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While there have been occasional attempts at establishing a Chicago alt.comix show to equal those in Toronto, New York, Portland and so on, none of them have really gained significant purchase — despite Chicago being one of the original stops** on the Spirits of Independence tour that launched the entire indie comics show experience. The Printers Row Lit Fair has served as a high-end event to spotlight some great cartoonists; and the recent Windy City Con was another attempt from a slightly more middle ground. Chicago has a great legacy of underground/alt/indie cartoonists, so it’s a fertile territory to till.

And now there’s CAKE — the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, to be held next June 16-17 at Columbia College’s Ludington Building. The festival plans to feature over 100 exhibitors along with a two-day program of signings, panels, workshops and lectures.

More info at their website but there’s already Facebook, Twitter, and a nice looking logo with images by local daughter Laura Park. Show guidelines will be going out around Halloween, and news of guests and events will be unfolding in the months to come.

CAKE: The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo
Saturday June 16th and Sunday, June 17th, 2012
Columbia College’s Ludington Building
1104 S Wabash, 1st and 8th floors
Chicago, IL 60605
www.CAKEchicago.com
[email protected]

** We seem to recall this as being I.C.E. — the Independent Comix Expo, but can find no internet records of it, so clearly we need a concise History of Indie Comics in Chicago stat.

1 COMMENT

  1. http://www.google.com/imgres?q=%22spirits+of+independence+tour%22+chicago&hl=en&biw=1104&bih=741&tbm=isch&tbnid=2dmh5bAS2CMRDM:&imgrefurl=http://jkcarrier.dreamwidth.org/344986.html&docid=PwNtZgrW33qGyM&itg=1&w=648&h=987&ei=8XtNToKHJsfV0QHu4dylBw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=255&page=1&tbnh=154&tbnw=101&start=0&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0&tx=8&ty=126

    (sorry… actual site is blocked at work)

    August 12, 1995 was Wilmette (north of Evanston). $15 a table!

    (And while it’s not on the poster, he also attended the second annual Small Press Expo that year, where I first met the Beatrix (badly). Man, what a great selection of creators! That was my first American comics-con.)

  2. If this is anywhere near as successful as the recent Zinefest hosted by Columbia this past spring, it will be worth going. They had a very large, diverse group of creators there (some that also fall into the indie comic category like Jeffrey Brown and Sarah Becan). I’ll be marking my calendar for this one and recommending others do so as well!

  3. I like the sound of this show. I’d make the trip home for it. Beanworld is a homegrown product of the ’80s Chicago indie comics scene–such as it was in those days of yore.

    I’ve been gone a long time and that part of my bio sometimes seems to have fallen between the cracks–my fault of course ‘cuz except for the 1st C2E2 I haven’t tabled there at any show since the mid ’90s.

    As far as the first indie show–it was part of the Spirits of Independence tour of which I was one Dave Sim’s original co-conspirators. (Spirits of Independence grew out of a previous mall tour idea that fell through because of “creative differences” between the prinicpals) The Chicago stop was indeed called I.C.E. (or it turned into I.C.E.the next year). I don’t think it was in Wilmette at all. Wilmette was where I lived at the time (or so it said on my drivers lisc. in reality I was going back and forth to California ‘cuz I’d been ED at Image Central since ’93. My wife, Cory, didn’t make the move west until ’96.)

    I think Dave Sim in the earliest planning for the Chicago Spirits stop listed my hometown as the Chicago-area location . It would take someone with a better memory than mine but I believe that I.C.E. was held at the old Chicago Comic Con hotel in Rosement, where the Image Tent had been before the show moved to the big convention center.

  4. Wow Torsten you have way better Googling than me — I tried for about half an hour to find any mention of the original I.C.E. or Spirits tour — nothing jumps out. The 90s are a black hole for the Internet, which is quite exciting, really.

  5. @The Beat – I find that The Google has gotten very bad at finding old pages lately, which drives me nuts.

    This reminds me of a question I had recently… does anyone on here know if Kansas City or Lawrence, Kansas, has any sort of Zine or Alt Comics show? It would be very, very small, no doubt, but it there is one, i would really like to do it (as I am from there), but I am too long away to know how to find this out.

    interesting news on the Chicago show. I have been wanting to visit Chi town for a long time.

  6. @The Beat – I find that The Google has gotten very bad at finding old pages lately, which drives me nuts.

    This reminds me of a question I had… does anyone on here know if Kansas City or Lawrence, Kansas, has any sort of Zine or Alt Comics show? It would be very, very small, no doubt, but it there is one, i would really like to do it (as I am from there), but I am too long away to know how to find this out.

    interesting news on the Chicago show. I have been wanting to visit Chi town for a long time.

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