Thanks to everyone who came by my table at KC Zine Con #3!
I had a good show, I sold my last copies of the “Miizzzard Experiments” print on the lower left of the photo. I had higher sales in 2016, but I think it’s because I had a wider variety of newer comics last year, so I’m going to try and increase my inventory for KC Zine Con #4.
Here’s my haul from the show.
Every year KC Zine Con has more awesome exhibitors, I hope the show continues to grow and thrive!
Like many progressive American people, 2016 has been an alarming year for me.
I got re-invested in the political process during the primaries. Thinking about the issues led me to finally get to This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein on my to-read list. This book is a clarion call to agitate for immediate climate action.
And then Trump was elected. In addition to his distressing racist, sexist, and dishonest rhetoric and behavior, his potential nominations for his cabinet are a climate nightmare.
In comparison to the challenges of climate change mitigation and an authoritarian president, my psychedelic space fantasy comics have seemed such an inadequate pursuit. I still believe in the power of stories and that art has transcendent value but I feel so privileged working on comics while the world collapses around me. Especially when I see what activists can accomplish in places like Standing Rock. I’m not sure if I want to make my comics more political or just get more involved with activist groups.
So I haven’t been as productive in 2016 as I was in 2015.
In 2015 I drew a lot and tabled at SPX for the first time. I had pages in four anthologies, Blank Hill Zine, RhiZome #3, Ink Brick #4, and Future Shock Zero. Yeah Dude Comics put out my mini-comic Sphere Fear. I finished Skew Part 3 and a couple other comics for Study Group. I did two large Acrylic paintings as rewards for the Fall 2014 Sparkplug Books Kickstarter.
In 2016 I tabled locally at the KC Zine Fest but didn’t travel to any national shows. I did some watercolor paintings for a couple of KC area art shows. Alternative Comics took over the Sparkplug backstock and then released Vortex through Diamond and produced a digital edition.
My biggest accomplishment was finishing Skew Part 4 and an epilogue. As a reward for reading through this post, here are six pages from Part 4:
Page 183.
Page 184.
Page 185.
Page 186.
Page 187.
Page 188.
One of my goals in 2017 is to find a publisher for a print edition of Skew.
I’ve also been working on another comic that should come out next year. It’s weird to work on comics that I’m not posting as soon as they’re finished. I don’t want to say anything else for fear of jinxing it. And I’m involved in at least one other anthology-ish project for 2017.
My first time at SPX was a mixed experience. I had a blast hanging in the cartoonists concentrate of the Bethesda Marriott, sold a lot of Vortex and my two risograph minis, and brought home a heavy stack of fantastic comics, but I was unable to fully represent Sparkplug due to a shipping snafu.
On Friday, my hotel roomie and I caught a metro ride to join my friend at Fantom in downtown DC for a hot and humid but fun book signing with Farel Dalrymple, MK Reed, Brandon Graham, and others. We checked out Fantom’s inventory – DC is lucky to have such a great shop!
Saturday morning I was dismayed to discover that the box of books that Sparkplug had shipped to the hotel wasn’t at my table. Sam Marx, the friendly SPX Exhibitor Coordinator, and the hotel staff scoured the loading dock but the box was never found. So instead of a table full of books, I had a minimal installation of Vortex, Cold Heat Special #10, and Sphere Fear (which luckily did arrive at the hotel).
I hadn’t seen Sphere Fear before the show (published by Yeah Dude Comics). I was a worried about my riso color choices (orange and green – I worried that it would be unreadable but I wanted to expand beyond pink and blue) but Issue Press did a wonderful job printing the minis, they looked beautiful and I sold out of my comp copies. Look for it on the Birdcage Bottom Books distro soon.
After the morning’s disappointment I rallied. I was in an auspicious table location – to the right of Benjamin Marra and around the corner from Frank Santoro, who was selling treasures from his long boxes unearthed from the basements of comics history and promoting the IndieGoGo campaign to fund the embodiment of his school in a physical building, the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency (contribute to this exciting cause if you can), and supporting his table neighbors with snacks.
Sparkplug Books intern Jenny Flax brought the Sparkplug tablecloth and postcards to the table.
I tried to stay rooted behind my table but I couldn’t help but slip away to check out the rich outpouring of talent at SPX. Since moving to Kansas City I’ve been in a bit of an art comics desert so this was an oasis for me. My favorite book was the Blades & Lazers collection by the aforementioned Ben Marra, fresh off of a successful Kickstarter campaign, including a bad-ass genderbent comic by Lale Westvind and Keenan Marshall Keller, and brilliantly printed in fluorescent pink and metallic blue spot colors, genius choices by the Sacred Prism publisher. I also really dug Mickey Zacchilli’s Venom riso mini, which boils super villain angst and vicious energy down to their viscous essences; the very metal horror-fantasy book Azzuldekkon by Alan Brown; Meghan Goes to McDonald’s, Meghan Turbitt’s hilarious and absurd collaborations with her comics students; and Pat Aulisio’s Infinite Bowman, frenetic psychedelic SF that riffs on 2001. I got a lot of other great books too and I’m slowly reading my way through my pile.
