Jurassic World

RUN for your life to Mama Says Comics Rock! You read that right: MSCR, Brooklyn’s newest funny book emporium plays host to the newest horse in the Secret Acres’ table, Reid Psaltis, and our old boy, Brendan Leach, TONIGHT. The fun starts at 6PM, so prepare for refreshments and a double dose of our two latest books, appearing for the first time anywhere in public. We love a good couple of debuts, sure, but lest we forget the occasion for such hijinks, MSCR is sending us all on our way to SPX, aka Comics Camp, aka the Small Press Expo, the big show happening this very weekend.

The aforementioned Mr. Psaltis takes his first-ever road trip with us, to bring his first-ever book, the Order of Things, to Bethesda. We never knew how dumb we were about animals until checking out this badass bestiary. Reid drops a lot of science here, which comes as no surprise since he got his learn on at the science illustration graduate program at California State University – Monterey Bay, and that was after acquiring a BA in oil painting. Be dazzled by his skills, but pay attention, because Reid pulls a fast one or twelve. By the time you remember raptors don’t eat ramen, you’re done for. Laugh and learn, people.

Then shed a tear for a pterodactyl, with the oversized, hardcover, spot glossy return of Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City. Brendan Leach’s classic tale lands somewhere between the Red Badge of Courage and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but with a flock of pterodactyls terrorizing turn of the century New York. This flight of fancy lands in familiar territory; even psychologists will envy Brendan’s ability to put the family drama in fantasy. Harpoon gunning a pterodactyl from a hot air balloon looks easy after dealing with a disappointed dad. A Xeric grant-funded, newsprint version of Pterodactyl Hunters won the SPX Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic a couple years back. What better place for its rebirth?

Another Ignatz Award winner returns to the scene of the crime this SPX weekend. Gabby Schulz, winner of two Ignatz Awards for his graphic novel, Monsters, makes his way back to the Secret Acres tables, with Sick. Sick garnered Gabby yet another Ignatz nomination, this time for Outstanding Graphic Novel. We beg you to vote for it, and believe us, we’d keep our mouths shut because Gabby hates all civic duty, but Sick is truly outstanding, and it is a graphic novel. Get to SPX and make your voice heard. Democracy in action and all that.

See you tonight, see you at the show and then we’ll see you back here in a week!

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

See You in September

OKAY. We’re going to do this out of order a little bit. On Sunday at CAKE, aka the Chicago Alternative (K)omics Expo, we unfurled our table cloth and Secret Acres flag to face day two of the big show. Our ginormous, loaner iPad was on the fritz, so we used our phones as cash registers because wonders never cease. The texts and e-mails came fast and furious. An “Americanized,” “self-radicalized,” “radical Islamist” shooter unleashed the most savage mass murder in American history, which really says something.

It’s strange when the Real World pops the bubble of a day at a comics show. It generally means terrible shit happened. This one happened to gay people at a gay club. We’re gay guys and we were talking comics at CAKE at the Center on Halsted in Chicago during Pride week. As gays, we’re used to being politicized. As Americans, we’re used to seeing mass murders and we’re used to seeing them politicized, too. “Americanized” is generally used to described Muslims in America, which, like any sane person, we find disgusting, ditto the term “self-radicalized” and whatever the fuck people mean by “radical Islam.” If only “Americanized” meant stockpiling violence upon fear mongering upon endless war, nuclear war, slavery and genocide, it would be an honest word, at least. So we were momentarily consumed by hatred for our own country.

Then we remembered who we were and where we were: CAKE was the place to be. After scrolling through the news, we walked into Sunday’s panel, a “Celebration of Sparkplug Comics.” The panel, an intimate affair, quickly turned into a celebration of Dylan Williams, in memoriam, at what was the last show ever for his publishing company, wrapping up after 14 years of great work and five years after we lost Dylan himself. The day we heard Dylan was gone, we happened to be at SPX, the Small Press Expo. We wrote then about what a blessing it was to be surrounded by so many people who loved him.

