics again and again, each time finding new details in the densely packed pages.
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Titus and the Cyber Sun by Lale Westvind
self published $7.00

I’m beginning to see other young alternative cartoonists who, like Dalrymple, are not afraid to use the trappings of science fiction and fantasy, as can be seen in the success of Prophet and other genre-ish efforts. The more recent books of Lale Westvind are in color; those brought to my mind something of the psychedelia of Victor Moscoso, but I was mainly drawn to her black and white comic Titus and the Cyber Sun, which in its ornate stipplings is reminiscent of the French cartoonists of Metal Hurlant and the underground works of the seminal graphic novelist George Metzger.
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Captain Victory #2 by Joe Casey, Nathan Fox, Michel Fiffe and Brad Simpson
Dynamite $3.99

This isn’t a minicomic or even alternative per se, but it is a continuation of a title begun by Jack Kirby in the early 1980s for a fledgling publisher, Pacific Comics—-that just as I was making my little minicomics at the WTC, literally began the direct market in comics that led to the scene I am describing here—and Captain Victory was the final significant expression by that great cartoonist and brilliant founder of so many comics concepts, as I wrote on this site here. An earlier revamp of the title by Dynamite appeared a few years ago, but it was a cheesy regurgitation of Kirby overwhelmed by what I would term “rainbow unicorn barf” art by Alex Ross and others. This slick new version also seems a rehash of Kirby’s ideas, but the art this time out is done in a vigorously explosive fashion by SVA illustration czar Nathan Fox, working in tandem with some of the alt/lit scene’s more adventure-comics-oriented talents such as Jim Rugg, Ulises Farinas and (pictured) Michel Fiffe, maker of the popular sci-fi series Copra.
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Middle School Missy by Daryl Seitchik
? $3.00

I’ve found Daryl’s Oily Comics work to be very amusing and well-drawn; this particular issue of her title Missy doesn’t name its publisher, but it manages the neat trick of being both slick and a minicomic at once! I wouldn’t be surprised to see her rolling in bucks like Scrooge McDuck after Missy becomes one of those edgy, not-really-for-kids animated shows on TV at some point.
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Comics Workbook #5
Comics Workbook $1.00

For five bucks, I was able to buy all five issues of this fascinating interview zine, which incidentally resembles my only other self-published effort, the xeroxed zine Comic Art Forum from the early 2000s that I produced with Marguerite. Comics Workbook is a by-product of Frank Santoro’s comics-making classes. The various issues include conversations with Sam Alden, Dash Shaw, Lala Albert and others as well as original comics by Derik Badman, Sarah Horrocks and more, plus articles and reviews by Warren Craghead, Nicole Rudick and the list goes on. In particular, I enjoyed Zach Mason’s exchange with “Ladydrawers” Melissa Mendes and Anne Elizabeth Moore about nonfictional activist comics. I also appreciate Melissa’s poignant Oily production Joey, which details a parental disruption and its effect on the children involved; the art is finished in watercolors and the book looks to be printed by color laserjet, pressing the limits of the minicomic format.
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The Tiny Report: Micro-Press Yearbook 2013 by Robyn Chapman
Paper Rocket $3.00

Unfortunately, I missed all of the panels at SPX and I especially regret not seeing artist and Paper Rocket publisher Robyn Chapman’s presentation about micropublishing, but her Tiny Report (cover above by Chuck Forsman) provides a well-organized orientation to the world of small press comics and independent publishing. Robyn rode back to NYC with us and so I was able to quiz her on the way about what is perhaps the most serious issue facing micropublishers today: distribution. Diamond distributes most mainstream comics, but they refuse to carry a lot of smaller publishers’ books, which makes their stranglehold on the business look monopolistic. In NYC, for instance, it seems that in Manhattan, minicomics and other products of the alt/lit scene are only carried by Forbidden Planet, Jim Hanley’s Universe and Carmine Street Comics and in Brooklyn, only Desert Island and Bergen Street Comics. Those are distributed mostly by the apparently overextended Tony Shenton. It sure looks from here like there is a void to be filled by some enterprising distributor, given the vitality of the micropublishing scene.

