{"id":1135,"date":"2008-10-05T23:42:48","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T03:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2009-01-01T14:40:12","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T18:40:12","slug":"con-report-spx-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1135","title":{"rendered":"Con Report: SPX 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spx_floor_08\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Much as with Heroes Con earlier this summer, I’ve once again proved to be too lazy and disorganized to do a nightly roundup post during the show… but, frankly, there were plenty of press folks floating around the place who will most certainly do a better job covering the show than I could–especially since I spent my time behind a table, not taking in all the other<\/em> good stuff going on.\u00a0 Just for starters I noted Heidi MacDonald<\/a>, Johanna Draper Carlson<\/a>, and Whitney Matheson<\/a> making the rounds–as well as a number of folks from Newsarama<\/em><\/a>, at least one from The Pulse<\/em><\/a>, someone who appeared to be Mr. Phil from Indie Spinner Rack<\/a> but who didn’t turn around when I screamed “Hey, Mister Phil!!!” and a person (oddly enough) from The Wall Street Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So there’ll be no lack of coverage from this year’s event from the usual sources, online and otherwise.<\/p>\n

What I can<\/em> probably provide some insight on, though, are what the general vibe among exhibitors was, and since I keep track of what I sell at shows, I’ll maybe do a comparison with this year’s Heroes Con.<\/p>\n

First, the general vibe and goings on: <\/strong><\/p>\n

This was the first year for the Saturday\/Sunday (as opposed to Friday\/Saturday, and even Friday\/Saturday\/Sunday of previous years) and I think there were some kinks getting worked through as a result, as exhibitors and the event organizers got a feel for this new schedule.\u00a0 A couple of my friends that had come down from New England and had arrived pre-dinner Friday night went to the Friday evening reception and said it wasn’t very well attended, speculating that there maybe weren’t really that many folks in town yet.\u00a0 That theory seemed to be confirmed as I noted that as I unloaded my luggage later in the evening–around ten or so–people were beginning to come into the lobby in a pretty steady stream with their luggage, probably just arriving either from evening flights or off the road.<\/p>\n

We checked out the hotel bar and found a strange mingling of a few SPX stragglers and some sort of wedding party there hanging out.\u00a0 We wound up joining some friends from the Triangle area of North Carolina out on the back porch for drinks, but no sooner were we settled in with a few cold beers, than the manager of the bar told us we’d have to leave.\u00a0 Somehow he’d figured out that some of the beers we were drinking hadn’t actually been purchased at the bar.\u00a0 How could he have known?\u00a0 Hmmm… Maybe it’s because the Hellcar<\/a> guys we were hanging out with were drinking beer out of AN ENORMOUS IGLOO COOLER that they had just set beside their table IN PLAIN VIEW.\u00a0 At any rate, we eventually left, feeling like elementary school kids caught wandering without a hall pass, and found a peaceful haven “below-decks” on some comfy couches downstairs in the conference area of the hotel where we found some peace and could engage in gentlemanly discussion of timely topics of interest, such as whether Underdog really got his powers from popping some sort of a pill.\u00a0 (Apparently, yes.\u00a0 Now that you can just look that kind of crap up on your %&$#@in’ iPhone it doesn’t stay unsettled for long.)<\/p>\n

Pretty much everyone I talked to agreed that the first day of the show, Saturday, was an amazing zoo.\u00a0 One person aptly described it as the “old” Friday and Saturday rolled into one.\u00a0 I was genuinely surprised by my sales that day, especially considering the newest thing I had available was Midnight Sun<\/em>, which has been out for about nine months now and is available through bookstores like Barnes and Noble.\u00a0 On the other hand, I suppose this is the first SPX I’ve had it at.\u00a0 I’ll get into more hard numbers in a minute, but I think I sold somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty of them on Saturday, along with maybe ten copies of my older SLG book, Farwell, Georgia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Post-show on Saturday was, of course, the Ignatz awards.\u00a0 I skipped them in favor of a few minutes of peace in my hotel room and a grilled shrimp Caesar salad that, once ordered via room service and including tip, cost something like $300.00.\u00a0 I returned in time for the post-show booze-fest, which was, as usual, a lot of fun.\u00a0 Again, pretty much everyone I talked to had nothing but great stuff to say sales-wise about Saturday.\u00a0 The cheery mood led to much merriment of course.\u00a0 In some strange manifestation of “six degrees of separation,” I wound up sitting at a table with a bunch of comics bigwigs far, far out of my league–including novelist and professor Tom DeHaven and his wife,\u00a0 and Fantagraphics\/Comics Journal<\/em> founder Gary Groth.\u00a0 I mostly talked to that guy that always comes to SPX in drag… who was curiously also<\/em> sitting at this same table with us.<\/p>\n

Sunday got rolling a little bit later–at noon, rather than eleven–than Saturday and, although it seemed like a pretty good crowd for a Sunday, my sales and the sales of those around me definitely seemed substantially slower than the day before.\u00a0 I noted a number of folks starting to pack up and go as early as 4:00 or so, even though the show didn’t close until 6:00.\u00a0 It’s worth noting, though, that this isn’t necessarily any indication of slow sales, but rather is likely just that many folks were heading home on Sunday and probably looking to get an earlier start.<\/p>\n