At CAKE, and in an LGBT center, post news of the massacre, we listened to stories of Dylan’s unending love for comics and the people who make them and the people who read them. Dylan told everyone what they needed to hear, and on Sunday, it was Austin English who said what we needed to hear. He talked about a time, on a road trip with Dylan, when he felt deeply discouraged and conflicted about complaining to Dylan: how do you get so wrapped up in comics when there are people dying by the thousands in Afghanistan? Dylan told Austin it was good to take it all seriously because comics were so important to him. That’s important to us. We’ve said this so many times, but it’s so easy to forget, and some sad souls might even forget that this is a community: our community is made of the best people on the planet and there are a lot of us.

Lucky us to be in the same room with a good chunk of the beautiful people. Yes, we were selling comics, but if you believed like Dylan did, this was a holy act, too. We sold a decent amount of comics, but with everything else going on in the world and in Chicago, the turnout suffered a bit. Speaking of being in the room, how we longed to be in the big gym, despite our prime real estate, and nosey neighbors like the Uncivilized gang, our own Sean Ford, and Tin Can Forest. We did catch glimpses of Corinne Mucha and Reid Pslatis. We snuck in a little cuddle time with our favorite Martian, Marian Runk. We chatted a little bit with Tom Devlin and giggled with Jessica Campbell at Quimby’s. We received a killer submission of sorts from Chris Gooch. We picked up the new Lale Westvind. We leaned on Zak Sally like a crutch. We hugged the King Cat, John Porcellino. We stood on a rooftop watching the sunset while Eddie Campbell read to a packed house downstairs. We peed in peace and comfort in genderless bathrooms. We ate cake. We saw hundreds of naked people riding bikes through the streets. We celebrated the first anniversary of our gay marriage. This is all to say a thing like CAKE is a community event, not a market, and we’re grateful to have participated in it. Thanks, everybody, especially to all the volunteers, who make these things happen for all of us.

But back to Reid Psaltis. We promised a big reveal and reveal we must. Coming in September to the aforementioned SPX, will be the debut of the newest Secret Acre, Reid Psaltis. It’s called the Order of Things. Yes, it’s a bestiary. You’ll read and you’ll learn something, but pay attention, because Reid is going to mess you with you and the animal kingdom in equal measure. Reid boasts some serious science chops in addition to being a world class painter. In fact, you can find some of his work on display at New York’s own world famous American Museum of Natural History right now. Everyone say, “Hi,” to the new kid!

The there’s the old kid, Brendan Leach. We’re bringing Leach back to SPX, too, and bringing his Ignatz Award winner, Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City back to print. Yep, everyone’s walking the dinosaur. Pterodactyl Hunters is a stone cold classic, like the Red Badge of Courage meets pterodactyls in turn of the century New York. We fell in love with Brendan at our first sight of the old newsprint version, so we’re pleased as punch to resurrect it out of a mosquito trapped in amber. Our dino-sized, hardcover, spot-glossed edition lands in your hands this fall.

Meanwhile, check out the starred, glowing review of Gabby Schulz‘s Sick over at Publisher’s Weekly. We discussed this a bit with old Gabby at our CAKE table. We appreciate the universal, glowing praise Sick has received–but, but, but it’s an argument against human existence and everyone who’s written it up describes nodding along while reading it. We adore Gabby and Sick, sure. If only he were more wrong!

Anyway, go forth and make love while it’s nice out. See you in a few.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

P.S. Thank you, Gene Kannenberg, Jr. for the use of your picture of Gabby at the 25th Anniversary of Quimby’s! We owe you one.

The Super Bowl Shuffle

WE LOVE YOU like a fat kid loves CAKE, aka the Chicago Alternative Komics Expo (sic). We got no CAKE last year, so we’re starving for flavor. Of the many things we love about the Second City or the Windy City or whatever, this show ranks pretty dang high on the list. As a couple of gay guys, we appreciate the queer friendly vibe of having a show in the hallowed halls of the Center on Halsted, the nicest LGBTQ center we’ve ever seen. Not to mention, our guy Edie Fake midwifed CAKE into the world. Though Edie relocated himself to the wilds of the Cali desert (no, really the wilderness), we are blessed to have some powerhouse local talent at the Secret Acres table. You will be witnesses.

