2015 YEAR IN REVIEW

So, there is still plenty of time left in 2015 for wonderful, terrible stuff to happen, but in the world of comics, things every year start to wind down about now. CAB was a few weeks ago, Milwaukee Zine Fest was last weekend [historically my last (and favorite) show each year]. The publishers are dropping their final holiday-hoped releases on us. So, time to pause and reflect.

I feel like I was on the road non-stop this year, but actually I did a few less shows than usual. That goes to show you how many festivals there are now. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter reflected recently on the unavoidable scheduling conflicts coming up nowadays, with two, sometimes three competing shows all scheduled for the same weekend sometimes. C'est la guerre.

I LOVE shows. I rarely feel more alive than I do while behind the Spit and a Half table putting great comix directly into the hands of readers. But the ceaseless travelling wearies. In a practical sense an artist or a publisher travelling great distances, paying for a table, paying for lodging, food, gas etc all to sell a comic book to someone is not exactly the most efficient way of doing business. But what else do we have? Aside from our handful of generous, open-minded retail outlets, from Desert Island in Brooklyn, to Copacetic in Pittsburgh, to Quimby's in Chicago, to Seite Books in LA, the general comics shop market continues to remain ignorant or even downright hostile to "Art Comics." Most people looking for unusual or challenging or non-sexist comics fled the comics shops a generation or two ago, but nothing substantial has risen up since to cater to those folks. So the shows fill a gap in the market.

Let me pause to suggest that good old-fashioned mailorder is maybe the best way to get these comics if you can't make it to the shows, or don't want to wait for a show to pick up a new title. I'm biased of course. I've run the Spit and a Half distro off and on for over 20 years now. One of my biggest accomplishments this year was bringing the website into the 20th Century (!) (Thank you Fran López!) with a cart, automated postage calculator, online checkout, etc, and the results have been great. More customers come through all the time, but I would say my total business is still about a third of what it was in the 90's, when mailorder was generally the only way to get these comics. I think and hope the distro will continue to grow as more people find out about it. (And of course there are plenty of other comix mailorder distros out there-- see the sidebar on my site.)

Looking back I feel like I barely got anything done this year.  I'm STILL adding books to the distro site that I picked up at SPX or earlier, and all the travelling left little time or energy for drawing. When I really think about it though, over the course of the past year and a half I drew almost 300 pages of comics (producing both The Hospital Suite and King-Cat #75) -- still, the creative work seemed to get swallowed by the busy work this year.

I do have a head start on #76 and hope to have it out "early"-ish in 2016. I'll be travelling a bunch in 2016 too, but I'm trying to visit some of the shows and cities I've missed in recent years. We'll see how it all goes.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone who came out to signings, picked up a King-Cat somewhere along the line, visited my table at shows, and so on. Once the tired fog clears from my eyes, I realize what an amazing time for comics we live in. Here's to next year!

-John P.

FOR THE LOVE OF COMICS

A few days ago my good friend Noah Van Sciver posted his advice for young cartoonists, and it hit a nerve with a lot of people.  You can find his post here.  My name was mentioned in the essay, so I thought I would add a few thoughts of my own, in addition to what Noah said (which I'm in agreement with).

One thing I would say is that comics is still a small enough world that if you have talent, and cultivate that talent seriously, and find a unique voice and style, people will notice. There's no secret handshake or special gimmick you need to come up with. Just do good work, keep doing good work, and keep trying to improve. And be patient.

Don't let some imaginary perfect genius idea, that will take years to develop, keep you from doing hard, consistent work on what you have at hand right now. Just start somewhere and keep going.

Also, for the record, not ALL professional cartoonists have some "secret" means of supporting themselves. Many do it by working in illustration, web design, animation, making sandwiches at Panera Bread. But the number of cartoonists in the US that survive purely off "comics" is very very small. (I'm talking about people making personal, idiosyncratic art-comics, not genre stuff for big publishers.)

And: There is no shame and should be no sneering towards those with underlying financial support. Artists have had patrons and underlying support since forever. The larger problem is that on the surface comics seems like a "real" industry: there are well-attended comics festivals all over the country, awards given, NY Times Bestseller lists, and on and on. Looking at it from the outside it seems like "Yeah, this is something to get involved in!" The trick is that despite all that, the vast majority of people making their living solely from art-comics in this country work their asses off and still live in poverty.

