Man on Fire

WE KNOW you want the Small Press Expo Butt Touching Competitiion update that’ll put the butt back in Scuttlebutt, but  first things first. Before we hit the road for SPX, we threw down at Brooklyn’s Grumpy Bert with Theo Ellsworth’s the Understanding Monster – Book Three. The place looked like someone had gone wild safari hunting down Sesame Street. Talk about setting the mood. The thing you need to know about Theo Ellsworth is that he is KVLT. People traveled from up and down the east coast to hang with him. Seeing these familiar faces joining in the cutest, most awkward convsersation of all time really warmed the cockles of our hearts. What strange feels indeed, releasing the end of the Understanding Monster, but there could be no better hands to hold Book Three. Many deep thanks to Albert and Remy for getting us off on the right foot. We promise to bring more carrots for you next time, Remy.

 

 

We were so well prepped for the road to Camp Comics that we made time for a pit stop at the American Visionary Art Museum. You might know this, and if you didn’t, you could guess, but AVAM was hugely inspiring for us when we started this here Secret Acres. A decade ago, we raided their gift shop (typically filled to the brim with actual, handmade art) and our haul very much informed our aesthetic. Returning to the scene of the crime with Theo, who had his big debut with Capacity for our first ever SPX back in 2008, while hauling the new edition of Capacity back to SPX in 2015, was a real treat for us. Plus Barry found the man or cat of his dreams in the men’s room. What a stall stalker.

 

 

Friday night found firebugs at Fantom Comics. Our very own Farel Dalrymple and our lady of the evening, MK Reed, dropped Palefire like napalm on an Orc army of the finest nerds our nation’s capitol could muster. We love you, nerds! Big boy Brandon Graham squared off with our power couple on the other end of the Fantom floor for what turned out to be an all-nighter. No surprise there, despite the absence of Brandon’s better half – and wither Robin, anyway? Congratulations to you little sellouts, and all hail Fantom Comics for hosting the SPX Eve pregaming extavaganza. We’ll just have to crash your party next year.

 

 

We didn’t wait up for them. Instead, we hit our secret steakhouse, grabbed our badges and wobbled over to the Marriott patio while the ever responsible Annie Koyama picked the lock on the ballroom to get set up before everyone else, even Chris Pitzer, who took his whole gang to the Nats game, naturally. We played catchup with the Beat herself, Heidi MacDonald, over an intense, excited, hour long conversation about Big Media, pop culture, comics and women. It seemed to us that women had effectively taken center stage in pretty much everything, comics included. About twenty-four hours later, Heidi looked like a prophet. Occasionally, comics shows like SPX stumble into a theme, and this show was just such an occasion.

 

 

We admit the Secret Acres theme was decidedly less ambitious: be prepared. Believe it or not, we were set up before the doors opened. We blame Farel and his love of breakfast foods. The butt touching started early, too. We got to six, including going stealth butt to butt with Dustin Harbin and John Martz, before losing count. Our snack game on point, we waved goodbye to enough of Palefire, the Understanding Monster – Book Three and the new Capacity to set our new single day SPX sales record. Theo’s Special Guest status helped keep ’em coming. We owe you one, Warren. Farel raised the bar on sketches to Angoulême levels, practically giving us a free art class. MK took a ton of Palefire away from us and kept coming back for more. Ditto for our man Sean Ford and his big fat book, Only Skin. Ditto for Corinne Mucha, and her little number, Get Over It! Caught up in comics fever, we lost mid triple digit dollars to the floor, too. We’d expected that, with books from the likes of Kevin Hooyman, Bendik Kaltenborn, Cole Closser, Kate Beaton, Dakota McFadzean, Frederik Peeters, Maggie Umber, Derf, Rune Ryberg, Meags Fitzgerald, Simon Moreton, Anna Erhlemark and so on and so on and so on and so much for all our money. Our gang recovered over Dark and Stormies and American Ninja Warrior: Las Vegas.

 

 

Returning to the ladies, folks were taking bets with the adorably and inchoherently exhausted Comics Reporter himself, Tom Spurgeon. During his job interview with us at the bar Saturday night, he postulated that this year, 2015, would see every single Ignatz Award go to a woman. He was right as rain on that one. Think about that for a second. Way back in 2010, with both of our SPX books, I Will Bite You! and Gaylord Phoenix, delayed, we received one helluva consolation prize having Lisa Hanawalt as Special Guest of the Secret Acres table. That very year, Lisa would be the first woman ever to win the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic. That was five years ago. If you don’t find that kind of progress exhilarating, go eat a dick. Considering some of the (nowhere near subtle enough) fit pitching from Kevin Smith era leftover men cartoonists after the awards ceremony, there remain a few steps to take to leave them in the dust for good. To quote Eleanor Davis, Ignatz Award winner for Outstanding Anthology or Collection, “Ready to watch the boys flee comics now that it’s ‘a girl thing.’ good fucking riddance <3” and we’d like to add: good fucking going, Eleanor!

 

 

On the way home, we found some extra outsider art at the rest stop, which was holding a Name That Teddy competition. Beauty finds us everywhere. Speaking of everywhere, you can find MK and Farel on their intercontinental tour for Palefire. We say intercontinental because Farel is making us all jealous by heading out to Leeds for Thought Bubble UK. Head’s up, England! All the details of said tour are sitting right at the end of this post.

 

 

There’s another ending requiring your attention: after six years, countless gallons of beer and bubbly and one wonderful community building exercise, our hometown Bergen Street Comics is turning off the lights. Bergen Street Comics brought back the pull list, gave us our beloved Casey, drew Tucker into our lives and launched a half dozen of our books. Heartbreak hurts, but this Saturday, they’re having the party to end them all. Join us for the big sendoff because the more shoulders to cry on, the better. We’ll pop up on the social medias to remind you of all this, and we’ll back for the run-up to the capper of the comics year, Comic Arts Brooklyn. Thank you, all you thousands of weird people who showed up at SPX. We love everybody.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

 

 

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