Indy Comic Book Week at The Source in Minnesota

Last Wednesday I braved the cold just long enough to drive up to Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and take part in the Twin Cities’ chapter of Indy Comic Book Week. It was well worth the trip.

The event was held at The Source, a local comics and games store. The Source has a large back room that they use to host, among other things, gaming nights and Free Comic Book Day. This was the first time it was used for Indy Comic Book Week. “When I heard about the event, I thought it was a great idea,” said Burl Zorn, a Source employee with a gray ponytail and a long earring dangling from one ear. Zorn has been working at the Source for ten years, and plans to be here for many years to come. Zorn’s job requires him to wear many different hats, and he does it all with a smile. Throughout the night, I watched him interact happily with all the different attendees, restock the free chips and pop, and talk excitedly with the artists about their work.

In all, there were 17 local artists tabling at the event, and over 150 different local comics represented on the racks that usually house the regular sampling of D.C. and Marvel titles. (Some artists submitted multiple titles.) The event lasted from 5:00 to 9:00, with a steady crowd throughout. “Things usually die down an hour earlier in the winter,” said Zorn, “because it gets so cold and dark, and people want to go home.” But the Indy Comics event seemed to keep things bustling longer.

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The Cross Hatch Rehash: Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival 2009

I’ll confess to a certain degree of cynicism a few months back when Desert Island Comics owner Gabe Fowler first informed me of his vision for Brooklyn-based festival. Any initial doubts I’d had about the project were only compounded upon discovering that another was being planned for the borough, less than a month before his. The latter, of course, morphed into King Con, held at the Lyceum, in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.

King Con was, by most accounts (save, of course, for chilly temperatures in the cavernous attic space that housed the weekend’s panels), considered a success. Elemetns of that assessment could no doubt be attributed to the breadth from which the show drew, with exhibitors ranging from Superman artist Neal Adams to a woman who fashioned tiny dinosaur skeletons from balsa wood.

One assumed that the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival would prove decidedly more focused, much like Fowler’s Metropolitan Avenue storefront, which has eschewed superhero books almost entirely, in favor of smaller presses and homemade titles. If the show’s title was any indication, however, the festival would not be content to merely draw on the city’s comics community, instead exploring the sometimes nebulous lines between indie comics and fine art, a fact seemingly confirmed when Picturebox founder Dan Nadel was brought onto to project. At the very least, the show would prove effective as a counterpoint to the talent on display at King Con.

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The Daily Cross Hatch Goes Comic Book Club Tomorrow

[Image shamefully stolen from AVClub.com]

Apologizes for the late notice—we only found about this appearance in the last couple of days, but that’s how we play things in the comic book world, fast and loose. Cross Hatch columnist and part-time TV star Timmy Williams and myself will be appearing on Comic Book at the People’s Improv Theater tomorrow in New York, along with Dennis Calero, who draws Wolverine for a living and therefore almost certainly has a much better job than you.

If you live in the greater New York area and have never been to the show, I highly recommend it—even on those rare occasions when I don’t force myself into the lineup. It’s funny and fun and there are valuable prizes to be won. Show starts at 8PM, check out the Facebook page for more information.

–BH

I’ll Be Moderating Three Panels at King Con This Weekend

This weekend marks the first-ever King Con, a mid-sized gathering of some of New York’s finest cartooning talents, based in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. I’d recommend everyone in the New York and surrounding areas check out the event occurring at the Brooklyn Lyceum, if only to help support a fledgling community comics event, but of course my interests run a bit deeper, this time out: I’ll be moderating three panels throughout the weekend.

The first, set for 1PM on Sunday, is an examining of Smith Magazine’s Pekar Project, featuring the four primary artists, and, of course, our man, Harvey Pekar. Here’s the official synopsis:

AN AMERICAN SPLENDOR ONLINE: MEET HARVEY & THE PEKAR PROJECT: SATURDAY 1PM-1:50PM
Harvey Pekar’s been mining the mundane for magic for more than 30 years in his autobiographical American Splendor comics. Now he has teamed with SMITH and four remarkable artists – Tara Seibel, Joseph Remnant, Rick Parker, and Sean Pryor – to create his first ongoing webcomic series. SMITH comics editor Jeff Newelt and The Daily Crosshatch’s Brian Heater talk with Harvey & the artists about what its like for a legendary Luddite to go digital and the artists will each share their favorite working-with-Harvey stories. We’ll also be discussing Pekar’s recent graphic novel adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Working with Harvey and artist Joan Reilly.

