SPX [comics]  

My Haul from SPX

This past Saturday, LD and I had the opportunity to attend SPX in Rockville, MD, which from all I understand is the largest independent cartooning and comic art festival in the country. We had the opportunity to walk the ballroom floor and meet some of our favorite webcomic artists, indie artists and of course, Bryan Lee O'Malley.


BLOM sketching Y a picture


Among the highlights included:
-Kate Beaton sketching Marcel Du Champ for me
-Phil McAndrew knowing what the Geek Prospectus was
-Bryan Lee O'Malley sketching a post-wedding pic for Y

Among the lowlights included:
-me and LD desperately searching for Nedroid, to no avail. Apparently he showed up much later.

It was a great time, though I won't bore you with details on a convention that you weren't at. It's like showing you pictures of a very geeky summer vacation (but it was so awesome!).

But I will once again take the opportunity to say that supporting independent art is important, especially for the geeks, the internet savvy, the individualists, all of us. The age we live in, with internet making it totally feasible for people to self promote their own works, also creates a crowded field where a lot of shit can cloud the true gems. Word of mouth, and yes, financial support, is the main way we can see the people whose work we love and believe in rise to the top, and eventually to prominence, after which we will promptly hate on them and say that they "sold out." No just kidding. But everyone I linked above is either completely amateur, or in the case of O'Malley, someone who rose up based on the skill and worth of his own work after a lot of toiling and struggle. And SPX was an experience that reminded me how hard it is to do what they do. Coming from someone who was once considering a path towards being a starving artist of a different kind, they definitely do what I couldn't, and do it with a smile and pleasant demeanor that's respectable, and frankly, kinda amazing. I mean, Kate Beaton was handing out her books for free, and O'Malley couldn't have been a nicer guy.

So click on their sites and read around. Buy some of their shit, and tell a friend about it. And be jealous that I got to meet Bryan Lee O'Malley, and that my signed and sketched in copy of Lost at Sea will one day be worth millions after Scott Pilgrim takes over the universe.