After threatening for months to conduct and interview with her for my comics blog, Liz Baillie and I finally settled on a time, just after work on a snow night just after in late-January. As for a location? I suggest a bar, an old favorite just north of Houston st. in Manhattan, only to concede that it, arguably that last punk bar standing on the island, might be a bit too noisy for our needs during happy hour on a Friday night.  I search for the name of a café in the area, but come up short, not much of  experienced coffee drinker myself.

“We could try the Holiday Cocktail Lounge,” she suggests. She had been there a week prior and the place had been suitably quiet, at least so far as east village bars go—and, she adds quickly, “it’s the namesake of a Bouncing Souls record.”

It’s the 12th track off the band third, self-titled album. “I’m staying here where I can get a song free with my drink, to smooth thing’s along. The bartender he looks kind of sauced, but he always knows what’s going down.” It’s snowing lightly outside on St. Mark’s Place.

Inside, said free songs are largely old Bruce Springsteen tracks, as though someone had just hit Play on the boss’s greatest hits. When “Born to Run” starts, the minute the interview ends, Baillie pauses and her eyes light up. It’s the same song, she explains, that customarily blares out of the PA when the Bouncing Souls take the stage at the top of a show.

“Obsession” might be too strong a word, but Baillie is quick to discuss the various locales she’s traveled to see the band, including most recently, in another piece of Jersey band synchronicity, Asbury Park for a handful of dates the month before in the seaside town the boss put on the rock and roll map. And, of course, there’s Sing Along Forever, the one-off followup to her long-running My Brain Hurts, which carried the telling subtitle, “A Love Letter to the Bouncing Souls.”

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There’s a little bit of the future and the past in this quick final installment of our interview with The Lagoon author. We discuss the ways in which Lilli Caree’s fascination with sound has affected her comics, the power of a resolution-free ending, and why Hans Christian Andersen’s short story about a sad little Christmas tree is good fodder for a comic.

[Part One][Part Two]
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Anyone who’s ever stepped foot in midtown Manhattan’s Javits Center knows what nightmare big conventions can be. The insanity proves exponential when, once a year, the Center opens its doors to the New York Comic Con, a pulsating gauntlet of stray light sabers, marked-up die-cast memorabilia, and bit players from largely forgotten 70s science-fiction series. Those attending the show in hopes of catching a fair amount of alternative comics action, we’ve sadly found, often don’t end up returning for a second year.

It’s unfortunate, to be sure, but let’s face it—having attending the show for the past few years, we can sympathize. The focus of shows like NYCC and its larger west coast counterpart is squarely focused on the big name players in the industry. They are, after all, the ones who largely tend to bring bodies through the door. While the showing from smaller publishers is smaller (Fantagraphics, for one, let us know that it won’t be in attendence, as it’s since decided that there’s little to be gained from a show like NYCC), they’re there if you know where to look.

We put the message out to indie artists and publishers, asking where we might find them at this year’s show. The responses largely came back in one of two forms:

1. Those who swore on their life that they’d never again risk setting foot in the convention, and wished us luck on our seemingly self-destructive pursuit.
2. Those who were, in fact, planning on attending the show, and were therefore more than happy help their indie brethren direct traffic.

After the jump, check out the list of exhibitors that just may keep you alive (and relatively sane) this weekend, and if you don’t see your name below, drop us a line at: dailycrosshatch@gmail.com

–BH
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