For me personally, I didn't have a secret safety net, I just learned over time how to be comfortable surviving on $8000 a year. But when I got into comics I had no illusions about what I was facing. And I made that choice. And I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

EXTRA SPX NOTES, ETC.

Photo of John P. at SPX, by Phoebe Gloeckner

After filing my post-SPX/STL report last week, I realized I hadn't given full attention there to my time at SPX, probably the biggest show of the year for most, so I thought I would add in some additional comments.

First of all, don't get me wrong. SPX was a weird show for many of us, but it was also, at least for me, a great show. I had my best SPX ever this year, narrowly edging out 2012 in terms of sales. This is especially exciting because at a show like SPX, where many of my distribution clients are exhibiting (I don't overlap by selling their work at my table), I'm often down to bringing the more obscure items in my stock list. This year I focused on a bunch of French and Belgian imports, recent publications from the Latvian publisher KUŠ, Conundrum and Pow Pow titles from Canada, and so on. And people responded. I even sold an untranslated copy of Nylso's Jérôme et la Route!

From a personal angle, I sold plenty of copies of my newest zine, King-Cat #75, and met a lot of wonderful readers and artists. I had great conversations with buddies Noah Van Sciver, Melissa Mendes, Rob Kirby, and even Dylan Horrocks, who I finally got to meet in person!!!

So what did I mean when I said last week, "SPX is no longer the show we once knew"? I don't even know exactly, I'm still trying to put it all together. I was talking to Bill Kartalopoulos when he was at my table, and was trying to explain how I choose what books to bring to what show. Having done enough shows I do have a feel for the crowds at each one. Some crowds are looking for the weirdest, most out there stuff; others are more middle of the road. (I don't do the shows where people are looking for superheroes, or digital prints of Star Trek characters anymore.) Some crowds are looking for nicely produced book editions, some are looking for low-budget zines. With SPX, I really was at a loss for what to expect. What's clear is that it's no longer strictly what you would call an "Art Comics Show". (Was it ever? My memory fails me, but it did feel more like that in the past.) There are tons of webcomics artists exhibiting now, with their own set of aesthetics and creative goals. There are lots of very young artists exhibiting, who also have different sets of goals and approaches. The politics are different (in approach, if not in essence). But us traditional (?) (!) Art Comics creators were still there in force, we're just more diluted, spread out more in the sea of banners and comics.

Again, as I took pains to say in my last post, this isn't a bad thing. It's good! Comics has grown so much, so quickly, that now there are a zillion different people coming at it from a zillion different angles. But it does make it kind of hard for old-timers to keep up. I say old-timers with my tongue in cheek a little, but damn, let's face it, a lot of us are pushing 50 now, not to mention those fogies like the Hernandezes and Cloweses.

As many have pointed out, comics are in a real Golden Age. Many of the greatest comics ever made are being made right now. There's no shortage of amazing work available, from photocopied zines to lush hardcover books (to, I am told, webcomics, though I admit almost complete ignorance of that scene) and beyond. I've been in comics since the number of good, challenging, literary cartoonists could be counted on two hands, through the rise of the self-published revolution, the emergence of the Graphic Novel ™, the internet, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and whatever's next. Some of us are in it for the long haul, and I guess what we need to keep in mind is that above it all, it comes down to the work. Platforms, festivals, methods come and go. We ride those things out, keep our heads down, and try to create the best work we can; put it out into the world however we choose, and continue to hope for that human connection.

John P.

- - -

PS: The latest Comics Books Are Burning in Hell podcast discusses many of these points better than I can, and is well worth the listen for those interested.

SPX and STL 2015

Jim Rugg's cat Kirby helps staple zines for SPX.

Well, I had promised myself I would only do one long-distance comics convention this year, and gave that slot to TCAF, but it turned out King-Cat #75 was nominated for an Ignatz Award, and Noah Van Sciver was a Special Guest at this year's SPX.  So I decided to go at the last minute.  I made plans to get to Pittsburgh Thursday night and stay with my old pal Jim Rugg and his family.

