Small Press Expo 2011

Small Press Expo will take place on Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11 this year, once again at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Maryland. I hope you appreciate that I am posting about this early enough for you to start saving your money. This is a show that you can enjoy without spending much. but it presents an opportunity to sample a great deal of small press and independently produced comics. It has also had some pretty great programs in the past, Including features involving cartoonists such as Jaime Hernandez, Carol Tyler, and Bryan Lee O'Malley (To name a few sessions I personally attended and enjoyed).

This years lineup of special guests includes a pretty diverse group of creators as you can see from the Flyers I have attached here from the SPXPO site. (Craig Thomson and Dustin Harbin respectively). The artwork, flyers and posters that are made for SPX are always pretty awesome, and these are no different.

Write-ups for this year's guests can be found at the Exhibitors and Guests page on the SPX site. This year they were written by volunteers. I wrote the blurbs for Jim Rugg and for Johnny Ryan. I have been a big fan of Rugg's since I picked up Street Angel from him at a Pittsburgh Comicon a number of years ago, before it was in trade paperback form. Despite loving his work, or maybe because of my love for his work, my blurb is a bit drier than I had hoped it would be, as I didn't want to break down into blathering about just what a great guy he seemed like, and how interviews done with him are some of the better comic related discussions you could want to read. Not wanting to turn a little blurb into an editorial love-fest, I went with a cut and dried approach and it is boring but respectful.

I felt a bit more comfortable being a little looser with the Blurb for Johnny Ryan. Up to the point of asking to do his writeup, I had only read one issue of Angry Youth Comix. I had wanted to become more familiar with his work, so I asked to write it and then bought at least one trade volume of each of his collected works, etc. Given the nature of his work, it made it feel a bit easier to joke while still being respectful of a cartoonist that really knows what he is doing.

It was fun being a part of this build up to the main event in the fall. SPX is a fun event to volunteer at, in addition to being one of my favorite comics related events in general. There is a large selection of wildly varied material, and behind nearly every table is someone that is genuinely excited about being a creator and getting their work in front of people. If you haven't been to it, you really should give it a shot. If you are a fan of comics and comics creators, then this is something that can really rekindle enthusiasm for those things. For the past several years I have gone and I have volunteered, and each year I leave the event having met some really awesome people at all levels of the comics experience.

Janes in Love

Today was a miserable comic book day for me, so I decided to make my own happiness. In addition to Previews, and the first issue of the new Vixen Mini, I decided to pick up Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. I recently talked about the Plain Janes in another post. Unlike that volume, which I borrowed from the library, I actually paid for this one with my own money and get to keep it without having to pay fines.

It was a quick read, but a good one, and certainly worth the 10 bucks I paid for it. These are good comics. Not 'Good comics for girls' or 'good comics if you are a young adult', but good comics that are also apropriate for a young adult audience and that look at the world from a young female perspective. I guess every few posts I have to say that I love Jim Rugg. He's a great artist and seems like a nice guy from the two shows I have encountered him at. I consider anyone who can stand in front of me while I am babbling on and be nice about it to be a nice guy.

We get the same characters from the first book moved forward just a bit in time to around early March. There are some tensions regarding boys, or the lack of boys, some stress about the continuing activities of P.L.A.I.N. and a bit of a sad parallel plot piece about Main Jane's Mom not leaving the house after an old friend of hers is killed in an anthrax attack. Jane hears back from the man in Poland whose life she saved, and whose sketch book she had held onto in the last book. He is a poet, and he is a friend to her from a distance. He also provides her with an idea that she uses to further the scope of P.L.A.I.N.'s mission.

During this book, feelings are hurt, Jane's are arrested, people stand up for the cause and relationships blossom while others are re-defined or re-affirmed. It's good stuff, I recommend that you buy it. It's too late for us to save Minx, but it's not too late to enjoy a good read.

Minx - Twofer 2... Two-ferther

This is another Minx post from me, but not yet THAT Minx post from me. That post will come soon, but not yet. This is the post where I talk about the two Minx books I just borrowed from the library and read. These were both even better than the other two I read.

The Plain Janes - Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. I am a big Jim Rugg fan, and have wanted to read this since it came out.  I was not familiar with Cecil Castellucci prior to this, but will check out her other stuff based on the strength of this one. I am a big fan of Teen Movies. I can't help it, it's my secret shame, or would be if I was actually ashamed of it. 10 things I hate about you, Can't hardly wait, etc. etc. etc. I generally like them. I thought this book read like what a good teen movie should be, and a bit more.

This story has pretty great depth without seeming deep or coming across heavy handed. It's about friendship and finding your place and free expression and art and the desire to be a part of something bigger and the need to be true to yourself, and the sense of helplessness we can feel in post '9-11' America. The fun part to me is how The main character Jane (MainJane) arrives at her new school and snubs the pretty and popular table to sit with the 'rejects' that she sees as her tribe. She isn't immediately embraced by them either, and at no point in the story does she betray them or act in a way that is untrue to her self.

The Re-Gifters - Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel

I love the art in this book, and the story even moreso. This story is a bit simpler than Plain Janes, but that doesn't make it shallow. It's a pretty standard sort of story with some unexpected bits and some nice twists in it. It is a believable and understandable story. That's not to say that it is fully realistic, but it's... real.

The nice thing about this story is that the main character is a Korean girl, and while we get a good feeling for that in her narration and references to culture and such, the cast of this story is wildly diverse, and none of it feels forced or fake. It is a story about a kid in LA, post-Rodney King riots, but still feeling the repercussions of that event to some degree. Those things just flow naturally around the story, and again, as the story is well written, it only adds to the total piece, making it feel like it is a real place and time with real people in it.

Both of these books are excellent and I recommend them to anyone who likes things that are nice and anyone who likes well written and well drawn comics. I made my 14 year old daughter at least try to read these books, as well as the two I had previously talked about, and she mostly read them, and liked them. I say mostly, because I think she skimmed parts of them. We talked about the books and the imprint going under as well as her tastes in comics and fiction and what mattered and didn't to her.  Some of that, however, will have to wait until I post THAT post about Minx.