Even if they’re sitting out of sitting at the Secret Acres table, our CAKE gang covers the floor real good. The remote roster boasts none other than Corinne Mucha, of Get Over It! fame and fortune. Corinne set up her own shop for this one, but rest assured, she will be bearing gifts. Our next door neighbor represents something of a reunion for us. Sean Ford, the maker of Only Skin and his current series, Shadow Hills, makes his way to CAKE from his new home state of Kentucky. Yep, he live theres now because that’s where they make the bourbon. Also, you’ll find Reid Psaltis at CAKE. Remember when we said, “hint, hint,” about that guy? Of course not, because we said that on tumblr or the like. We promise a big reveal when we return here with our CAKE tales.

Front and center at our table is Gabby Schulz, aka Ken Dahl aka Food Stamp Beer aka Vomiting Larry aka some other names he’d kill us if we told you. He has so many names. He’s getting Sick to the lovely masses once more. As a fun aside, Gabby took over Edie’s spot at Quimby’s (kinda) when he dragged himself to Chicago a couple years ago. How fitting  he will be on the truly awesome sounding 25th Anniversary Celebration of Quimby’s! panel. That panel kicks off the weekend, too. If you’re angry about Gabby subbing in for Edie, or you simply need more Edie Fake all the time, prepare to be happy because the Kavi Gupta gallery’s got some Edie on the walls for their show Gist & Gesture. In short, make the trip to CAKE, people.

Can’t make the trip? Check out Midwest Book Review‘s take on Rob Sergel‘s SPACE: An Eschew Collection. Or pore over Optical Sloth‘s ideal reader type review of Gabby’s Sick. Or watch Gabby’s short film (we will never say “motion comic” aloud), Suicide Forest if you dare. Or see what the Comics Journal has to say about Sick. Or do all this and have your CAKE, too. See you folks at the show, and see you back in here in week.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

Contagion

LET US BEGIN by thanking the organizers and volunteers at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival for continuing to run the best oiled ship in the sea. We seem to go out of our way to screw up our TCAF plans, year in and year out, but they just won’t let us fail. For the prime digs, the easing of international border crossing and the constant attention to, and anticipation of, our every need, we offer you our sincere gratitude. We promise to earn it in the future.

We breathed a great sigh of relief looking at both Gabby and Sick sitting at the Secret Acres TCAF table, next to Rob and SPACE. As you know, this moment took years to materialize. Though he held genuine and reasonable worries that people might line up at the table to scorn him, Gabby was wrong as usual. He had his chance and he blew it. Bless you, all you forgiving folks, Canadian and otherwise, who greeted us and Gabby with your smiles and your strange, plastic money. We did sell a bunch of Sick and SPACE and pretty much every other book we had, after deliberating whether or not to adjust prices for the exchange rate (which we decided was stupid).

The flagging Canadian dollar certainly contributed to our own ludicrous haul, but who needed an excuse when there were new books from Noah Van Sciver, Matt Furie, Andy Burkholder, Mickey Z, Brian Chippendale (BRIAN CHIPPENDALE TALKED TO US), Rokudenashiko, Powerpaola, Cathy G. Johnson, Joann Sfar, etc? All of those people hung around all weekend. We got to meet Nicholas Gurewitch (NICK GUREWITCH TALKED TO US). He gave us prints. Like presents. Special thanks to Max Weiss, for delivering unto us our favorite submission (of sorts) of the weekend, PAPA TIME. Perhaps the strangest absence was new work from Michael Deforge. That’s never happened before. Think about how crazy that is. Want to know what sucks about TCAF? Though we did find Alex Hoffman and the new Ink Brick, we know we missed a ton of stuff, no matter how many rounds we made.

We missed our neighbors of the past few years, Conundrum Press, but they boasted flagship status for hitting a giant milestone, their 20th anniversary. Conundrum celebrated this with a pretty damn great history/anthology, 20×20, and an even more impressive catalog, which included the likes of: Michel Rabagliati, Chihoi, Simon Bossé, Pascal Girard, Dakota McFadzean, Nina Bunjevac, Jillian Tamaki and Joe Ollmann, the Lord of the DILFs, to name a few. Congratulations, guys!

We lucked out with new neighbors in our old pals, Aaron Costain, who finally, finally finished Entropy (and we knew you could do it, Aaron!) the omnipresent John Martz, the even more omnipresent Dustin Harbin and the good ship Uncivilized Books, manned by none other than Jordan Shiveley. Our own MK Reed hid somewhere in the upper stratosphere of the library, but that didn’t stop her from coming all the way down to chill with us. You should’ve been our mule, MK. That’ll learn ya.