Aw! This is moments after he slashed me so hard I still have a gash.

Friday we got up and drove to Denny's so I could get my free Grand Slam (It was my 47th birthday). Then we headed over to Ed Piskor's to pick him up for the drive to the show.  I got to not only pee in his bathroom, but managed to check out his ink-encrusted studio. Inspiring!

Where the Magic™ Happens: Ed Piskor's drawing table.

South Central Pennsylvania

The ever-present psychedelic SPX carpeting.

Amazingly there was no traffic, and we made it into Bethesda earlier than I ever have before.  Which meant I got to say a few quick 'hi's", take a shower, and go to bed early.  Late in the night, Noah stumbled into the room and we shot the breeze into the wee hours.

If there was one thing old people took away from this year's SPX it's that this is no longer the show we once knew.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's a good thing, but for some of us it's also a weird thing.  To the generation before mine, the Clowes's, the Hernandez's, the Wares, these shows didn't mean a lick.  (Not a diss, it's just -- there weren't shows like SPX when they were developing, so I think they had less of a connection once they started).  Cartoonists of my generation also came up before the alt-convention circuit began, but in a way we have a special connection to these shows.  We helped build and develop them, helped build and develop the structure that underlies the current alt-comics community.  So maybe we're the first generation of alt-cartoonists to see that infrastructure pull away from us, to change away from us.  Again, not a bad thing. Comics is growing by leaps and bounds, and there are whole worlds of comics and comics artists that have sprung up now that we are not necessarily party to, close to. That's understandable. But I think for those of us who worked hard to develop this world, there are some emotional juggernaughts for us to run, as we get older and try to understand our current place in that world, as it evolves.

As weird as I felt Saturday (brought on no doubt by a few days of lack of sleep and decent food), on Sunday I entered a kind of almost hallucinatory euphoria (brought on no doubt by a few days of lack of sleep and decent food).  The last hours of a con are often a whirlwind for me, as I coordinate with artists and publishers to pick up new work for the distro.  As each person walked up to my table with another box of amazing comics, I regained my footing, and remembered what this is all about.  For me, at least, comics is as much about art as it is about making connections with people, supporting and encouraging artists to go deep, find themselves, and stay true to what they find.  I felt that connection so strongly Sunday that I almost wept.

We drove back to Pittsburgh Sunday night and on Monday morning Kirby was packed and ready to go to Beloit to meet his cousins.

In Chicago Monday evening I got lost in my own hometown and ended up confused in the Loop.  This is the corner of State and Van Buren.  Where are all the people?  They're walking their dogs at that new mall on Roosevelt Road.

At SPX I caught the dreaded Con Crud, and by Monday night I was sick as a dog.  I basically slept Tuesday and Wednesday straight through, only forcing myself out of bed to unpack the car and repack it for my next trip, to St. Louis.

Thursday night I spoke to a group of 40-50 students and faculty at Washington University (where my St. Louis host, the amazing cartoonist Tim Lane teaches), plus a few civilians.  After the lecture we showed the King-Cat movie and one by one the audience slunk out.  I kept director Dan Stafford updated on their departures via text, until there was only one person left in the audience.  Would he make it all the way through?  Hey! Not only did he make it through, but he was practically trembling with excitement afterwards. His name was Viktor, from Belarus, who had left the USSR in the 1980's.  He had never read my comics or even heard of them, but he loved the movie so much he implored us to try to show it around the former Soviet Union.  He said over there the view of America is diamond heists, explosions, gun shootouts, because that's all they ever see, via the movies.  He said, though, that was not the "real America," but that Dan's film actually depicted his experience of America, and Americans.  Wow.

It's an old cliché, that if some project just reaches one person, then it was all worth it. I believe that to be true, and this screening was just more proof of it for me.  The whole thing was for Viktor.  I thanked him, and gave him a copy of the Maisie issue, and walked out of the auditorium high as a kite.

My host Tim Lane working on an illustration of Ross Macdonald for The Baffler.

Friday I had the day off.  Tim had illustration work to do, and it occurred to me that I had a comfy couch, a sweet dog, and a houseful of comics at my disposal.  So I sat there and caught up on Terry and the Pirates, Spain Rodriguez, and re-read The Death Ray.  And blew my nose.

