Within the world of comic book production, there are two major camps.

There’s the camp that we all see - the Marvels and DCs and Dark Horses, all of which encompass the lion’s share of the superheroic universe as we know it - they’ve all been around for a long time, and they have the financial backing and decades of fan support to perpetuate them. From here, we get Spider-Man and Superman and Hellboy, all of which have their own merits as epic and fantastical journeys into visual fiction. Toiling dexterously away behind that big scene, however, are the innumerable ‘small press’ books.

The small press escapes a clear definition (besides ‘everything that isn’t Marvel, DC, Dark Horse or Image Comics’), and while loosely based in the conventions of mainstream comic culture, these independently produced comics can range from cleanly published, machined books, all the way to hand xeroxed and stapled items, and even into strangely assembled boxes of abstractly, hand-printed narratives - and barely any of them are superheroic. And yes, I still enjoy them immensely. I also enjoy sushi dinners and holding hands, ladies.

After attending the MOCCA fest this past February, and feeling formally indoctrinated into the whole small press & indie art scene, I’d travel almost any distance to embrace the culture again. So, I made plans to travel all the way down to Bethesda, Maryland to attend the Small Press Expo, or ‘SPX 2007’, on October 12th and 13th.

Nowhere but these artist gatherings have I felt such a collective focus on art and the production of comics for the love of creation, without the element of profit (beyond basic human survival needs) really entering into it strongly. The small press almost universally embraces a free-form approach to creating comics - no rules, no set sizes, no narrative conventions - just draw your damned story for all you’re worth, and let us see. This open-door policy allows for a lot of amazing, but well-hidden, creators to have a venue for their beautiful work - and it also allows a great deal of substandard and ‘outsider’ work through. It’s your job, dear reader, to politely sidle away from those things that don’t meet your own particular standards of excellence.

Like MOCCA, SPX was a vast collection of folding tables, spread thick and colorful with the wares of their creators, who sat lovingly behind these displays and exhorted passers-by to partake of their creations. Because of the idea of ‘small’ press, most of these items were only printed in very limited quantities, and more than a few times, I witnessed a complete sellout of certain comics on the tables, be they photocopied stories about the author’s cat, or full-color zombie comics. Some items went numbered in editions, and others still were produced to order, with the true number of existing copies, being run off at Kinko’s every month, being far less important than the sharing of the work. Unlike a mainstream comic convention, there was nothing in the way of flashing lights and pomp and TV screens set up around every corner to show off an upcoming video game. Which is not to say that the cute art girls don’t completely compensate for the lack of things to ogle.

Still, the more important of the pleasures of attending these indie cons is that you’ll be exposed to work that no amount of conscious internet digging will reveal to you - much of what I discovered was pure coincidence while walking down the aisles. You won’t find most of this stuff in comic shops - and even better than finding new and exciting stories is the fact that behind every table is the story’s creator and artist, excited to talk about it with you. You can’t beat that kind of interactivity.

Coincidentally, that’s why you also shouldn’t start loudly critiquing the work after you flip through a few pages - you’ll likely shatter the artist’s little ink-stained heart when you fail to notice that he’s standing RIGHT THERE. Fortunately, when I started talking about how much I loved Jeffrey Brown, it was all positive observations. You’d think that I’d connect the dots that the guy standing behind the piles of Jeffrey Brown books, signing a Jeffrey Brown book, would be Jeffrey Brown - but those key pieces of evidence didn’t really connect within my brain. I revere these artists and storytellers so deeply that I fully expected some kind of penumbric halo surrounding him - and also, that he’d be as wiry and tiny as his self-portrait version of himself, which populates most of his comics.

That’s another awkward detail of the small press. So many of the comics are so deeply autobiographical that when you meet the artist who created them, you know such a penetrating level of detail about their lives that there’s no comfortable barrier of mutual ambiguity between the two of you. You’ve seen them naked, and you’re a fanboy standing in front of their table and trying not to come off like a complete loser. Which, might I add, I usually completely fail at.

SPX was smaller in size and population than MOCCA Fest, but it attracted many more important creators, and creators of a higher caliber. The Bethesda Marriott, which hosted the event, was a clean, beautiful hotel - even though their TVs are not set up for you to hook up your PS2 and play Guitar Hero all night long, which remains a point of dissatisfaction that will surely have me ornery for days. Regardless, off I went, with a wallet full of small bills (essential at any comic convention) and my ever-present Bizarro Comics book in hand, expecting the unexpected.