On Sunday, I’ll be heading up a discussion about the state of comics for kids.

KIDS COMICS: SUNDAY 11AM-11:50AM
Remember that old cliche, “comics aren’t just for kids anymore?” In the era of grownup graphic novels and gritty anti-heroes, are comics for kids at all anymore? Join a new generation of cartoonist creating work with a youth-centric focus as they discuss the past, present, and future of comics for kids. Moderated by Brian Heater the panel will feature Matt Loux, Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman Sara Varon, and more!

And last, but certainly not least, I’ll be chatting up the great Bob Fingerman on Sunday night.

SPOTLIGHT ON BOB FINGERMAN: SUNDAY 5PM-5:50PM
Alternative cartoonist Bob Fingerman has had a long and *ahem* colorful career. We’ll trace the artist’s career from his early days working for magazines like Screw and Penthouse, to his new illustrated novel, Connective Tissue and comic, From The Ashes. Along the way, we’ll visit Fingerman’s seminal book, Minimum Wage, his early sci-fi graphic novel, White Like She, and, if he let’s us, his stint as a writer for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. Moderated by Brian Heater.

So there you go, something for everyone, right? Come out and say “hi.” Or, if there’s nothing appealing above, you’ll likely find me hanging around that 8-bit Gaming Tournament for the remainder of the weekend.

–BH

Opportunity for APE-Goers

That’s right! I’ll be walking around APE this weekend and carrying with me some fancy-pants bags I made. I sewed them myself and silk-screened a little promotional Cross Hatch decal on each one for the finishing touch.

If you’re a Cross Hatch fan, and you mean to buy a lot of comics this weekend at APE, and you need a bag to carry it all, you should come over and say hi! I will be toting these things around, and I don’t want to take any home. Help me out?

- Sarah Morean

APE 2009 Preview

As I write this, it’s currently 25 degrees warmer in San Francisco than New York. I’m huddled next to my computer for warmth, debating whether or not I’m going to drag myself out of Queens this weekend, in order to go hang out with William Shatner and a bunch of professional wrestlers at the Big Apple Comic Con. The more the mercury drops—and the further I read into Big Apple’s programming lineup—the more I regret not booking my trip to the West Coast.

For those lucky enough to be in the city by the bay (including our own swine flu-surviving Sarah Morean, who will be manning a table along with an assortment of hand-made Cross Hatch tote bags), be sure to check out this handy guide to some of the show’s highlights, after the jump. Oh, and if you could pick me up a Mission-style burrito while you’re out there, I’ll get you back.

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An Open Letter to SPX by Susie Cagle

[Below is a note from San Francisco-based cartoonist/Cross Hatch contributor, Susie Cagle. While we had nothing but nice things to say in our writeup of the show, we feel that Cagle brings a fresh perspective to the proceedings, as a cartoonist--and a broke one at the (which, these, is perhaps something of a redundancy). With that in mind, we present the full, unedited text of Ms. Cagle's piece.--Ed.]

Dear Small Press Expo directors and committee,

This was my second year in attendance at the expo, and I enjoyed my time there greatly. Despite the fact that many of my West Coast peers were not able to make it this year due to slim wallets and high prices, I was lucky enough to obtain a ticket with frequent flier miles and a discounted room at the Hilton up the street. I didn’t have the funds to rent a table at SPX either, but I was lucky enough to work that out in my usual way, thanks to a less fortunate would-be convention goer. This was the same game plan as ‘08, and were these financial boons not made on my part, SPX would never be possible for me. I certainly don’t make comics for the sweet, sweet cash (I can’t say I know anyone who does), but I was laid off in February and the commercial demand for journalists these days is about as profound as it is for cartoonists. A few more slips down this recession slope and I’m afraid it won’t be possible for many other tenuously employed cartoonists outside of NYC and the D.C.-metro either.