Jo Jo, my couchmate for Friday.

Saturday was the 2nd Annual St. Louis Small Press Expo (I do think they need to change the name, it's too confusing), held at the beautifully refurbished downtown library.  From the minute I walked in the door, the show was pumping.  The only time I was able to get away from my table was to pee a few times and feed the parking meter, and for a well-attended panel/conversation I did in the downstairs auditorium with Tim.

The few instances I had a spare moment, I ran over to one of the tables in my vicinity to check out the wares. All kinds of cool stuff: comics, zines, magazines, prints, you name it.  All super high quality and interesting. I had no idea what to expect of the show, but I can say it blew whatever kind of expectations I may have had out of the water.  Sales were about as good as one day of SPX in Bethesda.

Scenes from the STL SPEx venue.

Tim Lane is one of the most talented, unique, and sadly undersung cartoonists working today, so it was heartening to see he had a line of fans at his table all day long.

Afterwards I packed up and drove home to Beloit, exhausted and sick, but stoked on comics, and zines, and people.

The bridge back into Illinois.

Ol' Man River

(Ninny, back at home, Midnight.)

* * *

Many thanks to Jim Rugg, Natalie, Kirby, Noah Van Sciver, Dan Stafford, Stephanie, Tim Lane, Angela, Jo Jo, and Nick Kuntz for support and hospitality!

FALL TRAVELS: SPX and Beyond

So, gearing up for the last big splash of 2015.  Fall is a major time for comics shows, and here's where I'll be:

Sat./Sun. September 19-20

SPX, Besthesda, MD

Table I-9, with Noah Van Sciver and Kilgore Books

King-Cat #75 is up for an Ignatz!

Thursday September 24

Lecture and Film Screening

Washington University, St. Louis MO

6:30 PM, Open to the Public

Saturday September 26

St. Louis Small Press Expo

Central Branch, STL Public Library

Thursday October 29

Slideshow and Q+A

Madison, WI

Rainbow Books Co-op

(Tentative)

Saturday October 31

Madison Print and Resist

Madison Public Library (Downtown)

Saturday November 14

Milwaukee Zine Fest

Falcon Bowl, Riverwest, MKE

* * *

After that I'm gonna hunker down and get the new King-Cat done. See you soon!

John P.

AUTOPTIC 2015

Lawdy, lawdy-- just realized it's been three months since I posted her on the ol' blog. Just been runnin' around the country selling comics, and sitting in front of this computer adding HUNDREDS OF THE BEST COMICS IN THE WORLD to the new, updated, 21st Century Approved SPIT AND A HALF website. Please check it out. I still have lots more stuff to add, and am working on it almost every day, so check back often!

Meanwhile, I thought I would post some photos from my recent visit to Minneapolis for the Autoptic Festival.

On the way up it was a beautiful day, so I finally stopped at Castle Rock, the rock formation located along the highway at Camp Douglas, WI, which I've whizzed past innumerable times in the past.  There was a nice rest area, with a beautiful path running around and in between the rocks.  I recharged and headed back on the road.

Minneapolis is one of my favorite places, and any excuse to come up there is good for me.  Once again this time Autoptic played host to the Pierre Feuille Ciseaux comics workshop, where a pile of French speaking cartoonists join forces with a pile of English speaking cartoonists and make a mess of art in a one week period.  (I was lucky enough to participate in PFC in 2013, more on that soon!)  So besides the usual great artists that many American comic festivals attract, Autoptic '15 featured such special international guests as JC Menu, June Julien Misserey, Dominique Goblet, Nylso, Antoine Marchalot, Inès Estrada, Pascal Matthey, Pierre Ferrero, Rachel Deville, and more.  So right off the bat, just the presence of these artists makes Autoptic special.  Add to that the obvious care and heart the organizers put into the show, and you have something very exciting.

I arrived in Minneapolis late, but not too late to get to hang out at the opening reception where the absolute highlight was finally getting to meet, in person, Nylso, the great French cartoonist.

Crowd outside the opening reception

John P. and Nylso, together at last!

