Arts and Minds
SPX Delivers A Weekend of Comix Bliss
If there’s one thing you can say about last weekend’s Small Press Expo, it’s that it more than lived up to its rep as one of the premier indie-comics shows in the United States. Celebrating its 15th year, the Bethesda-based annual celebration of comics and the people who make them certainly delivered. Publishers like Drawn and Quarterly, AdHouse Books, Boom! Studios, and TopatoCo enthusiastically offered up their books, and creators like Hark! A Vagrant’s Kate Beaton were on hand to sign, sketch, and chat with readers.
“It was incredibly intense,” says Marty Day, whose Baltimore-centric live drawing competition, Super Art Fight, made for a crowd-pleasing late-night set following the post-Expo Ignatz Awards show. “I’m not sure if a whole bunch of indie-comic-loving kids charted a bus together, but I’ve never seen it that packed.” If this year was anything to go by, SPX is only getting bigger and better as it ages.