Some of the biggest mainstream comics publishers do not use Diamond for bookstore distribution of their graphic novels and collections; for instance, both DC Comics and Dark Horse have deals with Random House. More recently, the book trade distributor Consortium Books has been placing the graphic novels of alt/lit publishers Uncivilized Books and Koyama Press in major book retailers around the country—and the word is that the British artcomics imprint NoBrow and Françoise Mouly’s Toon Books have now joined with Consortium, which ups the ante somewhat.
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SPX: Different Shows for Different People

Posted on September 17, 2013 by RM Rhodes

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In a comment to my post from last week, R. Maheras wrote:

“I was at SPX today, and almost every complaint about homogenized superhero comics can probably be made about contemporary small press.

There’s a relative sameness pervading contemporary small press that I don’t remember seeing during the small press explosion of the 1980s.

Zombies, cutesy creatures/monsters, or reality-based angst comics seemed to be bulk of what’s available these days.

In the 1980s, I was snapping up dozens of small press comics every month. At SPX, While I spent about $120, I was hard-pressed to find stuff I wanted to sample. One of the more interesting things I found was actually what creator Pat Barrett himself only half-jokingly labeled a screed: “How to Make Comics the Whiner’s Way.” I thought it was actually a pretty good indictment of what appears to be a substantial faction of today’s small-pressers.”

I was also at SPX this weekend. This comment made me want to use my words and Noah was kind enough to put this up as a separate post instead of hiding it in the comments.

I’ve been going to SPX since 2002 – a few years covering the show for a small local magazine here in the DC area, then one year as a volunteer, and this was my sixth year selling my own comics as the man in the purple suit. (Full disclosure: I also maintain the SPX Good Eats Google Map.)

Over the course of the past decade, my wife and I have come up with a game at SPX. She goes off and finds stuff and I go off and find stuff. When we compare our finds, we ask each other “where did you get that?” It’s very obvious that what she finds interesting in comics is very different than what I find interesting in comics and we always spot very different things at the show, so much so that it’s almost like we’re at completely different shows. I tend to regard that as a feature, not a bug.

My wife picked up Pat Barrett’s book for me and she talked to him about it. He told her that it was written in response to people who knew they wanted to make comics but didn’t know what they wanted to create. Mind you, that’s hearsay so it’s impossible to say exactly what his intention was (and I argue that we should look at the primary source instead of the author’s intent anyway). Having read the book last night, I saw a very pointed sendup of “How-To” books, especially those that are aimed at teaching people how to draw. And yes, there was a lot snark aimed at autobiographical comics, which were all the vogue a few years ago.

One of the interesting things about comics these days is the conventional wisdom that if a comic isn’t about superheroes then it’s pretty much automatically not commercially viable. And that lack of concern about whether or not a book is going to sell has opened the floodgates to allow just about every kind of comic under the sun – both in terms of subject matter available, art style and format. And, as far as I’m concerned, the best thing about indie comics is the almost complete lack of homogenization or sameness on offer.

For example, on my row of tables (I was on what Rafer Roberts called “the fifty yard line” of the room) there were Warren Craghead and Simon Moreton’s minimalist comics, a gay porn space opera, my eclectic collection of books, video game inspired books, and a guy selling bad caricatures and an apology for a dollar. There was also a wide range of books available from the DC Conspiracy, Interrobang Studios, Nix Comics and the Spider Forest Webcomics Collective.

My must-buy book of the show this year was my friend Marguerite Debaie’s A Voyage to Panjikant, a meticulously researched historical fiction about traders living on the Silk Road in the Seventh Century. It’s a beautiful book that’s colored entirely in watercolor. I also picked up a space opera comic called Galaxion by Tara Tallan, simply because it looked interesting. I even went out of my way to pick up the few books from Frank Santoro’s Comics Workbook competition that were at the show – Jared Cullum’s Baba’s Accordion, Alexey Sokolin’s Freefall, and Alexander Rothman’s Vespers.

Not a one of these are “[z]ombies, cutesy creatures/monsters, or reality-based angst comics,” but it’s easy to understand why it seems like that’s what the room had to offer. With such a large variety of material to choose from, it was impossible for any single individual to wrap their arms around everything that was available. I think a certain amount of confirmation bias does tend to creep into what people tend to see at shows like this when the options are so overwhelming. We see what we expect to see because there is no way to really carefully evaluate everything.
I saw volumes of Shakespeare that contained beautiful handcut paper illustrations. I saw a comic printed on a strip of canvas. I saw comics that were printed at mini comic size, traditional comics size, magazine size, square format, horizontal format, and were massively oversized. I saw comics that were photocopied and hand-stapled. I saw mass-printed books with beautiful production values. I saw parody books that were waiting patiently for cease-and-desist letters and wonderful original concepts.

