Expo gives comics lovers something to marvel about!!

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Source:http://www.gazette.net/

Expo gives comics lovers something to marvel about
Independent artists, fans gather to gain new inspiration
by Bradford Pearson | Staff Writer

Every day, Perry Alter goes to work at Cold Stone Creamery in Savannah, Ga., all the while looking forward to when he can head home, where he works on his comic strip, Sibville, until about midnight.

Once a week, he allows himself to go out and meet friends, but he never loses sight of his goal.
‘‘I hope to do this for a living,” said Alter about Sibville, not Cold Stone. ‘‘Do I expect to get rich and famous? No. But if you’re into comics and that’s your goal, I think you’re in the wrong field.”

Alter was among hundreds of vendors, exhibitors and attendees at the 13th annual Small Press Expo, billed as North America’s premiere independent cartoon and comics arts festival, held Friday and Saturday at the Marriott North Bethesda Conference Center.

The expo, held annually in the Washington area, was an opportunity for independent artists and fans to come together and find new inspiration, new reads and new customers.

‘‘Independent” is broadly defined in the comics and cartoons world, but is mostly characterized by a do-it-yourself mentality. Most comics are done by a single artist or small group of artists as opposed to some of the more well known comic companies, like Marvel and DC, which are done by groups of artists.

More personal care, according to most people at the expo, allows a greater intimacy in writing than the glossy, superhero-driven comics.

‘‘The mainstream stuff is not very open,” said Matt Lennig, a comics artist from San Francisco who also does concert posters for artists like The Flaming Lips and Ben Harper. ‘‘But anybody can be a part of this. From autobiographical comics to space exploration to whatever, it’s here, and it’s all about the love.”

Many of the vendors at the festival make comics as a hobby, working day jobs for money, while hoping someone sees their work and wants to sell it. The market has grown in recent years for collections of independent comics, according to a Bethesda comic book shop manager.

‘‘The real artistic independent comics are getting picked up by publishers, and more [comic] books are getting made into hardbound books,” said Joel Pollack, manager of Big Planet Comics in Bethesda. ‘‘Over the course of the last seven or eight years the demand for these books has been growing.”

But not everyone draws comics in hopes of landing a book deal.

Suzanne Baumann, of Hamtramck, Mich., writes an autobiographical, matchbox-size comic that she prints off her laser printer at home. Once a week, Baumann and a group of fellow comics artists from her area meet and talk comics.

‘‘Everyone loves their style of art and runs with it,” said Baumann, who is a graphic designer. ‘‘I just love doing this and going to shows. All I need is people to come up to me and say that they really like my comics.”

Comics arts used to be bound to traditional formats, like glossy comic books or cartoon strips in the Sunday funnies. But comics at the expo proved that as the art evolves, so does the medium.

Many artists drew their comics on simple white sheets of paper, copied them at Kinko’s and distributed them. Others banded together with other local artists and put all of their works in hardbound collections.

But, like most everything else, the Internet has become one of the field’s fastest growing conduits.

‘‘The Internet has helped immensely in the comics world, because it allows people to directly reach out and find new audiences,” said Tom Spurgeon, who runs the Web site ‘‘The Comics Reporter.” ‘‘Not everybody has a bookstore that sells comics and most people don’t have a local comic shop. Indie comics were very advanced to taking to the Internet.”

Many artists at the expo come back year after year, a huge draw for some of the attendees and staff.

‘‘It’s nice to be able to find someone to read one year, then follow their careers from [expo] to [expo] and see the artist grow,” said Karon Flage, executive director of the Small Press Expo.

In generations past, comic books were seen as a hobby for teenagers, with some residual older customers. But now the comics genre, according to one expert, is changing to accommodate grown-up readers.

‘‘A lot of these comics now include an ethos of personal expression that you don’t see in the superhero books,” Spurgeon said ‘‘This is now a very intimate medium, and it creates a very absorbing reading experience.”

While Superman and Batman won’t be disappearing from the shelves anytime soon, a new wave of comic book readers has challenged the mainstream comics publishers, and hopes they’ll loosen the reins.

‘‘[Independent comics] are just less prescribed,” said Theresa Chen, of Akron, Ohio. ‘‘There is less corporate control and freedom to do whatever you want. If the mainstream companies change their ways, good for them, but for now I like this better.”