I’ve been attending the Maryland-based indie comics convention SPX — that is, the Small Press Expo — for 15 or so of its 36 years, and this time around took the opportunity to dine with artist Paul Kirchner, who breathed the same comic industry air I did during the ’70s.

Paul broke into comics in the early ‘70s through a fortuitous series of events which had him meeting the legendary comics artist Neal Adams, who introduced him to DC Comics editor Joe Orlando, and within the week getting a gig as assistant to Tex Blaisdell helping him out on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip and stories for DC’s mystery books. He also worked for awhile as assistant to the great EC Comics artist and Daredevil innovator Wally Wood. He moved on from mainstream comics to draw two wonderfully surrealistic strips — “Dope Rider” for High Times and “the bus” for Heavy Metal. His wide-ranging creative resume also includes a graphic novel collaboration with the great writer of detective novels Janwillem van de Wetering, designs for such toy lines as Dino-Riders and Spy-Tech, and much more.

Paul and I had dinner once the con wound down at the nearby and recently opened Commonwealth Indian restaurant, which had been favorably reviewed by the Washington Post.

We discussed how a chance encounter in art school led to him assisting cartoonist Tex Blaisdell on Little Orphan Annie, the life lessons he learned during his apprenticeship with EC Comics legend and Daredevil innovator Wally Wood, the ruse he used to convince the editor of Harpoon into commissioning more installments of his famed Dope Rider strip, how the office of Screw magazine was nothing like you thought it would be and the office of High Times was everything you thought it would be, where he learned “the only thing that’ll kill you bigger than a flop is a hit,” the techniques he uses to dream up new episodes of his surrealistic strip “the bus,” his druggiest fan encounter, our joint memories of “Fabulous” Flo Steinberg, Marvel’s “Gal Friday,” his graphic novel collaboration with famed writer of detective fiction Janwillem van de Wetering, the first person he ever met in comics, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation at Commonwealth Indian restaurant — (more…)

I was hoping to spend all day Saturday at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda—which I last attended two years ago, where I felt privileged to meet civil rights legend John Lewis—but life intervened, and I was instead only able to spend a few short hours there on Sunday. My abbreviated time that day was because I had to leave early to get to—and I’m sure you’ll understand—a ukulele jam. But my visit, though short, was still fun.

The high point this year was the brief time I got to spend with Bill Griffith, whom I’ve been reading since I was a young teenager.

I first encountered him through his cartoons in the pages of the East Village Other, which spoke more to my sensibilities when I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn than did the Village Voice. And I bought at least one of his underground comics at my first convention. Which means I’ve been reading stories of his most famous creation, Zippy, for about as long as Griffith’s been drawing him. (more…)

Last month, I spent a day at the Small Press Expo, the highlight of which was meeting Congressman John Lewis. The civil rights pioneer was there to promote the new graphic novel about his life, March.

On Sunday, September 15, at 1:00 p.m., I attended a panel about the planned trilogy, grabbing a front row seat and feeling pretty happy with myself. Here’s the official panel description:

SPX is proud to host the Honorable John Lewis, the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district, to mark the publication of March, the first volume of a graphic novel trilogy documenting his life and work. A leader of the Civil Rights movement, Rep. Lewis was Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an architect and keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963, and has been a member of Congress since 1986. Rep. Lewis will appear with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell. In a discussion led by journalist Alex Dueben, the group will discuss the process and goals of this singular comics project.

Sadly, it turned out that I’d chosen the worst seat in the room, for whenever Lewis wasn’t leaning forward and speaking, his face ended up hidden behind the moderator’s open laptop. By the time I realized this, the room was packed and there was nowhere I could move.

So forgive me as you watch the video of the event, which I’ve finally been able to spare the bandwidth to upload. I think that whatever its flaws, you still be moved.

I spent Sunday at SPX—the Small Press Expo—in Bethesda, Maryland. (Actually, its location seemed more like Rockville to me, but I guess at some point parts of Rockville started to be called North Bethesda because the Bethesda name helped the area sound posher.) I had fun wandering the packed dealers room and picking up comics by cartoonists who are doing the more personal kinds of work mainstream publishers have for the most part abandoned with their constant focus on superheroes, superheroes, superheroes.

But as much as I enjoyed all that, the highlight of the day was attending a panel on March: Book One, which focuses on the life of civil rights pioneer John Lewis, and then getting a chance to meet the congressman and pick up an autographed copy of his book (which he created with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell). In case you don’t know, Lewis was one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, helped plan the March on Washington, and is the last surviving speaker from that day.

Here we are together right after I shook his hand and thanked him for his courage and sacrifice. (more…)

I didn’t get to attend the Small Press Expo last year because our trip to Melbourne for Worldcon trumped everything, so I was glad I had no SPX conflicts this time around. I only attended Saturday, but still managed to make it to three programming items—a Q&A with Roz Chast and Kate Beaton about working at the New Yorker, a panel on the Secret History of Women in Comics moderated by Heidi MacDonald and featuring Jessica Abel, Robyn Chapman, Alexa Dickman, and Diane Noomin, and a presentation by Chester Brown on his new graphic novel Paying For It. In between all that, I had drinks with John Sullivan and Jamie Gegerson, and of course made several circuits of the dealers room.

I managed to resist most impulse buys, but here are three things I found I couldn’t resist.

The first book that caught my eye was Frog & Owl: Regret is for the Weak, by Molly Lawless. There was something about the title that attracted me. Maybe it’s from too much reading of Frog and Toad are Friends to my son a couple of decades ago, but the idea of a dysfunctional relationship of a similar animal pair attracted me. So I picked it up and started to read.

The second strip in the book, titled “Love Is” (see below), made me laugh. And as I then told the artist, “OK, you made me laugh. Now I have to buy it.”

It was a good choice, because when I read the book on getting home last night, Lawless made me laugh a LOT. (more…)

I got to the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD, yesterday when it opened at 11:00, and in-between multiple circuits of the dealers room, managed to catch three presentations, all of them entertaining. I’d never attended SPX before, since in the past it’s often been opposite Capclave, so I had no idea what to expect in terms of access. Panels at Comic-Con can be so over-attended that they’re often difficult to get into, and I worried I’d find more of the same here, especially once I saw how small the rooms were. But I had no trouble getting good seats.

At 1:00 p.m., I attended R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics. I was familiar with the cartoonist’s blending of Batman with Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but not much more than that. Sikoryak discussed his new career-spanning collection that pulled together his other mash-ups, including Wuthering Heights as if done as an EC comic drawn by Jack Davis, The Portrait of Dorian Gray as if done by Windsor McKay as a Little Nemo strip, and so on. During his slideshow, he took us through his step-by-step process on the Wuthering Heights adaptation, and I was impressed by the care he took to make sure that he wasn’t just spoofing EC Comics in general, but all of Davis’ specific narrative tics. He handed out 3-D glasses for one portion of his presentation, involving pirates who couldn’t see the 3-D effects themselves until they removed those furshlugginer eye patches! (more…)