And yes, I did see some zombie books because zombies are big in pop culture right now. I saw autobiographical comics because most first novels are bildungsromans and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that comics follow the same patterns as novels. And there is always a great deal of cutesy stuff on display because the one thing that always sells at a show of such magnitude is a quick, easy hook that makes you laugh and only costs a few bucks.
And yes, you could make some of the same complaints about the books available at SPX that can be made about superhero comics – some are poorly drawn, some are poorly written and some are not well thought out at all.

But you cannot complain that indie comics have crippling continuity issues that prevent newcomers from picking them up. You cannot complain that indie comics present a straight white male view of the world that is not friendly to women and minorities (in fact, there was a greater preponderance of books with the word “feminist” in the title this year than there has been in years past). You cannot complain that indie comics are dominated by white males (the creator split was about 50/50 gender-wise, not so much racially). You cannot complain that indie comics are mired in endless editor-driven events that force you to buy a dozen books to get the full story. You cannot complain that indie comics have devolved into corporate IP farms whose stewards are more interested in maintaining the long-term viability of characters than they are in character development.

The real joy of attending a show like SPX is that everyone in the room is there because they want to be – because they are desperately, passionately in love with the medium and the possibilities inherent in comics. And yes, the creators would really like to make money. But most of them know that they will probably not break even, but for some weird reason they show up anyway.
Given that half of the people exhibiting at SPX this year were there for their first time, it’s entirely possible that a good portion of them went for the easy options and chose the same basic topics that most newbies choose. But if that’s all you saw then you were not looking very hard because there was a lot of weird, crazy, interesting, creative, exciting stuff available. I had to stop browsing because I went over budget twice – and I intentionally avoided the big publisher tables. I’d even go so far as to say that there was a book in the room for just about anyone from any walk of life. And that’s absolutely not something that you can say about mainstream superhero comics.

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“Comics as a Spiritual Pursuit” versus “People Don’t Buy Comics” – Thoughts after SPX 2011

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Caro

The Small Press Expo is really two festivals, simultaneous and inseparable but nonetheless distinct – the one where cartoonists talk to other cartoonists (and publishers and journalists and critics) about their work and their craft and their inspiration, and the one where comics fans and curious people come to collect mini-comics, buy compilations, fill sketchbooks, get autographs, see what it’s all about and meet those cartoonists. SPX cartoonists are exceptional people. And SPX is, ultimately, not so much about comics as it is about cartoonists themselves – cartoonists as a source of creative inspiration for each other and for the rest of us.

When I attended my first SPX, I had a vague grasp of the idea of art comics but I had read very little – Eddie Campbell’s “Fate of the Artist” and Dash Shaw’s “The Mother’s Mouth.” I read the Shaw because I was writing a regular books review column for a Virginia-based magazine and Shaw at the time was living in Richmond, so it fit my “local author” requirement. The Campbell was specially and insightfully selected as the “Right Way to Introduce Caroline to Art Comics” by a friend who resisted giving me comics to read until “Fate” matched up with the things I’d said I liked about literature. (It remains, as everybody here knows, one of my favorite books period, of literature or comics.) So I was primed for the notion that comics were Art, but nonetheless not quite prepared for the headiness of SPX.

That first SPX afforded me the opportunity to speak directly about art – not just comics, but art and writing and criticism as well – with cartoonists like Austin English and Nick Abadzis and Juliacks, and with critics like Gary Groth and Douglas Wolk, and it gave me the opportunity to hear really intelligent panel discussions about making art, featuring not only Nick and Austin but John Hankiewicz, and Tom Kaczynski, and C.F. and Kim Deitch. Those conversations, passive and active, were about comics on the surface, but for me, without a lot of comics reference points, they were every bit as much about art in general – about inspiration, about making yourself creative, about doing the work.

I’ve had a similar experience at every SPX I’ve attended since.

