I and "The Orphan Baiter" got nominated for a thing

The nominations for the Ignatz Awards came out this week, and as it turns out my story from Papercutter #13 earned me a nomination as a "Promising New Talent:"
It seems like if I were halfway responsible about my work I'd have reached the "promising talent" level while I was still in my twenties, but you know what? Let's just assume that my best years are still ahead of me and I'll redouble my efforts and try not to die. I do come from a long-lived family. Anyways, thanks to my editor, Greg Means of Tugboat Press, for believing in me and getting this thing out there.

You can vote for me or any other of the nominees you like at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD on September 11-12. Just attend, fill out a ballot and drop it in a cardboard box. The process is more similar to giving people valentines in grade school than it is to an election, but who among us fell in love with comics because they imagined that a small-press festival associated with the art would one day provide a perfect laboratory for field-testing innovative new democratic processes?

Whew

Okay, there's still folding and stapling to do, but new stuff for SPX is ready:

Print

Print

Print

Book

Hope to see you in Bethesda tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after.

PrintPrintPrintPrint

Things are starting to look like things. Good job, things.

PrintPrintPrint

Man, I gotta lot of stuff to cross off that list before Friday.

SPX: and otherwise: several things are happening at once

This upcoming weekend is packed full of events, do you hear me? Packed! Some events are nested within others like Russian stacking dolls, while others are up in a different corner like a Malevich painting or zooming in from out of nowhere like a mummy on a skateboard. Events!

(poster by Laura Park, who kills at making posters)

First: Shawn Cheng, John Mejias and I are going to be exhibiting at SPX in Bethesda, MD this weekend. It's the last of the Big Several alternative comics conventions that take place on the East Coast every year, and I am all sorts of excited to be there. We'll be at Table D15, right next to the good people at AdHouse Books and just on the edge of the Vortex of Swellness that is Dustin Harbin and Scott Campbell's table at D1. I'll have a new dollar book collecting the "Head to Head" drawings I've been making for the Partyka site, and I should also have some prints for sale.

While at SPX, you may want to attend these panels, featuring or moderated by my excellent pals:

• The New Action, moderated by friend and collaborator Sean T. Collins and featuring Shawn Cheng, as well as Frank Santoro, Brian Ralph, Benjamin Marra and Kaz Strzepek. It's about action, spectacle and genre in today's art-comics world, and man, just look at that lineup. This panel is a man in sunglasses walking in slow-motion with an explosion behind him.
• Mr. Collins is also going to be on a critics' roundtable with quite a few of the other worthwhile-to-read comics writers out there. They'll be talking about both comics criticism and notable recent books.
• Also of note: Sally Bloodbath, who as co-editor of Always Comix has published some things of mine and Shawn's, will be on a panel about comics and community: friends, drawing nights, conventions and general getting-your-stuff-out-there. Dylan Williams of Sparkplug moderates. Also features the omni-presence that is Frank Santoro, and Robyn Chapman and Benn Ray.
  

...If you're not in Maryland that weekend, but are instead in New York, Partyka's friend and frequent guest Danica Novgorodoff is having a book release party at Rocketship in Brooklyn for her second book, an adaptation of the Benjamin Percy story "Refresh, Refresh." Featuring the holy trinity of books, drinks and a store.







Also up in NYC: Team Macho, a collective of dudes from Toronto with whom we had a fine time at TCAF '05 (they had a 27-toed cat living in their studio, therefore Automatic Fun Time), have a show at Giant Robot.

...Hope to see you at SPX! I think I might actually be done with everything this year and not have to spend the show stapling things behind the table. Probably I will come off as a better, livelier person, but who knows how these things work?

SPX '07; illustrations by TCAF '05

We all forgot to bring our cameras to Bethesda this year. A lot of the trip, however, was similar to other festivals we've been to, so I'm posting some pictures from TCAF in 2005, when I had a camera but not a blog. Brief instructions follow each caption: follow them to make, in your brain, a representation of SPX 2007.

Shawn and I drove down to Bethesda on Friday morning. Shawn slept part of the way down, having been up all night trimming pages and sewing books. (Substitute rented silver Ford Focus for burgundy minivan. Also, pour out some motor oil in memory of the minivan, which belonged to Shawn and died on the side of the LIE this summer.)


Once we got there and set up the table, Shawn resumed sewing book bindings. Generally, he remained just ahead of demand, although there was a moment early on when there were no finished copies of "Vengeance at Cackling Mountain." Sew faster, dammit! (This picture works pretty much as-is, although there weren't yellow wristbands with "The Beguiling" printed on them at SPX, for whatever reason.)


Sara arrived by bus and met us at the hotel. When she and Shawn weren't assembling books, they were signing them for customers, so they tended to spend a lot of the festival hunched. (Subtract John Mejias, who unfortunately couldn't make it this year, and substitute hotel walls for tent walls. T. Edward Bak remains in the right foreground, if that's indeed him.)


The crowd was pretty good this year; we did about 20-30 percent more business than we did at the previous SPX; I'm not sure how much of this was a function of location, a more crowded show in general, or our Ignatz nominations. We did have quite a few customers who'd read our books before and were coming back for more. That was gratifying. (As before, swap tent for hotel. Swap any two Canadians for a gentleman in a purple suit and a gentleman in a sailor outfit.)


I didn't have sewing to do, so my duties consisted of A: Wondering if binding my comics with staples makes me some sort of wimp; B: Shit-eating grins.

I don't have good photo stand-ins for a batch of things, though. These are them:

• Sean T. Collins was there, and it was nice to see him in person again, 'cause it had been a while. Also nice: he liked Matt Furie's Boys Club, which was a relief because my entire experience with owning that book has involved me reading it and laughing, then someone seeing this and taking a look at it, followed by them looking at me like I'm crazy. This happened with Kate, John and Shawn at TCAF 07.
  
• Also there were all of these fine, fine, fine people. Thanks, folks, for talking and saying hi. I like you.
  
• We went to the Ignatz awards ceremony for the first time in six SPX's. It was brisk and quiet, with the exception of Alec Longstreth and Liz Prince's speed-read of the Debut Award nominees, and of course the monkey thing, which was set off well by all the briskness and quietness that surrounded it.
• The presentation of the minicomics Ignatz was preceded by a reference to "some people" calling the minicomic "an obsolete form," which drew some light boos. But who's been saying these things? Was Heidi MacDonald just referencing this? Did I miss something?
• I ate at the Silver Diner up the street three times. Now I'm full of french fries and I own more comics than I did before. Thanks, SPX.
  

SPX 07

I'm going to be at SPX this next weekend, October 12th and 13th. I'll be sharing table G6 with Shawn Cheng, Sara Edward-Corbett and (hopefully, if he and his wife and child can make it) John Mejias of Paping.

Here's how to find us: if you are facing Drawn and Quarterly's booth, your butt will be facing the people who are next to us.

One of my minicomics was nominated for an Ignatz award. This is what it looks like:
One of Shawn and Sara's books is up for the same Ignatz. It looks like this:

In summary, things that are grey and have animals on them are up for awards. Please drop by and look at them.

Also: Shawn and I have short stories in the FLUKE 2007 anthology. This should be available from the Weing/Davis/Weiser/Yoder compound at table D10-12A. They're nice, you'll like them.