Small Press Expo, Day 1
Saturday, 17 September 2016 23:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zviI went to Small Press Expo (SPX). I had heard about it on the Big Planet Comics podcast as being really great, and people were so enthusiastic about Flamecon this year that I regretted not going, so I decided not to miss SPX.
The floor is A Lot. There are many people, some smiling, some deeply engaged in their phones, some deeply engaged in conversations with other people, all hoping to sell you books, pins, t-shirts, posters, prints, etc. As someone who does 90% of her comics digitally, it's weird not only to be confronted with so much damn paper, but also for it to be in a bunch of different sizes. Also, comics are sort of…hard to browse? I mean, you can flip through pretty easily and tell whether or not you like the art, but it's hard to guess (a) what the story is about and (b) whether it's a version of that kind of story that you'll like.
What I'm saying is, this shit is an expensive crap shoot, and then, even if you like it, you have to bring it home and figure out how to fucking store it. Comics!
But there's a lot of it, and a goodly amount of it is gay or about magic or girl power or hockey or various other things that I like, so I did buy some. I intend to go through the vendors' room again tomorrow, there were some tables I didn't go to at all and a couple I want to go back to and maybe get other things from.
Some highlights: a mini on queerness, both issues of Old Time Hockey Comics, the Girl Gang pin from Jen Bartel, cat merit badge buttons, and a few other things.
I went to three panels. The panel management was not great; they were not good at moving people in and out in a timely fashion and they didn't actually schedule time for people to move, so the "hour long" panels were all really 45-50 minutes.
Also, none of the moderators seemed really great to me. One moderator had a sort of hostile approach to the topic at hand and, at one point, left her poor panelists having to explain to her why diversity was good and it was great that they had written books with female protagonists, thanks.
Another moderator wanted to talk about decisions about printing as artistic decisions, but hadn't really prepared her panelists to think about the topic in that way, so they ended up mostly not. I mean, they were engaging and they did talk about printing, but I don't think it was the panel the moderator envisioned.
The first panel I went to was the best one I went to, on being a publisher in indie comics. The basic message was, you're doing this to make sure comics you love, possibly made by people you love, exist in the world. (It is definitely not for the money. If you want to do comics for the money, you need to go to Marvel or DC.)
Going back tomorrow for 3 panels: Artists talking about their emotional connection to making comics, American Magical Girls, and Erotic Comics. And hitting the floor, again.
P.S. I need a comics icon!
The floor is A Lot. There are many people, some smiling, some deeply engaged in their phones, some deeply engaged in conversations with other people, all hoping to sell you books, pins, t-shirts, posters, prints, etc. As someone who does 90% of her comics digitally, it's weird not only to be confronted with so much damn paper, but also for it to be in a bunch of different sizes. Also, comics are sort of…hard to browse? I mean, you can flip through pretty easily and tell whether or not you like the art, but it's hard to guess (a) what the story is about and (b) whether it's a version of that kind of story that you'll like.
What I'm saying is, this shit is an expensive crap shoot, and then, even if you like it, you have to bring it home and figure out how to fucking store it. Comics!
But there's a lot of it, and a goodly amount of it is gay or about magic or girl power or hockey or various other things that I like, so I did buy some. I intend to go through the vendors' room again tomorrow, there were some tables I didn't go to at all and a couple I want to go back to and maybe get other things from.
Some highlights: a mini on queerness, both issues of Old Time Hockey Comics, the Girl Gang pin from Jen Bartel, cat merit badge buttons, and a few other things.
I went to three panels. The panel management was not great; they were not good at moving people in and out in a timely fashion and they didn't actually schedule time for people to move, so the "hour long" panels were all really 45-50 minutes.
Also, none of the moderators seemed really great to me. One moderator had a sort of hostile approach to the topic at hand and, at one point, left her poor panelists having to explain to her why diversity was good and it was great that they had written books with female protagonists, thanks.
Another moderator wanted to talk about decisions about printing as artistic decisions, but hadn't really prepared her panelists to think about the topic in that way, so they ended up mostly not. I mean, they were engaging and they did talk about printing, but I don't think it was the panel the moderator envisioned.
The first panel I went to was the best one I went to, on being a publisher in indie comics. The basic message was, you're doing this to make sure comics you love, possibly made by people you love, exist in the world. (It is definitely not for the money. If you want to do comics for the money, you need to go to Marvel or DC.)
Going back tomorrow for 3 panels: Artists talking about their emotional connection to making comics, American Magical Girls, and Erotic Comics. And hitting the floor, again.
P.S. I need a comics icon!