Within an hour of Aaron telling us about Toronto phenomenon, Zanta, we were treated to an actual TCAF Zanta appearance. Zanta was escorted out of the library, but not before doing some impressive push-ups, tearing off his shirt and screaming, “I’m Zanta! Google me!” To be fair, it did snow on Sunday, so Zanta’s appearance was not wholly unwarranted. We Googled him.

Speaking of Dustin, we call bullshit on Dustin hosting the Dougies, or as they are known in Canada, the Doug Wright Awards, which engages in discriminatory practices by only honoring Canadian cartoonists – but it’s okay for Dustin to host? Really? In protest, we skipped the Dougies for our annual poutine sports bar with Annie Koyama and a little bit of Chris Pitzer. But just as it hung over the Dougies, the shadow of Darwyn Cooke‘s sudden death fell over our Blue Hawaiian cocktails. We knew Darwyn a bit from our days at the Distinguished Competition. We’re sitting on some stories about that man which would knock your teeth out, but what a terrible loss for comics. No, we’re not going to gossip. Unless we’re drunk and talking to Heidi in the lobby of the Marriott while trying not to stare at Tom Devlin’s track jacket and ponytail combo and wondering how he convinced Peggy that outfit was okay.

For the first time in forever, we brought enough of a gang to sneak out to some panels. The winner, by far, was the little panel on artists “In the Studio,” with our idol, Bendik Kaltenborn, our mancrush, Brecht Evens, our bro, Kevin Czap, and the obviously bonkers but wonderfully talented MariNaomi. MariNaomi, by way of telling us all how she compulsively buys up pens for fear of running out of them, somehow leapfrogged to sharing her obsession with Chuck Berry’s habit of eating shit, literally, and how he was caught videotaping women customers defecating in the bathroom of his restaurant, Blueberry Hill. Of course, this derailed the panel completely, with MariNaomi exclaiming, in her best Chuck Berry voice, “COME TO PAPA… …yeeeaaah.” We left the table for that and we were glad. Also, now, MariNaomi, someone might stumble upon this mention of Chuck Berry’s sexual habits in their internet searches. PAPA TIME indeed!

On that note, we’re pooped. We have a lot of reading to do now that Gabby is safely returned to Chicago and Rob to Cambridge. We’ll be heading to Chicago, too, since CAKE, the Chicago Alternative (K)omics Expo is on deck. See you in a few.

Your Pals,

Leon and Barry

Outbreak

TRIGGER WARNING: this post may contain painful, embarrassing truths and mentions of Gabby Schulz, the artist formerly known as Ken Dahl. Thanks for hanging out and continuing to read, the beautiful few of you who are left. This weekend, we at Secret Acres drop Sick on the formerly suspecting, but now likely unsuspecting, horde of the world’s biggest indie comics show, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, aka TCAF.

Those blessed with a freakish memory and a long history of reading this blog, may remember that, in 2011, we went to our first TCAF and partied way, way too hard. Someone brought pills, others gave us free pot, we washed it all down with booze. On TCAF Sunday, like, while the show was happening, we searched frantically to find at least one of our gang trashed in the garage across the street. We knew no better at the time, so we drove home, across the border and back to New York, USA, right after the doors closed. The last line of our TCAF 2001 blog wrap up reads that we were all “literally feverish.” Two of us fell violently ill. One of us went to the ER. Gabby decided to tough it out. For weeks. This birthed Sick.

Stating that Gabby decided to tough it out qualifies as an understatement. Like millions of Americans, Gabby took his chances with no insurance. He’d argue that he was left to die, friendless. To our recollection, though Gabby violently disputes this, all of Brooklyn was begging to drag him to a hospital. We could probably prove it if we had the kind of chops to storify Twitter. If you enjoyed Gabby’s graphic novel Monsters, and bless the many of you who have, you know a little bit about him. He chooses darkness, or truth, as he would say. As his publishers, we’re aware that Gabby creates only in the bleakest hours of his life. It’s a dilemma: do we want him to be happy or do we want him to make some comics? No surprise, Gabby returned from the dead with Sick, the Ignatz nominated webcomic, documenting his illness/madness.

