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!

Yesterday, Friday the 12^th, began the first day of SPX in Bethesda, MD. For Adam Casey and me, traveling from North Carolina, it unfortunately got rolling a bit late as (predictably) our progress toward the Bethesda North Marriot and Convention Center ground to a near-halt as we neared the metropolitan D.C. area. After a grueling 45 minutes of fighting beltway traffic (traffic in general being something us small town types are generally unaccustomed to, and thus complain about more profusely) we finally rolled into the Marriot parking lot at about 3:15—a good hour and a half after the show began.

I’d figured arriving a bit late wouldn’t be a big deal, since generally Friday afternoons can be pretty slow at SPX. In this I was wrong… The place was uncharacteristically packed when we wandered in and my table remained busy enough that it took me nearly an hour to get my wares properly set up. More than one person at our table block remarked that this was the busiest SPX Friday they’d experienced.

And sales? My verdict is: If I had anything to sell, I would’ve sold it. With the Midnight Sun graphic novel coming out in December, I wasn’t really looking to sell the early “floppy” issues of the series, since anyone who liked the story would then have to buy the GN containing in part the same material in a few weeks. I wound up selling sets of the first three issues for a buck per set, and just writing it off as a promotional endeavor. I had maybe ten such sets and sold them all in the first couple of hours I was at my table. So far other folks seem to be reporting good sales anecdotally.

With a gazillion books debuting from tons of publishers it’s going to be a tough call on what turns out to be this year’s “buzz book.” Dark Horse’s The Trial of Colonel Sweeto, the hardback collection of Perry Bible Fellowship strips, seems to be a early contender.

The show stayed open until 8:00 on Friday, which seems like maybe an hour longer than last time. If so, it’s a good idea I think, given that the floor was pretty packed still at eight when they powers that be started giving everyone the boot.

One of the odd features of the host hotel is a curious paucity of elevators, which last year resulted in a truly unpleasant pileup of people at the one bank of elevators right at the end of the show. I figured I’d avoid this entirely by just knocking back a beer or two while the lemming-like pileup died down. Beer in the hotel bar was expensive but cold and provided some much-needed down time. I hung out with Chris Reilly, James and Kirsten from Isotope Comics, Whitney Matheson from USA Today, Dustin Harbin from Heroes Con, and a few other assorted folks for a bit then grabbed a quick bite to eat from among the few restaurants within walking range.

The post-Expo hoopla downstairs was curiously unpopulated, with (I’m guessing) most folks being unaware of it until word of mouth spread to the bar upstairs. Eventually, J. Chris Campbell, Rob Ullman, the Adhouse crew and some other folks wandered down and things picked up. Last call at midnight dispersed folks back to various hotel rooms for further revelry.

(SPX setting up pre-opening Saturday Morning)

Aside from some great parody strips, the best thing to come out of the recent “cancer” storyline in Funky Winkerbean is a term recently coined by a friend of mine: funkywinkerbeanization.  Employed as a noun, the term refers to a situation in which something that was originally lighthearted, fun and/or enjoyable later becomes laborious and bogged down in self-importance.  Here are a few examples of the word used in sentences:

• Many Dan Clowes fans are divided over the direction of his more recent work, but I’ve enjoyed his comics both before and after the funkywinkerbeanization of Eightball.
• I heard a couple of early Beatles songs on the oldies channel the other day and it reminded me of how regrettable the funkywinkerbeanization of that band was.

You get the idea…