I went to APE with Kelly, Kirby, and Jen and it was pretty awesome.
I wrote up a quick summary of the notable interactions we had with the artists.- Jason Shiga, who had a new puzzle for us involving sequencing (drawn) polaroid photos.
- We also saw Chris Jordan, artist for Babyhead Magazine, which still rules. Their booth had tons of cool new paraphenalia (I have a Hitachi Bubblegum button now!) but no new issue. The first one is still being sold though; get it while you can! Kelly asked if that character was named after a certain variety of vibrator (she wasn’t).
- Roberta Gregory, author of Naughty Bits (my favorite feature being Bitchy Bitch), was again tabling with Donna Barr who I always refer to as “the gay Nazi lady” (her most well-known work is The Desert Peach, about a homosexual German soldier in WWII… Barr will tell you he is NOT a Nazi). Ms Gregory drew a really cool Bitchy in my book and did a compelling pitch for her new graphic novel, Winging It 2, which is apparently the second half of something she started in 1988!
- Carol Lay, author of Story Minute, did a presentation with an overview of her work. She is pretty clearly not very used to public speaking but she did great. She explained the reasons her strip has gotten so much more political in the last few years and convinced me I need to buy more of her work. I caught her right afterwards and she was a little giddy from the relief of having survived giving her talk! She drew a very cool version of her Devil character in my book.
- The guys from Bolt City were there and had some incredibly cool posters from their next project, Flight, which was sort of reminiscent of Miyazaki‘s movie Laputa
- Bumper Boy sure has some cool paraphenalia!
- Sculptor Scott Hensey was there with his collection of original wax figures, prototypes for Disney, Pixar, etc. toys given away with McDonald’s Happy Meals. His collection meaning “his portfolio”- he’s the one who sculpted the “Mike” character I have from the Monsters, Inc. McD’s promotion. This guy is big time, and it was kind of sad to see him there, because there is almost no way any of the self-published authors could afford his services or a promotional deal which would put his skills to use. He told me good-humoredly that he still had a huge number of his originals, hand painted and everything, and that even though the thousands of cheap plastic toys cast from them are collected religiously, there is almost no market for their progenitors. He’s tried contacting the people who run fan sites revolving around collecting the damn toys, and of the sites about the movies and cartoons, but no dice. Ironic.
- The publishers of “Video.” were there promoting their new comic about the second coming of Jesus. I was assured by them numerous times that they are not religious freaks and it’s actually some sort of ironic commentary.
- Mad Yak was there promoting their new title whose name eludes me at the moment and isn’t on their site… If I had to pitch it I would say it is a combination of Tank Girl and Grey with a little bit of Aeon Flux mixed in.
- We saw the crew from a documentary called Piece by Piece about the San Francisco hip-hop/graffiti scene; they were tabling and promoting for their film. Why were they were there I dunno… I guess they are indeed “Alternative Press” now that I think about it.
- Kirby told the Bob the Angry Flower guy about finding that dumbass with the gelatinous cube online, and he seemed amused
- I bought a Tintin book from the Socialist bookstore guys. It’s a Tintin story (NOT written by Herge) where he and Captain Haddock are blue-collar workers who start a huge strike. It’s pretty good but has no ending- they get half the world to entirely shut down, and then start talking about Revolution. But it’s entirely destructive- they have gotten rid of the unions and now start talking about getting rid of the government, not even negotiating. Yay breaking stuff. What is the point? Like I’m going to let you yahoos make a new government from scratch.
- The reps for The Gift were masters at the Hard Sell. It honestly looks like a pretty good series; I don’t buy a whole lot of loose comics, but the author was an interesting fellow and he had a polished, compelling pitch, so I will be looking for it. Too bad the name of their comic makes it impossible to find on Google!
- I totally told the guy tabling for artist for Bodhisattva I would be back, because I wanted to get a signed copy of it from the artist when he got back from his break, and I meant it too… except then I got sidetracked with something Kelly was buying, and by the time I remembered him I was back at home. Doh!