After this year’s show, when we were all coming down from the high, Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF commented that “if you let it, [SPX] will reorient you towards comics as a spiritual pursuit,” and the sentiment gets at exactly what’s always made SPX so compelling. Until I started writing for HU, the culture of art comics in my experience was the culture of SPX. And the culture of SPX is extraordinary, because of those extraordinary cartoonists – 300 or so of them – and the conviction and imagination they bring to the show. I love comics because I love SPX. And I love SPX because the cartoonists’ passion for comics is an airborne intoxicant everywhere you go during the festival. At SPX, the cartoonist is the medium, transmitting the force and effect of comics’ potential to everyone in the room.

I think most people who come to SPX experience at least some of that intoxicating excitement, and I think we recognize it as one of the festival’s most valuable assets – especially for getting neophytes like I was to care more about comics and what they have to offer. Recognizing it, though, isn’t enough — we have to get that excitement airborne before the festival, so that it arouses curiosity in people who wouldn’t normally come to a comics event. And we have to get it into media that reaches that audience locally.

Coverage of SPX within the comics blogosphere is always strong (thanks everybody!). This year, advance coverage of SPX in local media was much more extensive than in any previous year – and we had a packed floor on Saturday as a result. That coverage was due, again, to cartoonists: the festival’s slate of high-profile guests was exceptionally strong this year, thanks primarily to Executive Director Warren Bernard’s months-long efforts with publishers and individuals. But the coverage goes into something of a vacuum, because most non-comics readers, including many journalists, have little to no frame of reference when they see an article about alt-comics. Mainstream media outlets, even the indie alt-weeklies, aren’t attentive to the books and cartoonists through the year (they often don’t really do “arts” coverage at all.) Non-comics readers aren’t primed to think of comics as a medium rather than a genre; they don’t get historical references; they have different expectations from people who are already in alt-comics’ core niche. Editors either don’t see comics coverage as relevant, or they see it as relevant only for their calendar/events section. The good editors get someone who is “in the know” about comics to cover SPX – but then that skews the coverage toward the existing niche demographic.

The problem of the expanded versus niche audience is of course something comics deal with all the time and in many contexts. On a panel devoted to “Navigating the Contemporary Publishing Landscape” (watch online at the SPX website), Fart Party cartoonist Julia Wertz, discussing her experience publishing Drinking at the Movies with Random House, commented that “what big publishers do is they just throw a lot of shit at the wall and they want something to stick, and comics don’t stick because people don’t buy comics. So the problem was that they put out this book and they had no idea how to market it, and I’d say ‘you need to send a copy of this book to The Comics Journal or to Tom Spurgeon,’ and they were like “what’s that?’…They were really nice, but they had no idea what to do with this book.”

I sympathize with those people at Random House, trying to sell mass general audiences a comic. The advantage of a press like that is their ability to put your book into the hands of a very wide audience. But it’s really hard to get across to the wide world of non-comics readers why a comic or a cartoonist matters. So many of our answers about why comics matter refer back to medium-specific, historical or nostalgic, comics-insider frames of reference that are largely meaningless to that non-comics reader. If your audience is really those people who already read TCJ and Tom Spurgeon, if your comic is made for comics insiders, then Random House’s broad reach honestly becomes a disadvantage. Wertz is surely right that comics insiders are the most likely people to buy her book and that the Comics Internet is the best place to market a comic. But things stick when there’s an affinity between them, so the question jumps out — is the audience of people currently reading the alt-comics Internet, the audience already familiar with alt-comics creators and vocabularies, the audience of people prepared and persuaded to consider mechanically reproduced comics as postmodern objets d’art, really large enough to support, economically and artistically, the critical mass of cartoonists needed to keep art comics and cartooning vibrant and vital as an expressive medium? Or do we have to build an affinity between comics and those expanded audiences, who may never be “comics insiders”?

One of the best things I did at SPX was talk to occasional HU commenter — and Ignatz winner for Promising New Talent! – Darryl Ayo Brathwaite, who has really thoughtful opinions about this topic. Darryl commented that “indie comic insiders tend to buy the critically acclaimed stuff, and the indie comic browsers tend to go for stuff that doesn’t get Comics Journal acclaim necessarily, but has a fairly easy hook.” An easy hook helps people manage the noise: “conceptually simple stuff appeals to people’s sense of wonder as well as to their sense of needing manageable answers in a room full of noise, both audio and visual.” I think he nails those “comics-civilians” and their buying behavior, but I think he also nails the essence of PR: identify and convey the hook, simply and directly enough that the message gets there in just a few seconds.