We announced the completed and collected Sick would be coming to TCAF in 2013. We announced the completed and collected Sick would be coming to TCAF in 2014. Last year, we stopped announcing Sick. This failed to stop folks at TCAF from asking if Sick was out, or if Gabby was at the show. If you asked, you might wonder what the hell Gabby was doing the past couple of years. He moved. Thrice. He accompanied us down some terrible paths in our Wilderness Moments. He cycled through three different, equally hostile and infamous Twitter handles before quitting the scene. Believing he had successfully alienated everyone, but not us, never us, he took over our own Edie Fake‘s spot at the legendary Quimby’s. He freaked out because, shocker, the webcomic Sick needed to be redrawn, top to bottom, to fit in a book. He decided it would be easier and faster to watercolor the whole thing, which, amazingly, turned out not to be true at all. He suffered some serious nerve damage that completely killed his drawing arm when he was a couple pages shy of finishing. He was knocked out of action for months. He finally finished Sick, five years after getting sick.

Secret Acres is proud to announce that Gabby Schulz’s Sick is debuting at this weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Keep it away from the kids and the delicate in nature. We tried to encourage Gabby to complete his magnificently rendered and watercolored masterwork, Sick, by allowing his perennial classic, Monsters, to disappear from print until it could be reissued in a special edition next to Sick. We keep our promises in these parts: we are pleased to announce the return of Gabby Schulz’s perennial classic, Monsters, written as Ken Dahl, now in a special, deluxe, flexibound edition. Christ almighty, what a long, strange trip it’s been.

Meanwhile, since we last appeared on this blog, Hillary Brown over at Paste, wrote up Robert Sergel‘s SPACE: An Eschew Collection. In this age of people constantly wringing their hands over the state of comics journalism and comics criticism, count on Hillary. She understands comics, she’s incredibly thoughtful and even better, she can really write. Thank you, Hillary for all the kind words for our latest. Hillary has company in Rob Kirby, who picked SPACE as his pick of the week, and in Alex Hoffman, whose Sequential State discussed SPACE on their podcast. Who says comics criticism is dead? What better way to celebrate all this love than to bring Rob and SPACE with us to TCAF. Yes, we love you all.

Alas, MK Reed continues to shirk her sacred duties as our TCAF comics mule, but she will be at the show, Palefire in hand, so no complaints there. If you can’t make it up to Toronto, you can still get Sick (and SPACE and Palefire) in our Emporium. If you just want to sit around listening to more podcasts, you can check out Mike Dawson and Theo Ellsworth on  Comics Alternative. If you need more Theo in your life, and we all do, really, there’s some lovely thoughts on his latest, The Understanding Monster – Book Three, over at Foreword. It’s so nice, they hit it twice.

See you on the other side, and back here in a bit…

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

R U Still in 2 It

FIRST THINGS FIRST, we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit over our first weekend of Comics Season. It all began, of course, with the VIP opening ceremony for the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival, aka MoCCA. Held at the Society of Illustrators itself, Friday night was a celebration of ten years of the Center for Cartoon Studies, aka CCS. We share a lot of history with CCS, including three CCS grads and a CCS fellow that we’ve published. So for us, the MoCCA Fest started with a reunion. The CCS exhibit is running for a bit, so if you skipped the opening night and complementary bubbly, make your way to the Society and check out the CCS fellows’ original art. At the very least, it provides ample evidence that Alec Longstreth suffers from some kind of graphomania because no reasonable person drew those Basewood pages.

Rob Sergel enjoys much better mental health despite all the rampant social anxiety contained in his SPACE. Our MoCCA debut for 2016, SPACE launched without too much of a hitch. Thank you, beautiful people for coming all the way upstairs and getting yours. A rainy Saturday morning left us yawning into the afternoon, however. Imagine our surprise to find a crowd downstairs when we snuck out for lunch. Our shitty real estate failed to keep us from a strong half day, but we got a lot folks telling us they didn’t know the second floor was open. Everyone appeared to like the Metropolitan West nonetheless. MoCCA’s moved three years in a row, which alone might make it the most New York of shows. We skipped every panel and every Saturday night party to grab some secret Mexican food because we were wiped out and selfish for Rob time.

