SPX 2011

(Please note: this blog post was written in part by Tracy Hurren and Brian Ralph) So, OK, yeah, Tracy and I ended missing our flight on the way down to SPX, which meant spending, oh, say about 6 hours in the airport doing what Tracy is doing here, as well as working on some photo shoots.

(yes, we are pretty drunk at this point)

Finally, we made it to Baltimore just in time to make the Atomic Books pre-SPX party featuring Brian Ralph, Anders Nilsen and Marc Bell (as well as Melissa Mendes, Tom Neely, Dina Kelberman and Noah Van Sciver). Here Brian, Dan Zettwoch and Anders (as well as the brim of Kevin Huizenga's hat) clearly have mixed feelings about the event. Brooding? Amused? Sour taste? Who knows.

Marc Bell was the first D+Q author to do his presentation, which largely involved playing some SCTV skits and saying "Actually, don't worry about this image" and "I'm just going to skip this."

Needless to say, he had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

Next came Anders Nilsen's reading from Big Questions and from a new story. Here you can see Brian taking photos for our blog "360 degrees of Anders Nilsen(TM)."

ALL NILSEN, ALL THE TIME

And here's a sneak peek of one of Anders' newer stories.

Next and last came Daybreak cartoonist Brian Ralph. Wait, do I have a video of his introduction? Why, yes, of course I do.


(In case you can't hear, what he's recently found is a "grey nose hair")

The amazing Chester Brown speaks with a fan! Aside from being a cartooning genius, Chester is extremely polite and down-to-earth, and really takes time to speak with all of his fans. I definitely recommend that you seek him out if ever he's signing near you.

Marc Bell signs the brand new Pure Pajamas!

Don't let Brian's slack demeanor here confuse you; he sold out of Daybreaks all right; he's just taking a little rest. GIVE THE GUY A BREAK.

Somehow this is the only photo of Kate Beaton signing that I have, somehow. Peggy, look, I swear that we didn't make her sign standing up. We gave her a chair! This wasn't her official signing time!

Come official signing time, however, this is what her line up looked like. All the way to exit sign. Are those people hugging consoling one another because I had to cap the line 30 minutes into a 3 hour signing?

Yes.

So, apparently this is what happens when you send Tracy to take photos of panel discussions? Here, Brian Ralph shows a slide of, um, a child's football game? I'm not really sure.

The great Dan Kois introduces Chester for his slideshow presentation, which Tracy said was the best one she's seen him do yet. (This is pretty high praise considering that we all saw him do this presentation in no-red-light-zoning-laws Montreal just a few months ago)

And here, dear internet audience, is pretty much what it is like to work at comic book conventions for a living.

No rest for the weary. While you were partying post-ignatz, Tracy puts the finishing touches on the next John Stanley book.

At which point we learn that apparently publishing school mostly involves learning how to gesture threateningly at computers. That, or Tracy's been watching WALL STREET again.

Can Dan Zettwoch do for mini-burgers what he did for mini-comics? Only time will tell!

All joking aside, this weekend was marked by the really tragic news of Dylan Williams' passing. Dylan was a real fixture of all of the shows for as long as I've been going to them and much longer; his absence has been felt acutely in the past few months and will continue to be felt for years to come. What always amazed me about Dylan was that he managed to be simultaneously uniquely ethical and principled, but also incredibly kind and empathetic. I always really valued hearing his opinions on small press, vegetarianism and anything, really, and appreciated that we could have a dialogue/disagreement about ideas and he would remain both resolute in his and understanding of mine. He also had a great sense of humour and it was a point of pride for me when I knew that he liked a joke that I'd made. We may not have known one another very well, but I find it hard to believe that I'll never see him at another show. I feel deeply sad for all of his friends and family, but happy that we all got to know such a wonderful man. I think I would be lucky to be half the person that Dylan Williams was; we all would.

(Jesse Moynihan, Dylan Williams and Kaz Strzpeck at MoCCA 2009)

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