SPX kicks off on Friday, with a new venue but a continuation of the popular format of bookselling on Friday and Saturday, the Ignatzes on Saturday night and a small press summit with panels on Sunday morning with a picnic to follow.

In brutal honesty, the buzz on this year’s SPX is fairly low level. Oh, make no mistake. The Beat is looking forward to this greatly, and there is a four page who’s going thread on TCJ. But people just seem kind of jaded about the whole indie comicon thing, exacerbated by the fact that this show has had very little in the way of press updates.

Perhaps it’s just that after a year of hard conventioneering, everyone is a little burnt out. We hope that’s not the case, as a lot of good books are debuting in Bethesda this year, the programming looks stimulating, and the Igantz noms are stellar. The guest line-up, spotlighting grand master Feiffer, established master Millionaire, and new darlings Bell, Huizenga and Nilsen is also smart. None-the-less with a new venue forcing people to make new decisions about where to eat dinner and other new logistics (no gellato!)–not to mention the rapidly evolving face of the comics business–this is a good chance to invigorate and reimagine the SPX paradigm for a new world order.

We’ll be spotlighting a few books and creators today and tomorrow (late as it is) to alert the faithful to the best.