I met a bucketful of artists, purchased way too many comics, and finally got to meet Jeff Smith for a signature in the aforementioned Bizarro book. You might recall my ire that I was forcibly prevented from meeting him at New York Comic Con earlier this year.

More details to follow on Saturday and Sunday.

====================

Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!

See, I don’t collect comic books. I don’t live close enough to a comic shop to warrant hunting down the current issues of my favorite characters to keep up with the epic storylines that are happening. Comics also take up a lot of space, what with their fancy backing boards and protective mylar casings, and at $2.50 or more per issue, it’s not a cheap hobby. It feels more like having a pet or paying child support to an estranged spouse than a delight.

So, I collect graphic novels. It sounds fancy and hip, but it’s really just eight or so regular comic issues bound together into book form, like a mega-comic. There’s a scientifically tested probability that if you call them ‘graphic novels’ instead of ‘comic books’, your chance of scoring goes up about 15 percent. Also, showering will increase that percentage. Who’da thunk it?

Cram a year’s worth of drawn-out visual anticipation into a single volume for about 15 bucks and you have gold - the graphic novel. Sure, they’re about 8 months out-of-date as far as comic continuity goes, but they look a lot nicer on a bookshelf, and you can snag ‘em on Amazon or your local bookshoppe on the cheap. They probably won’t be worth more later, as some comic issues are, but profitability usually isn’t my main motive behind my interest in comics. My real motive is that I want to be Batman in more ways that I’m comfortable explaining and I’m trying to glean some of his tricks. So far, I’m up to ‘step one : become a billionaire’. I’m sure that the buttkicking comes somewhere after that, but I’ll skip the whole ‘getting a little boy to live with me and play dress-up’ stage.

In keeping up with the never-ending saga of the immortal Batman, I picked up the recent ‘Face the Face’ storyline, which collects issues 651 to 654 of Batman and issues 817 to 820 of Detective. It deals with Batman’s absence from Gotham, how a reformed Two-Face somehow protected the city while Batman was gone, and Two-Face eventually going crazy again upon batman’s return. While I still don’t understand how a non-physical villian character could defend Gotham city as well as Batman could, nor do I agree with the death of one of Batman’s more important and interesting enemies, The Ventriloquist, it represents an important part of the Batman canon. Ergo, I was obligated and compelled. Apparently, it was really interesting to watch play out over half of a year, but I got it all in one fistful.

See, DC Comics recently orchestrated an enormous, soul-shattering series of events that shook every DC hero and villain to the core. People dying, heroes disbanding and losing their powers, and generally depressing stuff flying all around. And then, they suddenly flash-forwarded all of their stories to a point one year later, and since this past May, they’ve been explaining the bizarre changes and the missing time in a weekly series called ‘52’, which again seems to be building up into another insanely huge crisis. This too will be collected, eventually, and I’ll try to catch up again. If you’d like a good jumping-in point, I’d try the Identity Crisis collection, and for all of the obscure characters that will pop up, I’d also suggest the enormous DC Comics Encyclopedia. It’s a worthwhile book to have to address how the characters might be related, though since the events of the Crisis, it’s probably gone a bit out of date. Does it sound unnecessarily difficult and complicated to need to keep track of a comic story with an encyclopedia? You’re not the only one who thinks so, so DC Comics will publish a Companion to help understand these events.

Don’t let that stop you, though. There are plenty of non-hero related graphic novels that deal with all kinds of subjects, often biographically. Jeffrey Brown deals with his relationships with women in tiny vignettes, in tiny books. Craig Thompson chronicles his first true romance in Blankets, which is a charmingly semi-epic and emotional exploration into love that actually, physically broke my heart. It was messy. And then there’s books like Cancer Vixen and Mom’s Cancer, which visually deal with telling the stories of people battling diseases. The classic Maus and Persepolis intelligently deal with living in war-torn countries.

Being a ‘comic’ doesn’t exclude something from being an intelligently executed work of literature, which is still a dominant perception in America. The pictures aren’t included to simplify a story, but to amplify and describe, and more often than not, to engage a viewer who might not have otherwise been so attracted by a page of words. Even more dominantly than that, the creator probably just needed to draw. So maybe you won’t be able to sell it later at a higher price, they’re good reads - something my five-foot tall stack of them will attest to. Comics like Gaiman’s Sandman have won genuine literature awards, and this week saw the publication of the very first Best American Comics 2006, from the very reputable Best American series of books. And if there’s any doubt about where to jump in, start at the beginning.