A few more random thoughts on APE, the people I met and some of the stuff I got while there …

–I had a nice conversation with Ryan Claytor, who has self-published And Then One Day, a series of autobiographical comics. Ryan’s a grad student down in San Diego studying autobiographies, and has managed to combine his comic love and studies.

In a month or so, Ryan will release And Then One Day #6 - The Autobiographical Documentary. He had the printer’s proof with him, and it looks pretty incredible. To create the book, he wrote questions about himself on flashcards, then chose people from his life — family, friends, ex-girlfriends, etc. He put them in a room with the flashcards and a tape recorder, told them to answer the questions, then left them alone. Then he took those interviews and turned them into a comic. Cool concept, and the final comic looks great.

Ryan’s also going to be touring this summer to various comic shops, conventions and museums to support his books. You can see everywhere he’ll visit here. I asked him to drop us an email every now and then so we could post them on the blog, and I’ll likely do a Q&A or something when issue six comes out.

Anyway, go check out his website, where you can read his 24-Hour Comics Day comic, buy stuff, etc.

–Another guy I had fun talking to was Jose Cabrera, creator of Crying Macho Man. Jose, who is from down in L.A., has been publishing his comic on the web and was selling collections of his strips. The book pokes fun at politics and pop culture; one strip was about Fidel Castro hitting up rock star Prince for various movies, because Castro couldn’t get NetFlix to deliver to Cuba. I picked up his collection as a gift for someone, but luckily their birthday isn’t for a few weeks, so I’ve been able to enjoy it myself. And now I wish I’d bought two of them.

Major props to Matt Silady for pointing me in Jose’s direction.

–I also bought Stephanie McMillan’s book Minimum Security for that same person; her work is also political and very well done. The back cover has a picture of her against a squad car being handcuffed, so you know she’s the real deal. She’s also very nice in person.

Again, props to Matt for pointing me in her direction.

–At the Top Shelf table, I picked up SuperF*ckers #4 and Micrographica, by APE attendee Renee French. Renee and Jeffrey Brown were a lot of fun to talk to, and were responsible for the Wolverines in Love post I did earlier this week. I talked to Jeffrey a little bit about his well-regarded Wolverine zombie story from a few years back, which unfortunately never saw print. Also chatted with Brett from Top Shelf, who I quoted in my story for the main site. Brett’s updated his blog with a report from APE of his own.

–Another book I picked up was Bookhunter by Jason Shiga. It’s a 1970s cop movie set in a library. Seriously. Imagine if Dirty Harry hunted down overdue books or stolen texts, and you’ve got the main character. I can imagine the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage” being played over the opening sequence. Great stuff. It’s published by Spark Plug, and you can buy it off their site.

–Had a lot of other great conversations with folks at the con. When I posted pictures from the con Saturday night and mentioned talking to the AiT folks about various things like knitting and my brother, Larry Young said most people will probably think that’s lame, but he thought it was cool because it showed how laid back the show was and how people attending have other interest, too … or something to that effect. Larry, Mimi, Matt and Daniel at the AiT booth were a lot of fun, and I appreciate them letting me hang out at their booth for long periods of time.

Talked to Graeme’s wife, Kate, about being a “comic book widow” at conventions, as it was something my wife could relate to. She liked my wife’s idea of bringing a friend to San Diego so she could have fun in the city while her husband spent all day at the con. Also chatted about Dallas, since she was heading there for work.

My conversation with Dan Vado was much more extensive than what was in the main page story … one thing he kind of touched upon that I thought was cool was the idea of electronic comics being delivered to devices other than computers … such as iPods, PSPs or even plasma TV’s. I mentioned cell phones, but he thought the screen was too small … but with the popularity of them nowadays, and all the other crap they come loaded with now (like web browsers and video games) I don’t think it would be too far-fetched to use them in that way. But he was jazzed about the possibilities of getting a comic onto a plasma … think how cool that would look. If you’ve seen Amazon’s service where they deliver stuff directly to your TiVo, then you can see how that might work. Dan’s also a hockey guy, and used to sponsor a retailer vs. publisher game in the past.

Chatted with Gina from First Second about cool mini-comics. She had just bought one about an elephant and giraffe that looked incredible, but I unfortunately never made it over to the artist’s table to pick one up myself. So consider this a reminder to myself to see if I can find it on the web. Speaking of mini-comics, when I saw James Sime from Isotope, he was stocking up on them for his store. We talked a little about the awards the night before, as well as his Eisner judging duties. James is a great guy and is always fun to talk to.

And as always, it was great to see Graeme, Ian Brill and Matt Maxwell in person. I had lunch with Matt and Ian the first day, and Ian shared his advance copy of Silverfish with me that he’s reviewing for Publisher’s Weekly. And I found out about Matt’s Worlds of Warcraft addiction, which I probably wouldn’t have guessed.

There’s probably more that went on that’s slipping my mind now; overall, awesome show, and I look forward to going back next year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Conventions, Creators, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.