Nylso and I met through the mail in the early nineties, when Laurent Lolmède discovered my work and introduced it to Nylso and his partner Joelle Manix.  Together they published a small comics revue called Le Simo, and soon began translating and publishing excerpts from King-Cat in their magazine.  It was the first time anyone anywhere really started to take an interest in what I was doing in comics.  Le Simo was simple, and beautiful, and being included in its pages was a true honor.  It was through them that I was introduced to French cartooning, and discovered many of my favorites.  Especially at the time, but even now, I felt such a kindred spirit between what I was doing in comics and many of the French artists.  I drew a great deal of inspiration from them.

I stayed the night with old zine friend Yoonie, and woke in the morning for the show.  Stepping outside in the morning light I was treated to her beautiful backyard, full of wildflowers, gorgeous weeds, and a lovely Catalpa.

The Catalpa tree in the courtyard

The show is held at a place called Aria, an old warehouse/factory converted into an event center.  Surely one of the most unique venues for a comics festival I've ever experienced.  I got to hang out all weekend with table neighbors Kevin Huizenga, Jonathan Baylis, and Dan Stafford of Kilgore Books, so you know I had a good time.  I even bought some Cowboy Henk books off the Fremok table!

The Spit and a Half table

Aria decor

Before I knew it, the weekend was at an end, and it was time to go.  I wanted to get back to Stephanie and the menagerie, so after a quick dinner I hit the road, arriving home in the wee small hours.

There are so many shows nowadays, and so many great ones, and it's become a kind of necessity that to survive as a cartoonist in this country you have to spend a lot of time on the road.  That's a whole 'nother essay for another time.  Suffice it to say, sometimes I come away from a comics show feeling exhausted, drained, and depressed.  The travel, lack of sleep, sensory overload, financial risks involved, all can take their toll on your energy and mood.  I have to say though, for the first time in a long time, when I got home from Autoptic I felt a surge of passion and energy for comics, my own and everyone elses, and I got right back to work.  That's really saying something.  Thanks Autoptic!  See you next time.

CAKE AND BEYOND

Hi Folks,

This weekend is CAKE, the wonderful comix festival in my dear old hometown, Chicago.  I hope you'll come on by if you have a chance.  I'll be at Table 86 with the ALL-NEW King-Cat #75 (the All-Maisie Issue!) AND --- the new Scholastic Books edition of my previously OOP book Thoreau at Walden.  In addition, I'll have a load of distro stuff, including new and exciting work from Pow Pow Press, Conundrum, Nick Maandag, Tom Van Deusen, Noah Van Sciver, Marc Bell (Stroppy!), Pascal Girard, Not My Small Diary, Swimmer's Group, Colour Code, AND MORE!

FRIDAY NIGHT before the show, drop on by Quimby's at 7 PM for a slideshow and panel discussion with Eleanor Davis, Keiler Roberts, and myself, moderated by Hillary Chute.  These are two of my favorite cartoonists, and it'll be an honor to sit down and talk with everyone!

If you can't make it, but would like to order copies of King-Cat 75 and/or Thoreau at Walden, they are both available at the new Spit and a Half site: www.spitandahalf.com.

Thanks everyone!
John P.

SINNISSIPPI DAYS

Yesterday, Stephanie and I took a walk out in the Nygren Wetland Preserve, but hung a left at the old train tracks instead of continuing around the water.  We'd never gone that way before and it'd recently occurred to me that in that direction laid the confluence of the Rock and Pecatonica Rivers.  One of the first things I did when I moved to good ol' South Beloit was purchase a map and study it for potentially interesting things.  If you're me, the confluence of two regional rivers counts as a potentially interesting thing.  Yet I had never figured out how to get there.

On our way around the open water we noted several nesting orioles, plenty of goldfinches, warblers, two swans in the water, a white egret, a lone cormorant, and the ubiquitous honking Canada Geese.  Red-winged blackbirds began their annual scold, chatting at us from the trees overhead and spreading their wings to make themselves look ferocious.

Baltimore Oriole (top) and nest.

At the turnoff, we followed a gentle old oxbow lake through prairie.  Not too much action but the blackbirds and a pile of turtles making the most of a tiny log in the lake.

