SPX 2007 – Day 2

Saturday, traditionally the more heavily attended of the two days of SPX, lived up to that reputation and more today with pretty much everyone I talked to reporting really strong sales and a few folks going as far as to say that this has been the strongest SPX so far. I’d agree with that as well. Given that I had essentially nothing new (other than some freebie promotional stuff for the upcoming Midnight Sun graphic novel), I had amazingly good sales for the day. I had on hand way more copies of my old 2002 SLG book Farewell, Georgia, than I would normally have brought to an SPX—around 30 copies—and sold every one of them by about 5:30 today. My minicomcs sales weren’t as strong as past years, but as mentioned I didn’t have much new, and the competition for good minis at SPX is getting pretty stiff these days. With my table space clearer than usual, I even threw some original pages up and managed to sell one of those as well. A great day, all in all. So, despite my previous grousing about the new location, it’s looking like SPX is firmly established and prospering. 

Having actually made a bit of change this go round, I was able to hit the floor and shop for stuff without financial guilt. Here’s a few of the items I picked up:

Shithole by Corine Mucha – Corine gave me a mini at my table last year called maybe Bugs (?) and I really enjoyed it, so when I saw her on the Ignatz ballot for Outstanding Debut, I made a point to track her latest down.

Tub Flub by Brad McGinty – I’m always shamed by the fact that Brad and I are at the same events pretty much every year and–while I often show up empty handed–he always has something new. Always.

Monsters by Ken Dahl – This was a bit of a buzz book from last year’s show, and issue two was out for this year’s show and looked fantastic, but I figured I’d start with issue one. All the CCS stuff looked really good as usual and I would have bought more stuff except that I just ordered a bunch of minis from them online a couple of weeks ago.

Monkey and the Crab by Shawn Cheng and Sara Edward-Corbett – This book was nominated for best mini I think, and it looks really nice. It was a bit pricey at $8.00, but it’s hand bound with purple string in some kinda crazy-ass cat’s cradle stitching, so I coughed up the bread on “art object” grounds.

Carl is the Awesome: Carl’s Large Story!!! by Marcos Perez – It’s true, you know: Carl IS the awesome. There was also a hardbound collection of the first bunch of Carl minis available that I would have bought if I didn’t already have them all in their original form.

Zig Zag #2 by J. Chris Campbell – Chris’s stuff is always amazing and I’m sure this is no exception. The “smiley/frowny” face endpapers are worth the cover price alone.

Portraits, Vol I: Authors of Adventure Literature by Chris Schweizer – I’m a sucker for these sort of “illustrated list” minis (and make them myself occasionally) and this one looks beautiful. Chris has a pirate book coming out soon from Oni that looks fantastic as well.

Skyscrapers of the Midwest #4 by Josh Cotter – I think Josh Cotter is one of the most impressive cartoonists to appear on the scene in recent times and I’m sure this latest installment of Skyscrapers is going to be good. I’ve just flipped through it at this point, but noticed that it’s got a cool comic-in-a-comic thing going on featuring “Nova Stealth,” that giant Cylon lookin’ robot from some of the earlier stories.

The Ignatz awards are getting underway downstairs as I type this, so I’ll probably wander down to that crazy “United Nations” room where they’re held to root for my faves. This year I voted a Ted Stearn straight ticket. Go, Ted!