Day 1: Friday, Sept. 6

Me and Rob Nelson of DCA Workshop fame lit out of Boston around 8:00 PM with about a hundred Machiavelli minis, an iPod with almost enough music to get us to Maryland, and enough junk food to kill a diabetic police horse. Our goal: SPX in Bethesda. We arrived in Bethesda at 4 AM after cruising through New York City at a stately 10 MPH for about an hour and a half. As proof that there does exist a comics god, we were able to score one of the three parking spaces they have at our hotel, the American Inn. Then we crashed.

So, my readers may be asking themselves, what exactly is SPX? SPX stands for Small Press eXpo. It’s a comics convention/art festival in Bethesda Maryland. It differs from most other comics conventions as it does not feature people dressed like Xena or Kevin Smith. It’s relatively small, filled with artists and publishers, and has a glorious lack of those long white comic boxes that collectors put their mummified comics into. You may have read elsewhere on this site that my Machiavelli piece made it into SPX 2002, the comics anthology the SPX folks put out each year. Life is a pretty sweet fruit.

Day 2: Saturday, Sept. 7

Our 4 AM arrival meant that we missed all of Friday’s programming, but we woke up at the crack of 10:30, ready to go. It was then that we realized that there was a hillbilly family in the room next to us. As we were getting ready to head over to the expo, we heard through the door that separates our room from theirs, the following exchange:

Female hillbilly voice: EAT IT EAT IT!!!! Just shut up and eat it!!!!
Male hillbilly voice: bitch.

Chatting with Russ McIntosh of Potlatch fame

Needless to say, Rob was at the wall in a heartbeat, trying to hear more of the "conversation," which continued in this profanity-laced vein. I had to drag him out of there. We arrived at the Expo, where I promptly bought five copies of the anthology, which I then had to carry around with me all day. Smart.

...a wad of cash that would make Donnie Brasco Blush

Well, we did a preliminary lap around the rooms to get a feel for who was where, where we wanted to spend our dough, etc…By the end of the day our backs were straining under the weight of all our books. Some of the things that stuck out:

The MonkeySuit guys: Rob especially dug this crew of animation/comics dudes and their sweet anthology. He won't stop talking about it. No doubt about it, though, the MonkeySuit antho is really good: see for yourself.

Jeff Mason: Alternative Press top dog and all around good guy. Jeff was more than happy to strike up a conversation with people he's never met before and was one of the nicest people we met in Bethesda. He also carried around a wad of cash that would make Donnie Brasco blush. "Always remember, the beaner goes on the outside of the roll."

Eddie Campbell takes a look at Machiavelli

I spoke briefly with Eddie Campbell, who took a look at Machiavelli and complimented me on it. We talked for a moment about printing of minis and I picked up a signed copy of After the Snooter.

I passed out minis to anyone who would take them. When we returned to the hotel with stacks of comics, which we spread out and started poring through, there was a further treat in store for us: the hillbilly family was watching pro wrestling! They then engaged in a spirited debate over who the best wrestler was. You can’t make this stuff up.

Carla Speed McNeil: Creator of Finder, Carla has a lot of experience in the self-publishing sphere (more on this later) and was very personable, even though we hit her table late in the day, when many other artists were becoming visibly cranky. She is also notable as being the only person who liked the calligraphy in Machiavelli.

Russ McIntosh: the editor of the Potlatch anthologies, Russ is definitely a good guy. I chatted him up, forced some minis on him, and asked him to keep me in mind if he's going to be editing any future anthologies.

Day 3: Sunday, Sept. 8

The self publishing panel. Of special interest was a tangent over whether your work should be considered a hobby or not, and whether self-publishing is "vanity press." Well, let me lay that one to rest: it isn’t. In a healthy, robust industry such as, say, book publishing, an aspiring writer has many publishers to send their work to, who in turn, have many, many venues in which to sell their wares. The number of publishers in comics that publish creator-owned titles can be counted on two hands. If none of them are interested, you’re out of luck if you don’t DIY. Also, "vanity press" in publishing generally refers to a publishing house that you pay to publish your work. Self publishing is really more akin to small business than "vanity press."

One of the panelists suggested that you should consider your comics a "hobby," as they are not going to support you—at least at first, and perhaps never. Carla took exception to this label, as do I. If you begin to think of art as a hobby, you are psychologically defining yourself as a dilettante. There are enough obstacles in your way as an artist, and the psychological ones can be the worst. If you're not even thinking of yourself as an artist to begin with, you're already handicapping yourself before you've begun.

Conclusion

So, what did I come away from this with? A lot of comics, that's for sure. Some new friends, I hope. The knowledge, from reading the Internet message boards, that I missed a lot. And a resolution that next year, I'll have a table, and enough chapters of Machiavelli finished that I'll have something to sell at it, preferably in a high-quality digest format. Also, I'll work out the legibility issue on the calligraphy. Oh yeah, and I definitely will leave on Friday.