Other Comics News Parade-O-Links 12212013

(Masters of the Universe No. 46 (UK) .  Stolen from James Eatock.)

Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, comic books, graphic novels, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics, cartoons, digital comics, other, etc. during the week ending 12212013:

"Cartoon Network gravy train is a bit closer to those little handcarts where you pump the handle up and down and roll down the track behind the gravy train. It's a cool replacement for a lame dayjob, but from what I've been told the pay's about the same. All things considered, I'd rather be back in the David Heatley days than wait for Adventure Time/Regular Show/Steven Universe to save us all." -Sean T. Collins.

• Merry Christmas everybody.  And if you don't celebrate Christmas then, Merry Christmas!  And I don't mean that to be antagonistic or as a way to try and convert you to my religion.  I mean it exactly for what it is.  A greeting in the tradition of the customs in which I was raised and live.  It means that I wish you and yours good health, good fortune, merriment and joy this season.  If you or anyone from any culture, language or faith would greet me with well wishes in your own custom I would accept it graciously and appreciate your kind thoughts.  Respecting the customs of another human being does not mean that you embrace those customs or that you have been submissive to them.  I just means that for about a half a second, you mustered up the human strength to be polite to someone that was trying to be polite to you.  It's pretty easy.  Shalom.  Merry Christmas. 
• Robert Newsome over at Second Period Industries has prepared some Christmas music for you to download and enjoy.  Also, he let The Robot host his most recent podcast and it is a little bit scary. 
• It is the holidays so that means the Holiday Spurge is rolling out his holiday interview series faster than I can read them.  So far I have very much enjoyed the Paul Pope and Sean Collins/Joe Mculloch interviews. 
• I don't know that I've ever read an Ed Luce comic but the stuff in this Rob Clough piece looks interesting. 
• Chip Zdarsky has a hilarious hobby and this Sex Criminals cover is magical. 
• Frank Santoro put together a list of best of lists from 2006 to 2012 because that is the kind of thing Frank Santoro does. 
• Sparkplug could use your patronage. 
• It is ridiculous how good Boulet is. 
• The great Sam Henderson talked to CBR. 
• This week, a great many comics folk learned how to spell LaBeouf. I think the guy stealing from a Picturebox about page is twice as strange as him stealing from a comic to make a movie.  We give people Academy Awards for stealing from a comic to make a movie.  (Seriously people, Diablo Cody straight up used the Dan Clowes/Terry Zwigoff screenplay from Ghost World to write Juno and they gave her a freaking Oscar!  Of course Shia LaBeouf would steal.  The Academy practically commands you to!  Jeez-Its people.)
• This is literally the first best of list I've read this year where I thought, yeah, some of that stuff is pretty good. 
• Fluke really is awesome and it will also be on April 19th at the 40 Watt next year. 
• I hope someone is keeping score.  I'm starting to lose track. 
• I'm hopeful that all of Pussy Riot will be freed and will be able to live normal quality lives. But the only way I'll watch the Olympics is if Pussy Riot plays the opening ceremonies.  (After which, I will immediately stop watching the Olympics.)
• And finally..."ones for guns, I know at one, and the other's for whenever you're shootin' off your guns you can say whatever you want". 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.
p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.
p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.
p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.
p.p.p.p.p.s.  Yeah, I do Instagram too now.  I guess it's a law or something.

The 2012 Small Press Expo report from Henry Eudy

(Image stolen from the Small Press Expo facebook page.)

The following report on the 2012 Small Press Expo was provided by Superman's real best pal Henry Eudy.  
All of the photos below were provided by Erin Cassavaugh except where noted. 

(Rich Barrett, Adam Daughhetee and Henry Eudy.  Image stolen from The Dollar Bin.)

Let's forget "small press", let's drop it all together. Let's not even think that much about comics, about mini-comics, about hand pulled screen prints, about anthologies, pin-ups, buttons or badges. Let's just focus on people, on special people, the Special People Expo 2012. Let's let that radiate for as long as we can before we go back to arguing about lettering techniques, what kinda manga is whatever kinda manga, about selling boots and raising dough. Let's ride those good waves, good people, special people, cartoonist people.

(Josh Latta, Shawn Daughhetee, Adam Daughhetee, Rob Ullman and Rich Tommaso.)

A good feeling in a comics community is maybe not that rare of a thing but it can be rare enough. This year's Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland was a pearl, a perfect, small, shiny thing that glowed, that radiated it's specialness. It seemed to me that everyone wandering the halls of the Bethesda Marriott knew in some way that this was a special show. That we were all gonna ride a high together that, later, in the shadow of memory, we'd look back on and say, "Man, that was it. That was the top." Or maybe I'm talking out my ass here, maybe it was just a comics show and some stuff got sold and some stuff got bought and some minorly famous dudes signed some swag and we all went home. Maybe that's all that happened. Or maybe it was magic, for me it was magic.