…Which brings up: It definitely felt weird to just close down at the end of the day and go home.\u00a0 In years past, even with Saturday as the last day of the show, everyone stuck around Saturday night to hang out, go to the Ignatz Awards and socialize.\u00a0 The unpleasant prospect of hitting the road didn’t rear its ugly head until the following day.<\/p>\n

All in all, though, a great show, especially considering the current economic woes.<\/p>\n

Now, sales…<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, a disclaimer: I don’t attend events like SPX to generate money; I go to generally stay in the loop with what’s going on in the art form, to get my books out there for folks who buy stuff mainly in person at events like these, to catch up with friends I see only at conventions, to make new friends and most of all just to have fun.<\/p>\n

That said, going to one of these things as an exhibitor entails a substantial financial outlay, and I remember the first time I considered getting a table at SPX there seemed to be a curious lack of information online with any hard numbers indicating what folks were selling.\u00a0 Occasionally a big publisher will declare that they sold out of this book or that book and will give a number of copies that they brought, but few if any regular folks seem to put out there what they brought in.\u00a0 I certainly hope I’m not breaking some unwritten rule of comicsdom by publishing such things, but certainly in the past<\/a> I’ve posted numbers from various shows mainly for comparison’s sake, and I’ll do so again here with the hope that it’ll provide some useful info for other relatively small-time comics creators trying to decide which shows to attend, if any.<\/p>\n

Comparing conventions to one another is definitely difficult to do, owing to differences in various things, but this year’s SPX and Heroes cons are a reasonable point of comparison for me since I had essentially the exact same stuff for sale at both–the only real difference being that, since I’m not making minis any more, I had even fewer minis available at SPX than at Heroes.\u00a0 For these comparisons I’ve modified a bit what I’m listing as my take for original art at Heroes, since part of my original number included a commission that I didn’t actually do at the convention as well as an original art purchase that had been arranged in advance and only ocurred at Heroes con because both I and the purchaser were going to be there.\u00a0 So here’s the breakdown:<\/p>\n

SPX 2008<\/span><\/p>\n

\"spx_2008\"<\/a><\/p>\n

HEROES 2008<\/span><\/p>\n

\"heroes_2008\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Interestingly, as far as cash-in-hand goes, I wound up with almost exactly<\/em> the same amount of money walking out the door at both shows.\u00a0 It says a lot about how brisk SPX was, though, that it’s a two<\/em> day show and Heroes is a three<\/em> day show.\u00a0 On the other hand, the hotel at SPX costs about 160% of the hotel at Heroes.\u00a0 A huge<\/em> factor for me personally, though, is that I’m usually a guest at Heroes, but have to pay for a table at SPX–and of course Heroes is just down the road from me, whereas I have a long drive and one extra day in a hotel for SPX.<\/p>\n

My brain really starts to hurt when I try to figure out how I did at this convention or that, especially when I begin to factor in things that are and aren’t tax deductible, etc.\u00a0 I find this stuff more interesting mainly just as an indicator of the general health of the market for the sorts of comics that I’m most interested in making and reading.<\/p>\n

Speaking of reading books…<\/p>\n

The Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m notoriously bad at calling the “buzz books” at shows like these, but I didn’t really note any single book that seemed to be in everyone’s hand.\u00a0 I’d maybe put Chris Schweizer<\/a>‘s Crogan’s Vengeance<\/em> (Oni) in the running as it seemed to be getting a lot of well-deserved attention.\u00a0 I saw a number of folks as well with some great-looking new releases from Fantagraphics including John Kerschbaum’s Peety & Pussy<\/em> and the collected Fuzz & Pluck<\/em> hardcover from Ted Stearn.<\/p>\n

I was a bit surprised that Adhouse<\/a> didn’t have a big onslaught of stuff debuting at the show, but I did get to see preview copies of not one, but two, really beautiful Scott Morse books that are apparently forthcoming from them.\u00a0 One is, I think, entirely new stuff; the other is a couple of previously published anthology pieces.<\/p>\n

Apparently repeating an event from last year, John McNamee started a narrative corpse-style jam comic that was drawn on a spool of cash register paper.\u00a0 You can find the strip itself, as well as a list of participants, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I haven’t had time to even unpack yet, much less go through my purchases from the show, but one item I’ll feature here is this onesie that was given to me by Paul Friedrich of Onion Head Monster<\/em><\/a> fame.\u00a0 I’ve made a deliberate effort not to plaster my blog with pictures of my daughter, but in this case since it’s apropos to comics, I can’t resist:<\/p>\n

\"onionhead\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Caption on shirt: “Onion Head Monster takes a great big pea.”)<\/p>\n

\n


\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much as with Heroes Con earlier this summer, I’ve once again proved to be too lazy and disorganized to do a nightly roundup post during the show… but, frankly, there were plenty of press folks floating around the place who will most certainly do a better job covering the show than I could–especially since I … <\/p>\n

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