We loved spending these intimate Mexican moments with Rob, selfish or not, but man, we felt cheated by the absence of Koyama Press, AdHouse, Hic n’ Hoc, etc. Minus the usual suspects, MoCCA seemed like a dress rehearsal. A comics vet, whom we refuse to name, said she thought there was a little fatigue in the air, which, maybe? You’d never know it from the volunteers, who have been consistently awesome for the near decade of MoCCA shows we’ve done. Ditto the lines around the block for the panels that we skipped. We talked to one of the MoCCA Prize judges, who judged the floor to be more of an artist’s alley than indie comics show. We latched on to that one, but that’s probably because we’re more on the IDGAF end of the spectrum when it comes to cartoons on TV.

As someone once pointedly paraphrased: if the scene sucks, it’s because you suck. The MoCCA scene did not suck, to be sure. Plenty of superstars roamed the floor, we found some new comics crushes at the MICA table and in Natalie Andrewson and Kate LaCour in particular, and the majority of folks bringing us their comics were not lunatics. We even got a shot of James Sturm reading Gabby Schulz‘s Sick. It was James who said (paraphrasing again) that MoCCA might not be the Big Gun show we want it to be, but it’s not a disappointment. We agree on both counts, more or less. Good enough is good enough. Plus we hung out with Rob all weekend and dropped a bunch of SPACE. What suck there was rests on us for sure; we need to be more active steerers if we’re still on the Society’s steering committee for 2017. We hope we are, if only to hang with the Society folks some more. They feed us even.

Don’t whine if you missed Rob at MoCCA, because he and SPACE are heading up north with us for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, aka TCAF. Rob joins none other than the aforementioned Gabby Schulz, aka Ken Dahl, who at long last will have Sick with him. See the pic above? The book exists for real; we swear to you. Yes, we promised you Gabby and Sick back in 2013. We believe it’s better late than never, and Sick is better for the wait. Gabby’s got his new, special edition of Monsters coming as well. MK Reed, alas, decided to abandon her post as the Secret Acres border crossing comics mule this year, but she will be at the show with her (and Farel Dalrymple’s) Palefire and Rob and Gabby and Sick and Monsters and SPACE. Not bad, huh?

Until then, and before we forget, there’s a fun profile of Edie Fake and his Marlborough Chelsea show over on Vice. The show itself is hanging at Marlborough until the 23rd. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss us too much, either. TCAF’s right around the corner and we’ll be back here before you know it with all the dirt on Sick.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

Missing You

ONCE upon a time, back in 2008, we sat on our very first panel. It happened at the Small Press Expo. The night before, we had celebrated the impending glory of our first SPX at the unfortunately-named “SPX-plosion” at Atomic Books in Baltimore. Atomic hosted the debut bash of Daybreak 3, Goddess of War, Boy’s Club 2, the Hot Breath of War and Capacity, a rogue’s gallery of indie comics’ finest from Bodega Distribution, Picturebox, Buenaventura Press, Sparkplug Comic Books and, of course, us.

At the panel, we sat with Randy Chang, Dylan Williams and Alvin Buenaventura for a Publisher’s Roundtable. Secret Acres leaned heavily on the expertise of Randy and Dylan when we started out, so we knew them well, but it was our first time getting to hang out with Alvin. We found him a little inscrutable, scary smart and weird beyond reason. The four of us ignored the large crowd assembled to hear us gab, and ended up gushing over each others’ books and bitching about distro issues the entire time. It felt to us that the future had arrived.

These days, that convivial panel feels like it happened a thousand years ago. Since then, Randy’s closed the shop and moved on to bigger and better things, ditto for Dan. We’ve already dropped plenty of words here about losing Dylan, and now, five years later, Sparkplug itself. Alvin shuttered Buenaventura, returned with Pigeon Press and has now left everyone behind with a pile of great comics and stunning art prints. Whatever era it was that began back in 2008 is inarguably over. Rather than lie, we’ll cop to being just a little terrified. For us, time tends to pass without notice, but, boy, did this past winter drive home the fact that Secret Acres has lived through a distinct comics lifecycle.

When we say we’ve missed you, you beautiful people reading this, we mean it. Here’s to the start of the 2016 comics season.

