The high point of this year's Ignatz Awards ceremony, hosted by PW Comics Week's own Heidi MacDonald and held during the 13th annual Small Press Expo (SPX), was the presentation of the Outstanding Online Comic award. It was accepted on behalf of Achewood creator Chris Onstad by a gorilla in an Achewood T-shirt—well, a cartoonist in a gorilla suit and an Achewood T-shirt—whose lengthy sign-language acceptance speech was “translated” into English by presenter Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of another popular Web comic and now book collection, The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Gurewitch, who spent a lot of the show (held October 12 and 13 at the Marriott Bethesda North Conference Center in Bethesda, Md.) busily signing copies of his Perry Bible Fellowship collection, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto, is the kind of artist SPX has nurtured in recent years: two years ago, he won his first Ignatz for his online strip, and now his first book is an in-demand hardcover from Dark Horse. In the opposite corner of the room, Jeff Smith was signing copies of his much acclaimed fantasy series Bone andhis new hardcover collection of Shazam! (from DC)as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. A regular of SPX's early years, Smith was returning to the show as a conquering hero, and his presence was responsible for a younger crowd than the show usually sees.

Alongside them on the exhibition floor were several hundred other cartoonists, a lot of whom are hoping to be the next Gurewitch or Smith. SPX is devoted to independent publishers, self-published artists and minicomics. There’re no manga or mainstream superhero works (unless you count the parodies). Exhibiting artists were selling handmade minicomics and prints, promoting their online projects, unveiling a few books (like Julia Wertz's first collection of her online strip, The Fart Party, and Liz Baillie's My Brain Hurts) and doing a whole lot of hobnobbing and networking. Of all the independent-press comics events held in the U.S., SPX is the most social, thanks to attendees staying in the same hotel as the expo itself and inevitably congregating in the hotel bars and for informal after-hours parties.

Indie publishers’ tables were scattered around the show floor, and most of them had significant new releases as well as multiple signings. PictureBox debuted a slew of titles, including Yuichi Yokoyama's elegantly designed New Engineering and an oversized hardcover reprint of Frank Santoro's Storeyville; Fantagraphics’ biggest releases included a hardcover "special edition" of Joe Sacco’s Palestine, show guest Bill Griffith's new Zippy volume, Walk a Mile in My Muu-Muu, and two new volumes in the Hernandezes’ Love & Rockets paperback reprint series (Gilbert Hernandez was on hand to sign his volumes as well as a new issue of New Tales from Old Palomar). Top Shelf debuted a new Jeff Lemire book, Ghost Stories, which Lemire was on hand to sign.

Drawn & Quarterly’s booth featured signings by Rutu Modan (Exit Wounds), Kevin Huizenga and Anders Nilsen, and debuted the second volume of reprints of Tove Jansson's Moomin comic strips. D&Q also swept the Ignatz Awards ceremony as the publisher of four winners: Huizenga's Curses (Outstanding Anthology or Collection), Nilsen's Don't Go Where I Can't Follow (Outstanding Graphic Novel), Gabrielle Bell's "Felix" (Outstanding Story) and Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve #11 (Outstanding Comic). Other Ignatzes went to nominees who are more recent parts of the self-publishing and minicomics scene: Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star, the Alec Longstreth-edited anthology Papercutter #6 and Minty Lewis's P.S. Comics #3. And if there was a breakout artist at this year's show, it was probably Tom Neely, who sold a pile of copies of his self-published book, The Blot, and picked up an Ignatz for Promising New Talent.