"Are We Having Fun Yet?" {warning: non-comics geeks will find this boring}
SPX '07 Recap:
FRIDAY:
"Whatchoo doin'... mouthwise."
Okay, first of all, traffic on Friday was super crappy. Bethesda is like a half hour away. Rush hour traffic made the trip 2 hours long.
AT THE ACTUAL PLACE:
First off, pictures here.
The parking lot at the hotel we parked in last time was all closed off for construction whatever, so we had to go to another one on the other side of the building, then find our way to the convention. We stopped by the Playground Ghosts table, where I met Aaron Diaz. He was really cool- I got a print from him and he also recommended the comic Pug Davis* to me. James got Nicholas Gurewitch(!)**'s book, and I bought one of Chris Yates' awesome puzzles. I also questioned David Malki !*** about him or SPX being better, however, since he was actually exhibiting and not wandering around like at Comic-con, the answer was that they were one big happy team (cue sugary smile). We wandered around, stopped briefly by the Digital Pimp Online and Blank Label tables - Gary Tyrrell was with them - saw Dean Trippe****, then got dinner at Silver Diner and went home*****.
SATURDAY:
Saturday was fun, because 60% of it was not spent in traffic. We got there just in time for Bill Griffith******'s panel, which was awesome. He talked about Zippy's origins, his other earlier works, showed a ton of different comic strips on a huge projector, and talked about the comic itself, Muffler Man, and his man misadventures with The Man*******. There was a short Q + A session afterward, ending with a hearty dose of non sequitur (Audience member:"Is orange vivacious?").
Next it was back to the Playground Ghosts' corner of the convention*******. I got another print from Diaz-for a dollar!-and also gave them a piece of fanart. At this point, Kris Straub had come over to take some pictures, and Malki ! and Yates started making fun of him because he hadn't gotten any fanart... until I produced another index card for Straub. R Stevens also was there, so James talked to him briefly.
We went back by the Digital Pimp table, picked up some stuff, went back to the Blank Label Comics table and got to see Willis perform his Exact Change dance, wandered around more, went to the Oni Press tables - I had seen Lost At Sea there the previous night and so wanted to get it, but by that time I was out of money (Saturday all the copies were sold out, so I got Scott Pilgrim vols. 1-3 instead) - then both got copies of Bill Griffith's latest book, and saw two different people in utilikilts on our way out.
*Haven't read too much of it, but the artwork is amazing
**Exclamation mine
***Exclamation not mine
****He has awesome business cards
*****Travel time: 30 min.
******Creator of fucking Zippy the Pinhead********
*******Due to his use of the Big Boy mascot in his strip, someone from the Big Boy company sent him an email asking what was up with the obsession with Big Boy, only they didn't have anything indicating they were from the company, so he wrote a reply about how Zippy thought of Big Boy as 'either God or Satan incarnate and wanted to be friends with both'********* and then another couple of paragraphs of crap from the top of his head and sent it off. After this exchange, the Big Boy company sent him a cease and desist letter, only to 'further add to the surrealism of the situation' they had sent him the wrong one, so he got a message asking him to stop his illegal displaying of the Big Boy mascot in his diner in Arizona.
********Best damn comic left in the newspaper
*********Paraphrasing these quotes
FRIDAY:
"Whatchoo doin'... mouthwise."
Okay, first of all, traffic on Friday was super crappy. Bethesda is like a half hour away. Rush hour traffic made the trip 2 hours long.
AT THE ACTUAL PLACE:
First off, pictures here.
The parking lot at the hotel we parked in last time was all closed off for construction whatever, so we had to go to another one on the other side of the building, then find our way to the convention. We stopped by the Playground Ghosts table, where I met Aaron Diaz. He was really cool- I got a print from him and he also recommended the comic Pug Davis* to me. James got Nicholas Gurewitch(!)**'s book, and I bought one of Chris Yates' awesome puzzles. I also questioned David Malki !*** about him or SPX being better, however, since he was actually exhibiting and not wandering around like at Comic-con, the answer was that they were one big happy team (cue sugary smile). We wandered around, stopped briefly by the Digital Pimp Online and Blank Label tables - Gary Tyrrell was with them - saw Dean Trippe****, then got dinner at Silver Diner and went home*****.
SATURDAY:
Saturday was fun, because 60% of it was not spent in traffic. We got there just in time for Bill Griffith******'s panel, which was awesome. He talked about Zippy's origins, his other earlier works, showed a ton of different comic strips on a huge projector, and talked about the comic itself, Muffler Man, and his man misadventures with The Man*******. There was a short Q + A session afterward, ending with a hearty dose of non sequitur (Audience member:"Is orange vivacious?").
Next it was back to the Playground Ghosts' corner of the convention*******. I got another print from Diaz-for a dollar!-and also gave them a piece of fanart. At this point, Kris Straub had come over to take some pictures, and Malki ! and Yates started making fun of him because he hadn't gotten any fanart... until I produced another index card for Straub. R Stevens also was there, so James talked to him briefly.
We went back by the Digital Pimp table, picked up some stuff, went back to the Blank Label Comics table and got to see Willis perform his Exact Change dance, wandered around more, went to the Oni Press tables - I had seen Lost At Sea there the previous night and so wanted to get it, but by that time I was out of money (Saturday all the copies were sold out, so I got Scott Pilgrim vols. 1-3 instead) - then both got copies of Bill Griffith's latest book, and saw two different people in utilikilts on our way out.
*Haven't read too much of it, but the artwork is amazing
**Exclamation mine
***Exclamation not mine
****He has awesome business cards
*****Travel time: 30 min.
******Creator of fucking Zippy the Pinhead********
*******Due to his use of the Big Boy mascot in his strip, someone from the Big Boy company sent him an email asking what was up with the obsession with Big Boy, only they didn't have anything indicating they were from the company, so he wrote a reply about how Zippy thought of Big Boy as 'either God or Satan incarnate and wanted to be friends with both'********* and then another couple of paragraphs of crap from the top of his head and sent it off. After this exchange, the Big Boy company sent him a cease and desist letter, only to 'further add to the surrealism of the situation' they had sent him the wrong one, so he got a message asking him to stop his illegal displaying of the Big Boy mascot in his diner in Arizona.
********Best damn comic left in the newspaper
*********Paraphrasing these quotes