![]() ![]() At the risk of sounding snobbish (which is OK, because I am a snob), a comic like this is sort of halfway between "mainstream comics" (your Marvels and DCs) and the kind of comics I like best, which I call art comics. This comic is firmly an "indie comic." It has a vibe similar to, say, Scott Pilgrim (but I liked it better than Scott Pilgrim because I don't really understand all the gamer stuff in Scott Pilgrim). He's an Austin-based multi-media artist who worked one summer as a pizza delivery boy, which presumably is the genesis of his amusing comic, Buffalo Speedway. Here's one of his cartoons that made me laugh:Īnother cartoonist whose work I liked is Yehudi Mercado. It's a funny little mini that would be right at home at SPX, but it really stuck out here. They were live-blogging and giving away copies of 29-95 contributor Joe Mathlete's comic book, Hooray! It's the Future. But "indie" was not really on display much except at the booth. His appearance and the appearance of his wares was very goth, and goth was a subculture well-represented here. I can't find any images of them online, but if you are interested, his email is They're definitely worth checking out.Įven though he was selling rather unusual artworks, Kinser fit right in. They could stand next to any number of delicate pieces of assemblage art without shame. They are beautifully crafted from bird bones, insect wings, wax, and other materials. I seriously regret that I lost photos of the "Curious Specimens." These were jars that contained what were purported to be the skeletons of fairies or pixies. Artist's alley might have been the right place for a Kelly Deanne Robertson or Ted Closson to set up-but they would have stuck out there next to the fantasy/superhero/adventure/goth artists there. There was an artists' alley area (with several fairly "big name" artists) that was separate from the dealer's room. That weekend, the center was hosting Comicpalooza, the Shell Eco-Marathon, and the 3/10 High Caliber Gun & Knife Show. As it was, the dealer's tables didn't even fill the hall they were in. It was in the Brown Convention Center, a structure so huge that it could have hosted a half dozen Comicpaloozas at once. But it felt smaller because it was dwarfed by the space it was in. This year's Comicpalooza is a lot larger than last year's, which was held in a mall. There are conventions like Comicpalooza and then there are art comics conventions like SPX and APE. ![]() ![]() Or, I should say, how the modern comic book convention has bifurcated. That is what the modern comic book convention has evolved into. Virtually everything there was related to popular fannish genres and generally to the lowest common denominator examples of those genres. That's a big post (or posts) and I'm not really ready to write it.Ĭomicpalooza was devoted to comics as entertainment. ![]() There's a lot I could write about these two worlds and their relationship with one another. These are the world of comics as art and the world of comics as entertainment. As I mentioned in my previous post, there are two comics worlds that overlap to a certain degree in certain places. So be it-the point of this post isn't to show Comicpalooza, but to put down some thoughts about it and comics conventions in generally. They are probably hidden somewhere on my computer. I took a few photos of the Comicpalooza comics convention (which I visited yesterday) and somehow managed to lose them all. ![]()
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