Among the small press show circuit, for a while the three key shows were SPX, MoCCA and APE. APE or the Alternative Press Expo, was held in San Jose and was the oldest of them all, launched by Slave Labor Graphics in 1994. The show was acquired by Comic-Con International the next year and run in […]
CAF update: APE and Short Run get dates; ELCAF gets a day and Lineworks NW gets guests
Whew the comics arts festival circuit news is flowing thick and fast; we’re in the middle of application season and hearts and minds are turning to tabling. And the CAFs are answering back with news.
A movement is afoot to bring a comics festival to San Francisco
A group has formed in San Francisco to discuss bringing a comics festival to SF, currently bereft of comcis event with the move of WonderCon to Anaheim and soon APE to San Jose. The group has called for a town hall meeting on Monday, October 20th:
APE ownership to return to Dan Vado and San Jose
There’s been a bunch of scuttlebutt going on around APE, the Alternative Press Expo now unfolding in San Francisco, and it is being announced today that CCI, which runs APE, the San Diego Comic-Con and WonderCon is returning ownership of the show to founder Dan Vado starting next year. Vado founded the show in his home base of San Jose in 1994 as part of the then-burgeoning scene of indie comics events that included the Small Press Expo in Bethesda and SPACE in Columbus. CCI took it over in 1995, eventually moving it to San Francisco. Vado has been mostly uninvolved with the show in recent years, while expanding SLG, his comics company, to a storefront and event space. And of course, CAFs have blown up everywhere, with TCAF, SPX, MoCCA, CAB, MeCAF, Thought Bubble, Short Run and many more showcasing the indie comics side of today’s comics world.
ape2013_guest_vadoThe Beat had a chance to speak briefly with Vado about taking the show back.
Weekend Preview: APE in San Francisco
SF’s sole remaining comics show, the Alternative Press Expo, aka APE, kicks off tomorrow at Fort Mason. Guests include Bob Fingerman, Spike, Robert Williams and Paul Pope.Programming is here. APE is a fun show, or was when last I went in 2004, but the Bay Area’s soaring rents and general artisanal toast scarfing ‘tude seems to mitigate […]
Alternative Press Expo 2013: Not San Diego or New York, But Something Else
By Bruce Lidl While the vast bulk of the comics industry, including most of The Beat staff, was gathered in Manhattan for New York Comic Con, there was, quite literally, an Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco over the same exact weekend. Unlike at the Javits Center, where Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and the rest […]
Government Shutdown Hits Comics
By Bruce Lidl While wandering the aisles at the 2013 Alternative Press Expo in San Francicso this past weekend, overwhelmed by comics, comix, and knitted hats, the problems dominating Washington DC seemed very far away indeed. Yet, even here among the alternative nerds, we felt the effects of the government shutdown, depriving us […]
News and notes: Poison Elves return, Table Titans, Colombian comics progress and a big sale!
¶ Ape Entertainment has teamed up with the publishing house Sirius to publish an ongoing Poison Elves series which will launch an adults-only imprint at the usually family-friendly Ape. Poison Elves is the life work of the late Drew Hayes, who died in 2007. The series ran from 1991 until 2004. It’s definitely a post […]
Dandelion Seeds: The Return of Halloween Comics!
___________________________________________________________________________ A few months ago, I brainstormed about how Halloween mini-comics being offered by Diamond could be used in a variety of ways to promote comics and have some fun! (Read that again… there are event suggestions and a timeline there, which I’ve paralleled below, but did not exactly duplicate.) During C2E2, Diamond announced that […]
Coming Attractions: March 2012: Part One [updated with intro]
I’ve already previewed Marvel and DC, so here are the other publishers, with titles MAYBE shipping this month!