Alternative Press Expo 2002

On February 9, 2002 I went to my first comic convention ever: the Alternative Press Expo! I found out about it from the Bob the Angry Flower site; Stephen Notley (BtAF's author) said he was gonna be there. I looked into it, and found out that a bunch of my other favorite artists were gonna be there too! And it was going to be held in San Francisco, so I had no excuse not to go.

I went out and bought a little sketchbook in the hopes that I could get the artists in question to draw a little sumthin'-sumthin' for me; although I had never been to a convention, I had heard of "convention sketches."

Since I overanalyze every situation, real or imaginary, I decided that it would be rude to ask someone I had never met to put the first drawing in an empty sketchbook. I also wanted something to separate the APE sketches from sketches I might get at a future convention. With these things in mind, I drew the monkey-in-an-ape you see at the top of the page. It was my first real attempt at coloring something with markers, as you can see by the glaring stripes that cover the poor ape's body. I also wasn't very comfortable with a brush yet (like I am now) (that's sarcasm) so I used the fatten-up-lines-with-Microns-to-make-them-look-like-brushstrokes technique, which works well enough. All things considered, I was pretty happy with the results.

But enough about me! The day of the convention came, and I dared to drive and park in scary San Francisco. After a few setbacks I successfully arrived and registered. Since he was the prime mover behind my actually being there, I made a beeline for Stephen Notley's table: I-2.

Empty.

So, I decided to wander around and take in the heady aromas of a real comic book convention. But first...

A Note on the Alternative Press Expo:

The operative word is "alternative." Any superheroes at APE were clad in irony as well as spandex. The biggest publishers there were Slave Labor and Fantagraphics, with Alternative Press and Top Shelf/Highwater nipping at their heels. No Marvel, no DC, no Dark Horse. However, the benefits of not being in the middle of a real-life Eltingville Club meeting were cancelled out by the mass of equally-annoying goths in torn "Z?" shirts waiting to see Jhonen Vasquez.

In all, it was pretty rad. There were kids selling stapled-together xeroxes of their mini-comix sitting next to big publishers selling books, t-shirts, and action figures. People who couldn't get seller's permits were hawking their comics in the parking lot. Lots of stickers, lots of candy, lots of cool comics you've never heard of.

The first author I tracked down was Tom Hart. He's done a bunch of great, soul-searching stuff (usually published by Top Shelf), but my favorite by far is Hutch Owen. I introduced myself to Tom, and said the line I repeated several times that day: "I just discovered your stuff a few months ago, and I love it. Especially (X)." Tom was very nice, and seemed almost surprised and grateful that I liked his stuff as much as I did.

So. It was time to see if comic authors actually did sketches for random people. I confessed my inexperience with the subject to Tom, and after the inevitable joke about knowing a secret handshake he began a sketch of Hutch for me. As he was drawing it and talking to all the people who kept stopping by to see him ("Tom! Remember me? With the hair?"), I wondered: should I pay him? Trade with him? Buy something from him? I settled on the latter, but ran into a problem because I already owned everything he had published. When I told him about my predicament, he rooted around and found a bunch of old mini-comics he had fogotten to put on the table. So, I bought Love Looks Left, a stapled, xeroxed collection of Tom's early work. Thanks, Tom!

Now that I was a seasoned sketch-getting veteran, I took some time off to buy stuff, including Jordan Crane's unique and beautifully complicated Non #5 and Brian Ralph's awesome Cave~In. I also learned that no-one has bags for the stuff you buy. Next time I'm going to take all of my saved-up plastic grocery bags and give them out to needy tables.

Checked table I-2 again. Still no angry flowers.

Next on the sketch-procurement list was Finder's own Carla Speed McNeil. Finder is one of the best comic books out there; I was hooked after only seeing one panel of one issue, and I'm constantly amazed at the depth and originality of the story Carla delivers month-to-month (or at least month-to-every-other-month). Needless to say, I was excited to meet the great writer/artist behind the book.

As Carla drew a picture of Jaeger (Finder's protagonist) for me, I got to talk to her about the stuff she's done, the stuff she's proud of, the pen she was using, and the Amish. When she was done I picked up Finder #25, a mini-comic (You Ain't Got This! #1), and the bagged Mystery Date set. Man, Mystery Date was great! Thanks, Carla!

I-2? Not empty! Who's there? Not Stephen Notley!

It was time to get to the bottom of the Bob the Angry Flower mystery, and luckily I had the right tool for the job. I checked angryflower.com with my hiptop and found out the bad news:

APE UPDATE, 5 pm Friday --ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Stephen had been stopped in customs because he was an evil Canadian cartoonist planning on selling books in the U.S., and not a normal drug/beer/beaver-pelt trafficker like everyone else. And thus, my primary reason for going to APE was gone.

But life goes on.

I wandered around some more, and whom did I see? My hero, James Kochalka Superstar! There he was, standing in plain sight behind the Alternative Comics table (or was it Top Shelf?). Now an old hand at the meeting-authors business, I introduced myself and asked for a sketch. As he free-handed a picture of Magic Boy (no pencils!), I awkwardly asked if he was going to be performing in the city while he was out here. (James is multi-talented; comic artist by day, rock musician by night.) He made a face and politely explained that his band doesn't follow him wherever he goes. To make up for my gaffe, I bought one of the little, tiny, original acrylic paintings he was selling: a cat sleeping on a star. It's about three inches across, and I need to get it framed so I don't lose it.

Then I got to see the sketchbook. James keeps a comic-strip diary; he draws a little four-panel story every day, and has been doing it for years. Every so often he publishes another chunk of it; my local comic shop (which usually has a pretty good selection of alternative comics) doesn't carry any of these collections, so I bought the first one along with a copy of Kissers. Thanks, James!

...

Those are all of the sketches I got that day. I went to the web-comics forum; that deserves its own page. I also caught the end of the Too Much Coffee Man panel, and wished I had caught the whole thing. Alternative comics authors are all the best — funny, smart, misanthropic.

I got sick the next day, so I wasn't able to go back to catch Stephen Notley's triumphant return or Jordan Crane's printing seminar. Good thing I got the two-day pass, huh?

—Dave Bort
22 March 2002