Eventually we came to a stream and headed east.  This was the end of Raccoon Creek, which starts up in Wisconsin and winds its way slowly down to the Pecatonica.  Eventually, yes, we could see the river across the creek, a low floodplain between them, filled with birdsong.  Two young catbirds eyed us curiously and there were rumblings of a Pileated Woodpecker, but no sightings.  Finally the Raccoon emptied into the river, and it was just us, the prairie to our left, and the slow, muddy, sunny water to our right.

The path tightened and we were there-- a short walk through woods, dropping the bank onto a gravel bar, and there was the Rock on our left.  We could walk all the way out into the confluence on the gravel.

The Sauk and Fox people of the area called the Rock Sinnissippi, which means "rocky waters," and here one could plainly see the contrast between the muddy, murky water of the Pecatonica, and that of the clearer, gravel-bottomed Rock.

If you look closely, you can see the clear water of the Rock, on the left, merging with the muddy water of the Pecatonica, on the right.

We hung out for a bit, amid the honking geese, swallows, and robins, then headed back to the car, along the old railroad grade, and home.

All photos by SD.

TORONTO OR BUST

So I'm heading out to Toronto for TCAF next Wednesday... Between now and then I'll have a few hundred copies of the new King-Cat #75 (The All-Maisie Issue!) printed up especially for the show.  When I get back home I'll have the regular, full print run done and start getting copies out to stores and subscribers (expect mid-to-late May).  (If you're a subscriber and would like to pick up your copy at TCAF, just drop by my table in the Wowee Zonk room!)

There are a number of events going on that I'll be participating in as well:

Thursday May 6 at 6:30 PM, join Ethan Rilly and I as we celebrate the releases of Pope Hats #4 (Adhouse Books) and King-Cat #75; at the Central Bar, 603 Markham St.

At TCAF, I'll be participating in two panels:

Saturday May 8, Noon: John Porcellino and Julie Doucet, in Conversation, moderated by Tom Devlin. In the library on the 2nd Floor

Sunday, May 9, 11:15 AM: Truth & Intimacy in Graphic Memoir, with John Porcellino, Dustin Harbin, and Raina Telgemeier; moderated by Johanna Draper Carlson.  Marriott 200.

(Please confirm time and location as they may change!)

Meanwhile, if you would like to order a copy of the new King-Cat (48 digest sized pages, black and white, shipping mid-to-late May), prices are as follows (including postage):

USA: $6.50
CANADA: $7.60 USD
REST OF WORLD: $9.65 USD

Via PayPal to kingcat_paypal AT hotmail DOT com

If you're in the US you can also send cash/check/mo payable to:

"John Porcellino"
PO Box 142
South Beloit, IL 61080

Thank you!
John P.

A TRIP TO BLACKHAWK ISLAND

A few months ago I spoke to a class at Beloit College, and afterwards, the instructor, Chris Fink, turned me on to the work of Lorine Niedecker.

Niedecker was a semi-obscure poet who lived most of her life in relative seclusion on a rural spit of land, Blackhawk Island, where the Rock River empties into Lake Koshkonong, outside Fort Atkinson, WI. This is just a few short miles up the road from Beloit.  (She was a student at Beloit College for two years, until her money ran out.) Though she was a beloved poet amongst her colleagues (the Objectivist poets), her Midwestern isolation, and no doubt her sex, kept her from receiving the acclaim she deserved during her lifetime.

This is the exact kind of story that pushes all my buttons: an artist forgoing fame and acknowledgement to remain where planted, writing with depth of her plain, forgotten surroundings, locating the beauty and power in events and interactions that most would simply rush past.

We took a drive awhile back to Blackhawk Island, where the tiny cabin in which she lived and worked is still standing, flood after flood.  In more recent years, scholars and readers have rediscovered Niedecker's work, and it's begun to find its proper place in anthologies, biographies, and collections.

Fish
    fowl
        flood
  Water lily mud
My life

Effort lay in us
before religions
   at pond bottom
          All things move toward
the light

ruined
by the flood
    Leave the new unbought --
        all one in the end --
water

---

Friends of Lorine Niedecker
Lorine Niedecker: Paean to Place

All photos by SD; Blackhawk Island, Wis.