This weekend is the annual Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, an annual convention of mini-comics makers, self-publishers, zinesters, new undergrounders and other not-quite-mainstream comics folks that constitutes one of several of the reasons that Columbus, Ohio is such a great comics town.

If you’re in or around central Ohio this Saturday and/or Sunday, I’d definitely recommend stopping by SPACE (the acronym the event goes by to conserve letters). And if you’re not around central Ohio this Saturday or Sunday, well, feel free to get here. For more info on the event proper, you can check out the home site and a list of what creators will be there here.

Among the many comics that will be premiering at the show will be one by the Columbus-based comics creating collective Sunday Comix, which meets once a month at a local library to talk, draw and jam together.

Their book is called Jamtastic Foray, and if that sounds vaguely familiar, the cover design with the Kirby-esque space god with a halo of Kirby dots hammers home that it probably should.

It’s a jam comic by the members of the group, each contributing a page of story and then turning it over to the next creator.  Eleven different artists participate over the course of a sixteen-page story.

The method dictates a certain shaggy dog nature to the  narrative, and it’s kind of fun to read and see where an artist turns the story onto a new path, and whether the next artist decides to turn it onto another or continue down the same one, and see how the whole thing winds along its way.

Rich Watson begins by introducing a pretty generic character with the ultimately generic name of Jack. “He lives an average life,” we’re told. “He gets by. That all changed one Wednesday…and this is where it began.”

The last bit of narration is over a panel featuring Jack looking at a sign that says “Cash for Gold,” the first of several instances of one creator giving the next an opening rather than a challenge.

The character’s name apparently brought to mind two other Jacks—The Giant Killer and Kirby. In a pawn shop, he sells a Cabbage Patch Cow doll, which “ain’t worth beans these days,” but beans is what Jack gets from the pawn broker.

Magic beans, which, true to form, grow a magic beanstalk. On his way up it, he encounters Relaxus, Devourer of Spare Time.

That Kirby giant inspires the arrival of some New God-types, who leap out of a “Bam Tube,” but Jack slays the giant not with force, but with jokes and, well, you get the idea how this thing goes, right?

There’s an impressive array of different art-styles within, from Michael Neno’s splashes-of-black-filled, almost painterly style to Max Ink’s Zot-era Scott McCloud-esque fine-line cartooning to Sheldon Gleisser’s dialogue bubbles on computer-ized photo panels, and it therefore functions just as is its intent: To introduce readers to about a dozen different creators (including SPACE founder and organizer Bob Corby) in the space of a single, slight story.

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