Saturday night I stayed out far too late and got to hang out with a lot of great people. I love how everyone stays close to the hotel, it’s very convivial. I’ve been to enough shows at this point that I have a crew I usually hang with and most of them were there. I didn’t attend the Ignatz award ceremony but it was great to hear that so many skilled women were recognized, especially after this year’s Hugo nonsense.
Sunday was slower than Saturday. Sales were steady but I noticed a definite shift in what people bought – Saturday was all about the risograph minis and Sunday was for books.
Sunday night I took it easy – got dinner with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend; played (and lost) a round of the Magic card game, which was a fun nostalgia trip; and soberly talked with some people at the bar before trying to get some restorative sleep before my early morning flight. When I got up to catch a cab at 5am, a few people were still up, jam drawing. Next time I’ll have to get a later flight!
Despite the lows, I loved SPX and the close-knit atmosphere it emits. And thanks to Alex Hoffman and Matt Moses for being great hotel roommates. Sharing a room made the trip a lot more affordable for me. I can only do one out-of-state show a year and SPX might be my choice in 2016 too.
I started the Vortex Book Mini-Tour with a release party at Floating World Comics in Portland on Friday and Short Run in Seattle on Saturday. The tour ends with an Austin signing at Farewell Books tomorrow, Wednesday 11/9, from 7 to 9pm.
On Friday, 11/14, I got into Portland after lunch, took the light rail and bus to meet Virginia Paine (who runs my publisher Sparkplug Books). It was my first glimpse of the Vortex book – I was overwhelmed! I didn’t even want to flip through it at first. The metallic silver ink on the cover turned out just as I had visualized.
Vortex in good company on the shelves at Floating World Comics.
We took the bus downtown to drop a box of Vortex and Reich #12 at Floating World Comics and then went to Powell’s. I’ve been in Bookpeople here in Austin and Tattered Cover’s old downtown location in Denver but Powell’s beats them all! I could live in their sf section. We only had about a half hour but fortunately I have a list for whenever I’m in a used book store. I grabbed The Dark World by Henry Kuttner (and an uncredited CL Moore) and Sorcerer’s Legacy by Janny Wurts (I want to try a solo book by her before I dive into her unfinished epic fantasy series). I also saw Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped by Sheri Tepper but it was $15 and I wanted to get more than one book.
I read this on the plane ride back (it’s only 126 pages). An inspiration for Zelazny’s Amber. I noticed some additional parallels to Lord of the Rings (evil beings who invest their energy in physical objects) and Wheel of Time (a glass sword of great power).
The signing was fun, I could spend all night at Floating World Comics. I’d gotten the impression it was small, like a big closet, but their current space is enormous and Jason Leivian has packed it to the gills with fantastic comics. It was good to meet Elijah Brubaker and hang out with him, Zack Soto, Virginia, and everyone who came by. I had an interesting conversation with Mike Getsiv about the boundaries of the abstract comics genre. Then after the signing Sera Stanton (who drew the awesome Sparkplug Books cat t-shirt for the Kickstarter) gave me and Virginia a ride to Seattle so I got to sleep most of the way.
Sparkplug Books table at Short Run. Photo by Virginia.
Saturday was Short Run. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a free one-day show like CAB or LA Zine Fest. It’s in this old, beautiful brick building in downtown Seattle. Every glimpse I got of Seattle was beautiful. If I lived there, I couldn’t get over driving down a freeway, ice-crowned mountains on my left and a shining lake lapping at house-covered hills on my right.
Delicious fry bread tacos from a food truck at Short Run.
Short Run itself was great! Good energy; vegan treats and coffee by the clean, spacious bathroom; food trucks in the parking lot; and steady crowds all day. Vortex seemed to be selling well but I was still able to sneak away from the table to be a good consumer. It was my first time sitting at a publisher’s table at a con and it was exactly what I hoped for – All the interaction and none of the stress about sales. My #1 goal for the day was to meet Simon Hanselmann and get a personalized copy of Megahex so I did that within the first hour.
I did some drawings in Vortex as well. Jen Vaughn, Virginia and I’s gracious host, bought Vortex so of course, in thanks, I hexed her copy.
The inscription reads: “William Cardini curses anyone other than Jen Vaughn who owns this book.” Not sure what face I’m making – I guess it’s my witch grin? Photo by Jen.
