Indie Comics

by Brady Russell

S.P.A.C.E. is the Midwest's answer to the Small Press Expo,  founded twelve years ago by Bob Corby, as a show that comics creators without a huge following could afford to go to. I've known about it for a long time and always wanted to go. After attending SPX myself for the first time in 1999, I came home and started Googling creators I had met, and I think it was searching for Suzanne Baumann that I found out about S.P.A.C.E. for the first time. The photos made the show look much smaller, much simpler than SPX, which even ten years ago, at the original location, was a pretty crowded scene.

The Small Press Expo has announced its first guests for the 2011 show and they are all awesome: Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Ann Telnaes, and Jim Rugg. Maybe Jim Woodring will bring his giant pen!

Nominations for the Stumptown Awards, held in conjunction with the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, OR on April 16-17th have been announced. Nominees were selected by a judging panel which consisted of Michael Allred (Madman), Brandon Graham (King City), Laura Hudson (Editor, ComicsAlliance.com), Michael Ring (Owner, Bridge City Comics), and Jason Leivian (Owner, Floating World Comics) and will be presented at the show.

Deadline reports that Jeff Smith's RASL is being developed by SHERLOCK HOLMES roducer Lionel Wigram. The series, the follow-up to Smith's million-selling fantasy Bone, concerns an art thief who jump to different universes to steal priceless works of art, but at a great personal cost.

January wasn’t all bad news in the comics industry as Image had a strong month. Spawn #200 sold a crazy amount of issues thanks to its many variant copies, while The Walking Dead continues to rise and the new weekly reprints did fairly well. The biggest launches were a Darth Vader miniseries from Dark Horse, and IDW’s zombie crossover series Infestation.

A beautiful Peter Kuper poster and the guest list have been announced for this year's MoCCA fest.

A new poster for S.P.A.C.E., the Columbus indie comics show, has just been released. It's by Tom Williams of drawrobot fame.

This spring's Xeric Grant winners have been announced. Founded by Peter Laird, the Xeric is presented to worthy cartoonists to provide them with funds to print their projects. A total of $31,158 was awarded for seven comic book projects.  The Foundation has awarded in excess of $2.4 million to comic book creators and nonprofit organizations since its first grant cycle in September 1992.  

POOD, the oversized newspaper anthology of current cartoonists, has a third issue coming out in April, just in time for MoCCA, editor Adam McGovern writes:

Zeitgeisty Brandon Graham covers the Stumptown Comics Fest, to be held April 16-17, in Portland, OR.

This year's Stumptown Comics Awards are going to a juried format, and to do this...you must have a jury. The five judges form a local all-star team of creators, journos and retailing. The Stumptown...

The SPACE Prize, given to the best publications presented at the SPACE indie comics show held yearly in Columbus, OH., have just been announced, and they are: