The 11th annual Alternative Press Expo, held February 21 and 22 at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco, was the biggest ever, drawing several thousand attendees. APE is where art comics, comics-as-art and arty comic strips come together; upward of 250 small comics presses, self-publishers and cartoonists sold their wares.
Ten years ago, few small-press cartoonists had started publishing trade paperback collections; the surprising news of APE 2004 was how well luxurious hardcover collections by first-rank cartoonists are doing.
And, of course, at comics trade shows and conventions, there are a lot of fans and they come looking to buy books. Fantagraphics blew through a pile of Gilbert Hernandez's $40 Palomar collection, while hardcovers of both Chester Brown's Louis Riel and Joe Sacco's The Fixer sold briskly for Drawn & Quarterly. That bodes well for D&Q's forthcoming Bannock, Beans, and Black Tea, a hardcover memoir by John Gallant with illustrations by Seth. Even more copies of The Fixer were moving at the booth hosted by Comic Relief, the Bay Area graphic-novel superstore, which also reported steady sales of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (Pantheon) and Dave Sim's popular Cerebus books (Aardvark-Vanaheim), as well as his Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing.
A couple of the larger alt-comics imprints drew crowds to their tables with signings. On Saturday, Alternative Comics' Sam Henderson autographed and sold 50 copies of his Magic Whistle, Vol. 9; Alternative debuted Hi-Horse Omnibus, Vol. 1, an anthology from the editors of the popular minicomic, and James Kochalka's kids' book Peanutbutter & Jeremy's Best Book Ever! The prolific Kochalka also has a fourth volume of his Sketchbook Diaries published by Top Shelf (a hardcover collection of the whole set is due this summer).
The Top Shelf booth featured appearances by authors Jeffrey Brown and Jennifer Daydreamer (signing her first trade paperback, Anna & Eva), and the publisher sold numerous copies of author Alan Moore's first hardcover prose novel, Voice of the Fire.
APE founder Dan Vado's company, Slave Labor Graphics, had an impressive display of frontlist titles, including Crab Scrambly's goofy-gothic sendup, The 13th of Never, as well as older books by Jhonen Vasquez and others. In August, Slave Labor will be collecting Evan Dorkin's cult-favorite Bill & Ted comics.
AiT/PlanetLar did well with Brian Wood and Rob G.'s Couriers: Dirtbike Manifesto, which Wood was signing, and Carla Speed McNeil, representing her own Lightspeed Press, sold a stack of Finder: Dream Sequence (and previewed Queen & Country: Operation Stormfront, her collaboration with writer Greg Rucka, coming from Oni next month). Dennis P. Eichhorn appeared to promote the fledgling Swifty Morales Press's Real Stuff, a collection of his old autobiographical pieces drawn by an all-star art-comics lineup.
The breakout artist of the convention was probably Paul Hornschemeier, who's followed up the new collection Mother, Come Home (Dark Horse) with the even newer My Love Is Dead, Long Live My Love (Absence of Ink). And APE attendees were already buzzing about some graphic novels that won't be out for months yet: the second volume of Eric Shanower's Trojan War history, Age of Bronze (due from Image in May, a week after the Brad Pitt movie Troy opens); Adam Sacks's Salmon Doubts (Alternative Comics, May); and Tristan Crane's gender-bending horror title, How Loathsome (NBM, Apr.)
The chatter at APE suggested that, with old-fashioned comics pamphlets rapidly declining as a medium for art or literary cartooning, future stars may make their name initially in anthologies like the Granta-style paperback series that Fantagraphics is just starting to put together. Comics' ongoing intersection with the art world looks promising, too: Last Gasp Distribution's booth featured Raw, Boiled and Cooked: Comics on the Verge, a new exhibition catalogue copublished with the Maryland Institute College of Art.