I understand the expo is meant as a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Actually, I only understand that after reading a well-buried footnote in the program–before I was wondering just where all that money went. Because really, the money! Presuming conservatively that maybe two-thirds of the 170 tables sold at the early bird rate of $300, and the rest at the late rate of $370, that’s upwards of $55,000 right there. Plus 1772 paid admissions–maybe half of those were $15 weekend passes, and half day passes? Another $22,000+. Add in some minor poster sales and we’re talking a grand total of somewhere around let’s say $80K. I can’t imagine the Marriott is charging upwards of three-quarters of that for the use of one large and two small meeting rooms for daytime hours on a weekend, plus the hall, cash bar and bartenders for the Ignatzes. And if they are, well, you might want to reconsider this plan.

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The Cross Hatch Rehash: SPX 2009 Pt. 2 [of 2]

[Matt Kindt, Box Brown, Chris Staros, James Kochalka, Leigh Walton, and Jeffery Brown.]

There are certain points, I suppose, when the whole thing feels a bit like high school. Cliques are to be expected in such conventions, where attendance numbers in the thousands—not everyone can go back and party in the same hotel room (though many have no doubt tried), and therein lies perhaps the greatest tragedy of this year’s SPX—the great nightly diasporic hotel room migration.

The Nerdlinger trio of Robin Enrico, MK Reed, and Liz Baillie had also become the makeshift ringleaders of Saturday night’s post-Ignatz festivities, taking it upon themselves to print up fliers and roundup the troops for the evening’s third-annual Bethesda karaoke exodus, wherein indie comics creators by the vanful descend upon a local Korean restaurant, cramming hundreds of bespectacled and artfully tattooed bodies into a room well past any reason fire code limits.

Thing is, save for this annual excursion, it seems that the establishment in question didn’t see too many hopping Bethesda Saturday nights, and some time in the interim, the place had closed down, much to the chagrin of those early carpoolers desperate to perform the evening’s first—and therefore definitive—version of “Islands in the Stream.”

What the closing ultimately meant (well, besides a nightly increase in revenue for the White Flint Mall’s Dave & Buster’s location) was that, like Friday night, Saturday’s prospective partiers were forced to bring the parties back to crammed hotel rooms, once the Ignatzs’ chocolate fountains finally stopped flowing for the night, and with that, the “there’s nothing else to do in this burg, so let’s all party together” spirit died a bit this year.

[Part One] [More Photos][More Video][Ignatz Award Coverage]

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The Cross Hatch Rehash: SPX 2009 Pt. 1

Remember the old location? It was great, so much closer to downtown. The restaurants were much better—and closer—than those around the North Bethesda Marriott Convention Center. Remember when the show was held on Friday and Saturday, so everyone could play softball and picnic on Sunday?

I don’t. I only began driving down to the Small Press Expo three years ago—not quite enough time, I think, to have developed a glimmering sense of nostalgia for those long gone good old days—you know, when the show actually meant something. Three years, however, is certainly long enough to have fallen in love with SPX, and it’s more than enough time to have designated the early autumn weekend as three of my favorite days of the year.

There’s plenty of cause for nostalgia, I’m sure, and I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t expect to be carrying a similar fuzzy feeling a decade or so from now for the way they ran things back in the ‘00s. It’s just that, in a sense, constant fluctuation ought be one of the defining principles of the show. There’s a place for tradition at SPX certainly, but when we become fixated on the past, we lose sight of the expo’s true purpose as a platform for the some of the industry’s most exciting and underappreciated names. The moment the show loses focus of this moment it becomes just another entry in the seemingly endless parade of comic book conventions.

[More Photos] [More Video]

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The Cross Hatch Rehash: SF Zine Fest

[Photos courtesy of Greg Means/Tugboat Press]

A couple hours into the first day of the San Francisco Zine Fest and The Natural World cartoonist and recent Ignatz nominee Damien Jay realized, without much fanfare, “Well, I’ve already beat my MoCCA sales.”

It’s not that it’s all about those sales, especially when a full table costs $90 for the weekend, but the near-universal lucrative scene at the ‘fest, that easy spending even in slim times, speaks to the success of a show that meshes so well with its host city. It’s really no surprise it’s blowing the fuck up.

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