It is fitting that our first book of the year comes from Robert Sergel. Welcome to SPACE: an Eschew Collection. Allow us some nostalgic musings here: when we read Eschew the first time and realized that we desperately wanted to publish Rob Sergel’s work, it turned out that Dylan was already working with Rob. Of course, Dylan had read Eschew first and said it was his favorite comic and that it would be our favorite comic, and he was right.

Now, Eschew can be your favorite comic, too. Rob worked hard polishing up the old Eschew stories for SPACE, and shoring up a ton of stuff you haven’t seen before. Nobody nails life’s awkward and absurd moments like Rob Sergel. If you wish you could forget the anxiety-filled stupidity of the things you’ve done to get from there to here, Rob’s comics will have you cuddling your inner child – just try not to laugh in its face.

Freaks like us count the seasons by their comics shows. Rob and SPACE will be coming to the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival this weekend. Come by the table and try tricking Rob into drawing something for you. We expect great things from him.

We’re flying blind for MoCCA, though. While we remain on the steering committee with the fine folks at the Society of Illustrators. While life showered us with many blessings in the year that was 2015, it didn’t leave us too much time to help out with the steering. We did check out the Metropolitan West building and it’s gorgeous. We failed to get a look at Ink48, but with a name like that, it has to be damn fine. Between our pair of new day jobs, one new marriage, a toddler, a new home, some health scares and all that, well, in the Society we trust. Hey, we love an adventure, too.

Speaking of big news and adventures, Edie Fake’s solo show at the Marlborough Chelsea is up until April 23rd. When you come out to MoCCA, you need to walk the High Line from Marlborough. Feel free to kick the tourists out of your way, but check out Edie’s show because it’s killer, like everything Edie. We squeezed through the crowd to get to opening night, which rocked and amazed us. We’ve spent a good decade watching Edie, and what looks like peaking is always just another step on the way up for him. No doubts allowed, we are the most proud of Edie and his prodigious talents!

If attending MoCCA requires crossing an ocean for you, or presents other logistical horrors, you can pick up SPACE in our Emporium, of course. You can even pre-order the new and improved, special edition of Ken Dahl’s Monsters. You can even pre-order Sick, by Gabby Schulz, the artist formerly known as Ken Dahl. You imagine correctly that there’s a story behind that one, but it’s a story for another time.

We’ll return with our post-show rundown of all things MoCCA next week! Come say hello to Rob and SPACE at MoCCA this weekend and be part of the great comics lifecycle that we’re all living right now.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

High Anxiety

UNARMED and abandoned, we walked into Comic Arts Brooklyn. All of our artists ditched us at once, albeit with plenty of warning and with a plethora of reasons, but still. Can you blame us for our feels? At the very least, two of our gang showed up at the Mt. Carmel Gymnasium, namely Sean Ford and Brendan Leach. However, Brendan split early, called away on business, and Sean set up shop at his own digs, downstairs from us. Piling on, come the middle of the day, a billionaire summoned one half of us, the Secret Acres duo, to his billionaire’s lair. Biting the hand that feeds usually bites you in the ass, so for the majority of the day at CAB, Secret Acres was a total solo operation. A couple of years ago, in the days of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, we boasted a record (for us) ten folks behind two tables at the Mt. Carmel gym. Our circumstances for CAB 2015 looked absolutely disastrous on paper. And yet…

Somehow, we sold more books than we did last year. An interesting note: in terms of the number of sales, we ended up slightly behind. The saving grace was that fewer people bought more books. Allowing for the tiny sample size of us, this is a trend for 2015. Do we blame, or rather, thank, income inequality? Surely, Milton Griepp will tell us.

