This flyer for SPX had been reminding me since July of the excitement to come.
A typical Saturday for me is typically spent on campus or at home in Pennsylvania, but this yesterday, I got to switch things up a little and attend SPX (the Small Comics Expo) at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Maryland for the afternoon!
I enjoy reading web comics (particularly ones found on Tumblr), and over the past year, my interest in comics has evolved from something casual into something academic–this fall, I’m writing my senior capstone paper on autobiographical web comics and mental illness. So when I first heard about SPX at the end of July and learned that it’s in Bethesda, which is only an hour away from campus, I knew I had to go.
I’m not a morning person, so I didn’t arrive at SPX until the afternoon. The convention room was packed with exhibitors and attendees, so I was glad that I had done a bit of research ahead of time to get somewhat an idea of what artists I wanted to seek out and what comics and graphic novels I might want to buy. But I also spent a lot of time just walking around all the tables and I even found a few things I hadn’t planned on buying.
Even though I arrived later than I had planned, my timing wasn’t bad. Within two minutes of walking into the convention room, Lynda Barry, a pretty famous cartoonist, handed a drawing to an artist I was in the middle of buying a bag from–I was a mere few feet away from Lynda Barry! About an hour later, I went downstairs to listen in on a Q&A session with Barry, whose real-life persona is even funnier than the one in her autobiographical comic books. Barry talked about her experiences teaching creative writing/illustration classes at the University of Wisconsin–I hope those students realize how lucky they are to have Barry as a teacher. Luckily for me, in an indirect way, I’ve had her as a teacher too–my advisor and rhetoric professor, Dr. Dobson, uses Barry’s work in her own classroom, which is where I was first introduced to Barry. (Dr. Dobson has also been known to attend SPX on occasion, and if she was there yesterday, I didn’t see her 🙁 ) Barry’s newest book is called Syllabus, and since I didn’t manage to nab a copy yesterday, I’ll have to wait until it comes out in October–but I did get to see some pages from the book in slideshow form at the Q&A and I liked what I saw.
Overall, SPX was kind of overwhelming, but I enjoyed myself and the opportunity to dive a little deeper into the world of independent comics. In all likelihood, I’ll be going back next year!
Here’s some of the comics, postcards, and business cards I picked up at SPX.
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