The truth, though, is that comics insiders get overwhelmed by noise too. And a catchy summation can help people grasp the value of a conceptually sophisticated book. It’s not either/or, really — conceptually simple or complex — what stands out most to me in Darryl’s observation is the importance of making people care, quickly and easily. As a frequent purchaser of both books and visual art, I often get stymied by art comics that don’t have good cover blurbs or creator bios. Sometimes it’s just plain impossible to tell what I’m holding without Googling it — or reading it. For a mini-comic, you just buy it anyway, because it’s $2, it’s handmade, and it looks cool. But it’s harder to rationalize the gamble for a $15 mass-produced book, and for me, impossible once the book costs $35-40. At a table in a noisy room, the blurb is the most immediate way to convey to a potential reader why the book matters enough to spend money on it. Fantagraphics’ blurb for Cathy Malkasian’s Temperance is excellent, just right for making the book jump out to a casual browser (even though they omitted an artist bio.) K. Sekelsky did a terrific job in one sentence on her illustrated book The Time Travelers Pocket Guide. Secret Acres’ compilation of Mike Dawson’s Troop 142 uses a catchy quote to strong effect.

But, those are narrative books. Tom Neely’s beautiful and conceptually challenging book The Wolf, in contrast, doesn’t have a blurb at all. It’s is a wordless comic, and I imagine it doesn’t have a blurb for the same reasons lots of wordless, “art-focused” comics don’t have blurbs: partly a) because it would visually disrupt the cover, but mostly b) because blurbs generally assert interpretations, and art-focused comics tend to value openness of interpretation, “make of it what you will.” I bought it because Charles Brownstein recommended it, but without his insider intervention I’d probably have passed over it: it’s visually arresting but it’s not really quite my thing (body horror and no prose). Charles, though, captured my attention — he essentially narrated a cover blurb. He got me past my first impressions and convinced me that the book matters, that it has something to say.

I know this suggests questions about whether comics are ontologically and commercially more like books or visual art, and raises philosophical issues about the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Comics are Art — but they’re an art that hides quietly on the bookshelf, unlike the oil painting over the piano. Does thinking of comics as art objects move them toward kitsch because of the status of reproducibility in the comics medium, or do books where the art takes center stage problematize the categories of kitsch and art, including allo- and auto-graphic permeability and the subjectivity of interpretation? Anybody who has talked to me about art knows those type of questions excite me, and I think the extent to which comics challenge our notions about materiality and value does influence why people don’t buy comics.

But I also want every exhibitor at SPX to sell out of everything they bring. Promotion — whether at the festival level or the individual level — lives in that realm of hooks and pitches, not at the level of critical ontology. The kind of hook that appeals to a comics-civilian browsing at a festival isn’t really that far from the kind of pitch that appeals to a mainstream journalist skimming through an inbox of pitches. Part of the mission of comics PR, I think, should be to balance the valuable and motivating intimacy of comics’ community of insiders against the need to identify accessible and relevant hooks to promote cartoonists and their books successfully to an outsider public.

It’s not a ready balance. Those outsider publics rarely think in terms of medium; they think in terms of content. In the case of film and fiction and television, each medium has many disparate markets and target demographics that align more with the genres and styles and content available in all of those media than they do with any medium itself. But comics is both a single medium and, to a great extent, a single market. Mainstream comics readers are more likely to buy and read the comics at SPX than are people who have no ties to comics at all. But those outsiders do have commitments to chick lit or procedural drama or postcolonial narratives or feminist cinema. To appeal to outsider publics and expand the audiences who read comics, comics PR has to find the places where the content and genres and styles of the comics medium overlap with those disparate markets. The biggest challenge is appealing to those content-oriented markets without sacrificing what is so joyful about the medium-driven community we have now.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to read anything I bought at SPX, and I was only able to spend about an hour in the exhibit hall. So here, until I have a chance to process a little, are some photos of what I bought. They’ll get a little bigger if you click on them; mouse over them to see cartoonists’ names and titles. Some things I wanted to buy and missed, like Darryl’s comics, and L. Nichols’ beautiful work, and many others on Rob Clough’s list of must sees. I also didn’t make it to all the Ignatz nominees’ tables. For those of you who were there, please tell me in comments what else I missed!

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

Tag Archives: SPX

Microcombobulated at SPX

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“Comics as a Spiritual Pursuit” versus “People Don’t Buy Comics” – Thoughts after SPX 2011