(Joey Weiser on the left.  Not sure about the fellow on the right.) 

I've been too timid to apply to show at SPX shows in the past. I've attended, I've bounced around in the crowd, but I've lacked the guts to get in there and push out my paltry minis alongside the many there that I admire. This year I took the plunge, I tabled with some good friends, some smart, talented friends who helped me mask my meekness. If possible, always table with people smarter than you. You can observe them in their smartness and maybe get close enough that a little might land on you and stick. I was with Rich Barrett of the webcomic "Nathan Sorry" on one side and Christian Sager of the historical graphic novels "Think of the Children" and "The Cabinet" on the other. Both of these guys are more savvy than I am, smarter than I am, and better at the business of comics than I might ever be. It was a joy to rake in the jack with these fellas at my side. I think we all did a pretty tidy sum sales wise and gained some serious bro acumen. 

Helping boost the bro quotient at a booth just a diagonal jaunt away were our pals in the Alphabet Press; Ben Towle, Sam Wolk and Isaac Cates. Everyone at that booth is a special and wonderful friend to yours truly but Sam made me a pastrami sandwich. So yeah, Sam Wolk, official Top Bro. The bewilderment of being far from home and lost in a wilderness of folded and stapled foliage was lessened by the kind and familiar faces of my home state homies like Seth and Heather Peagler of Exile on Plain Street, Adam and Shawn Daughthetee of The Dollar Bin and Adam Casey and Allison Carroll, one of whom is associated with Winston Salem's sSalefish Comics. So, those are my shout outs. I like all you dudes and thank you all for helping me feel comfortable and at home at a show with some of my biggest idols in cartooning just drubbing along in the hallways, drinking coffee and adjusting their watchbands. 

(Dan Clowes.  Duh.)

So, on the subject of my idols, the cartoonists that made me want to be a cartoonist. Holy smokes, a lot of them were there, just looking like regular skinny awkward guys. Not all floating on a cloud of opalescence or radiating a milky light from their eyes and ears, leaving a scent of jasmine in their wake. They seemed to spend a lot of time in the bar. 

So, OK, Dan Clowes: Dan Clowes is like my Jack Kirby. He changed what comics could be for me. He made them bizarre and then he made them human and then he made them bizarrely human. I never thought I'd ever get to meet this guy and here he was, walking the halls in a black shirt, looking at the patterns in the carpets. He, Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine ate breakfast at the table directly behind mine. And here's where the indie comics community is so cool. These great cartoonists took no precautions, they openly walked among us and we just soaked up their presence with a sort of pride. I didn't see them getting hassled in the hallways to sign Little Enids or plastic Quimby's or Maggie and Hopeys. They didn't seem cornered in the bars by wild-eyed well wishers detailing their past catalogues. Everybody in the place had a real hang out vibe going and once in a while we'd kinda glance over and think to ourselves, "Yeah, those are our best." 

The closest I got to breaking that bubble was as I casually looked to my right as I walked to my room on Saturday evening. Between the railings of the lounge, my eye caught sight of Clowes, Ware and Charles Burns leaning forward toward one another over a small round table, partially consumed beers in their hands. I slowed in my footsteps. I reached for my phone and I thought about taking a photo. But that seemed crass. That brought celebrity in and, to my amazement, the feeling of celebrity had never been present with this show. Instead I was feeling a kinship with these gentlemen, a oneness as fellow cartoonists. We seemed to belong to something united and a nod or a glance would suffice over a photo op. This is totally the magic of the Special People Expo.

(Brad McGinty and Josh Latta.)

So, I don't know, does that kind of convey what kind of warm feeling was slinking down the aisles, bolstering up the table skirts of this wonderful show? There was a real feeling of oneness, of acceptance, a big tent of cartooning. Or, at least, I felt that way. I felt very generous to the overwrought, overly precious, barely twenty somethings, the manga kids with their big-eyed foxes and spiky haired heroes, the boob and fart crowd, the high arters, the too weird to live, the too strange to die, the lonely bedroom autobio-bot, the cutesy and the gruesome, the middle finger and the plea for understanding, the genuinely funny and the sharply snide, the total mess and the delusional dreamer, the boring and the insipid and the occasional truly unique. I felt like the floor was full of wonders and I felt like cartooning was the greatest. That's special, man.

Anyway, I bought some stuff and I met some people but that kinda stuff seems of little importance. The show was so good. Everyone was digging it and feeling all together now. It was a high. As the clock struck 6 on Sunday, the show closed to a rapturous and spontaneous round of applause. We'd all experienced something great and maybe some of us were present enough to know it. I was scared to death of attending what to my mind was a real "big time" alt comics show. I carted my wares out the swinging doors feeling very much like I belonged here in a hall with my heroes. Thanks forever, SPX 2012.  

-Henry Eudy.  September 18, 2012. USA.

Visit Henry's website here.

Follow Henry on twitter here.

Thanks Henry!
Thanks Erin!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.