The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Cons, Shows, Events

By Tom Spurgeon

* APE this weekend. If you get in line right now, you can probably get your book signed by Kate Beaton. I kid, but they have about a half-dozen really popular alt-creators anchoring the show this weekend, which is notable only in that such shows -- including this one -- are perhaps better known for their depth of talent than for the headliners. Everyone should visit the Sparkplug presence there and buy some books and attend whatever memorial event is offered for Dylan Williams. Mostly, though, you should just go if you can. Because of the Moscone Center's infrastructure issues, it'll be a year before a major show returns to the area. If you go to your favorite small-press publisher's site, you might be able to find an APE preview like this one.

* there's a ton of stuff to do at a show like that one, although two traditional stops seem to hold their usual promise: the CAM reception, which this year features Lloyd Dangle's Troubletown, and the traditional blow-out at Isotope.

* hey, APE also has a shuttle bus system this year. Maybe they had one in past years, I don't know. I love shuttle buses.

* FanExpo Canada claims nearly 78,000 attendees for 2011.

* Tony Isabella reports on the Detroit Fanfare show just past. It sounds like an old school show in maybe slightly too large a space.

* check out this Jason Aaron photo array from a recent comics festival in northern Spain. I know there are a lot of different reasons people go to shows, and I've enjoyed many one-bar same-hotel cons over the years, but I think more and more people are waking up to the fact how awesome it is to make a convention/festival part of a more standard vacation and I'm not sure other than Toronto and to a slight extent San Diego and San Francisco and perhaps New York the North American shows are oriented that way. That's not an indictment, because the overriding motivation of these shows is to make the experience profitable for its vendors and fun for its attendees, but it engenders some thought about where these things end up ten years from now.

* First Second extols the virtues of ICAF. The well-known academic conference begins today.

* finally, Craig Thompson posts from on tour in support of Habibi.
 
posted 5:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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