Finally put faces to some names I know from the internet, such as Michael Litven of Ebbits, Rob Kirby, Brandon Lehmann AKA Bobby Mono, Shanna Matuszak, and Jack Hayden of Snakebomb. Austin was represented well – both the Rough House Comics crew and Monofonus Press were there. It was great to reconnect with other comics folk since I haven’t been to a show since TCAF 2013. At dinner I was missing my family so I showed Virginia and Yumi Sakugawa photos and videos of Ruby.
My haul from Short Run, Floating World, and Powell’s.
We came back for the after party at Washington Hall, but it was too loud to talk with the bands, so Virginia and I met back up with Jen and she gave us an after-hours tour of the Fantagraphics office. We saw an old Love and Rockets cover divided into Rubylith layers to prepare it for printing!
The Fantagraphics basement is filled with comics. Photo by Jen.
Now I’m back in Austin with my wife and daughter and pumped about comics. There won’t be a new Skew page this week because we’re going to divide it into multiple parts so it doesn’t take too long to load and I need to decide where the split should be and draw a cover for Part 2. If you’re in Austin and I didn’t see you at Short Run, I hope to see you tomorrow at Farewell, so you can say hello to Vortex!
Thanks to everyone who came by the GCPM table and traded for or bought an issue of Vortex.
Me and Josh Burggraf. I look like a madman.
BCGF was amazing (and hot and crowded and intense).
I keep showing people this picture from the BCGF tumblr to give them an idea of how crowded BCGF was. You can see me staring directly into your soul through the camera.
It was my first time tabling at an east coast comics festival so I got to meet a lot of people IRL that I’ve only known online, which was fantastic. I’m really feeling the comics love right now. It’ll be a while before I can travel to another con so it’s good that BCGF was so great.
One really awesome moment was when this dude Barney came up to me and Josh and asked us to draw some sketches of superheroes for him. Barney’s a big fan of Rub the Blood, if you look at his Twitter he asked other people to do fan art.
You can see Josh’s perspective of our weekend on our GCPM tumblr. I’ll put Vortex #3 in my store soon.
There were tons of fun moments at STAPLE! 2012.
I’m chilling with the Cyclopean bear from Zach Taylor’s Bear Quest.
Thanks to everyone who came by our table.
The Gold County Paper Mill and Glademade’s table.
I felt like Sunday traffic wasn’t quite as heavy as last year, but it was great to meet fans, hopefully make some new ones, and hang with more cartoonists than I usually see.
Thanks to everyone who made it by Glade and I’s place during the 2011 East Austin Studio Tour!
We both had a blast and got to meet a ton of great people. My favorite though, were our first visitors. They were two teenagers who go to an arts magnet high school and their moms. One of them told me that they hope they can have a house like ours when they grow up. I hope that we inspired them just a little bit. It also made me think that high school me would probably be pretty stoked about the setup I have now. It’s good to get that reminder that I’m still living part of the bohemian artist dream while working a day job.
Mini-Comics Day at Dragon’s Lair was pretty good. Rather than work on a new mini, I just worked on Math Fiction Squared. I drew for four hours and got about halfway done with three pages. I’m almost done.
Here’s a preview shot I posted on my flickr last week:
This image hasn’t had the red/blue anaglyph 3d effect applied to it yet (obviously). It’s also been rotated and flipped. I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with different custom patterns for this project. I want to go back and add the patterns to all my old comics, but although that probably won’t happen I’m definitely going to start using them more going forward.
Hey yawl, the Gold County Paper Mill and Glademade had a blast at STAPLE! last weekend, thanks to everyone who hung out and bought stuff!
Zoom out shot of the table (I was able to get everything in the image except for the second Glademade card rack). Glade’s face is like “why are you d00dz hiding?”
We met a ton of kewl people and got to hang out with kewl people we’ve met at past STAPLE!s (that plural spelling of STAPLE! is straight from the style guide, I swear).
Now everyone is showing their faces. From left to right: Michael Miles, David Fullen, Glade Hensel.
Some highlights:
I hope to see you all again (and more people!) at STAPLE! 2012. Also, if you’re wondering, I’ll start posting the eight-page Glade and Mark comic on Friday. Click here for additional photos and GCPM-centric commentary
The opening of my show Hypermorph went splendidly, thanks to everyone who came out!
Here are some shots of the event, taken by my dad:
left to right: Michael Miles, me, my brother Peter Hensel
left to right: Glade Whitworth, Meg Mata, Karen Cassidy, Chase, some d00d, me, my mom Carol Hensel
The show closes on Oct 21st, so you still have about four weeks to go see it. If you need some enticing, check out this write up in the Houston Press (and yes, it’s true, I was working on my show until the last minute). I’ll post more pics once the show closes.