Despite one moment of panic, it turned out okay, going solo behind the table. Then again, CAB blessed us with the finest of neighbors in Koyama Press‘ Ed Kanerva (how we love you, Ed) and Annie herself. We bow to you, Annie! Meanwhile, Sean took away half our copies of Only Skin en route to a big day ditching all his copies of Shadow Hills. Brendan’s depature hurt sales of his Iron Bound not at all. We joked about making table while we packed up. Other than the lack of shopping time for us, CAB kinda killed it again. And yet…

We’re tempted to tell people to toughen up. Like last year’s CAB, some folks, who shall remain nameless because we’re not like that, panicked early. Come to Williamsburg and see the empty streets on a Sunday morning. Everyone knows the beautiful people sleep in. Enough with the hand-wringing already. CAB delivers a seriously inside crowd. People sold our books to each other. They’re so plugged in, in fact, that, for us, listening to them recommend the books on our table to each other remains the highlight of the show, maybe even our year. One woman quoted Rob Sergel’s Eschew to her friends. More than a few asked after Joe Lambert before foisting every last copy we had of I Will Bite You! onto their gangs. We dissappointed some folks who were asking if there was a new Curio Cabinet. We ran out of everything Corinne Mucha, largely because one customer kept brining others to the table all day. Allow us to retweet Sean:

Forgive us, but we’re old and we skipped the party to have a fancy dinner with some out of towners from Canada who were in town for the show. We were, nonetheless, roped into the Beat‘s (forthcoming) podcast, mostly talking mini-comics storage. Kevin H himself expressed mini-comics storage concerns earlier, which gave us a leg up for Heidi. So, for you mini maniacs out there, we recommend nesting tables. Get some. Trust us. Surely, Heidi’s podcast offers every conceivable solution, too, but nesting tables.

Anyhow, this is where we get off, show-wise, for the year. You can still follow Farel Dalrymple and MK Reed on their international Palefire tour. Farel will be deep in the Leeds at Thought Bubble UK (that’s in England) this weekend, lucky bastard. MK will be joining him in the City of Angels for Comic Arts Los Angeles on December 5th. Even before all that, catch Edie Fake and some Memory Palaces action at the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s Imaginary Worlds this very Friday. We’ll keep you abrest of all this on our Twitter and tumblr and Facebook, and we’ll be back here again for a very special look ahead to 2016. We promise big news for that one.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

Why Make Sense?

ONE LAST RIDE for us in 2015 to Comic Arts Brooklyn, our hometown hoedown! CAB makes us feel like Supermen every year. Every year we make the cut means we’re doing something right.

Brooklyn’s lost a lot of its comics scene, with rents and the lure of animation lucre leading cartoonists out west like it’s the Gold Rush. Adding injury to injury, we lost Bergen Street Comics this year, too. Mercifully, Desert Island‘s Gabe Fowler is keeping the flame. Rising from the ashes of ye olde Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in 2013, Comic Arts Brooklyn didn’t miss a beat. For round three, CAB comes out swinging. Really, look at the programming for 2015. Look at it.

Speaking of hometown heroes, our very own Brendan Leach makes his first pit stop of 2015 at the Secret Acres table. Although Farel Dalrymple raised the bar for show sketches at SPX, Brendan has some real chops when it comes to making his Iron Bound look extra pretty. Fellow Brooklynite Sean Ford, of Only Skin fame, will be in the room, slinging his latest issue of his current series, Shadow Hills. Of course, all three volumes of Theo Ellsworth‘s Understanding Monster and the brand new edition of Capacity, complete with limited edition, signed and numbered posters and prints, will greet you with a smile. Just to mess with you, the new, fancier, bigger and typo-corrected Monsters, the classic graphic novel from Ken Dahl aka Gabby Schulz, could be hiding at our table, too. You’ll just have to see for yourself.

If you’re one the Brooklyn defectors, and the west coast has you in its clutches, fear not. Tomorrow night, haul ass to Portland, Oregon and see the Palefire kids, Farel Dalrymple and MK Reed, face off with Brandon Graham. AGAIN. What is it with you guys? The incredible Floating World Comics hosts the terrible trio and their host of cohorts, Simon Roy, Amy Clare, Tessa Black, Robin Bougie and Robin McConnell. Sounds like quite a throwdown in Bridgetown.

Alas, we’ll miss that one because we’re stalking Annie Koyama. In case you missed it, Annie is celebrating ten years of health of happiness, so read all about it. We’re heathens, yeah, but Annie’s friendship is one of life’s great blessings and this milestone of hers deserves fudge. Also, in the ICYMI files, Palefire got the good news from mental_floss and Slate. MK even did the illustrations for the month’s Slate Book Review. If you just need more provocation in your reviews, check out nudes reading comics and their take on Theo’s magnum opus, Capacity.

We’ll be back with the post show post in a few…

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

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