turukhtan (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} turukhtan) wrote,@ 2009-04-28 11:40:00 |
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SPX09
I have survived the fifth Stockholm Small Press Expo of my life, and the 11th Stockholm SPX in history. Blimey how time flies!
As usual, it was good fun and totally exhausting. The best part, as always, was meeting all my comic artist friends and acquaintances (whom I would probably never have known personally if it wasn't for SPX), like Stef Gaines, Elin Bjurvald, Lisa Medin, Sofia Falkenhem, Tomas Antila (who used my font in his latest work, whee!), Li Österberg, Micke Sol, Natalia Batista, Jenny B. and all the other people my brain is too drained to think of right now and all the people whose names I don't know or remember yet.
It was more fun than usual to sell my stuff at the market, because Ainur had her table next to mine. Whee! I also entertained myself with drawing piggies and some other things:
(Ilan is trying to get me to make a piggy animation, and maybe I will do something with this kind of piggy faces. But I haven't really come up with any good storyline yet.)
Trying to figure out how to draw "Russian eye folds" ... and also "Tatar lines" over the cheekbones.
Still no idea what to do for the cover of the Eva book. :o(
But I think it should be something insane, rather than "atmospheric".
A fun detail was all the foreign people who had come. They grow in numbers every year! Even publishers with books exclusively in obscure languages like German, such as Reprodukt (for the first time this year - I'm curious how their business went).
That brings me to the feedback questionnaire we were given, where one of the questions was something like: "If there was a fee to book a table, would you book a table again next year?"
That question disturbs me a bit. Since its start, SPX has not only grown enormously in numbers of participants and visitors, but it has become more "commercial" every year. The first expo seems to have been pretty much a tiny gathering of quite obscure underground artists and their closest friends. Today the main part of the expo is actually not underground artists who make their own photocopied or digitally printed zines, but small publishing companies, not only from Sweden but from many other countries as well. This year it was particularly obvious, as most fanzine/underground people were assigned tables in a smaller hall, separate from most companies, schools and organisations.
Kristiina Kolehmainen, who does a great job for the entire comic book world in Sweden by organising the fair, has in conversation been enthusiastic about how fun it is to see all the new artists at SPX, struggling on the path "from ape to artist" (as she put it). If everyone would have to pay a fee to book a table, probably considerably fewer of these struggling amateurs could participate.
A sensible alternative if the organizers really need to boost their economy with booking fees (that I of course did not think of when I was filling in this questionnaire) is that companies, schools and organisations (who could afford it without problems) would pay a fee to book a table, while fanzines could get a table for free.
Packing up: unknown, Lenin, Marx, unknown and Stef Gaines. All blurry, because I didn't want them to notice me taking a picture. Me = stalker.
Worst comments: "Tjejerna tar för sig!" (a cliché phrase in Swedish, something like "The girls are coming on strong!" - O RLY), "Sveriges sötaste serietecknarsystrar!" ("The cutest comic artist sisters in Sweden!" - ...)
Best comments: "Sveriges mest kompetenta serietecknarsystrar!" ("The most competent comic artist sisters in Sweden!"), "Det är så fel på så många sätt" ("That's so wrong in so many ways", about the Mochi doll/hot water bottle cover I made for Ainur, which has a huge zipper in its ass for inserting the hot water bottle, and which Ainur used to store pens and change), Lisa Medin trying to think of my character Eva's name and only coming up with "Kajsa".
Worst moments: Me being a total ass to a certain person by accident and my stupidity, and me puking my guts out all Sunday night (something I ate, my onsetting period, general stress? Whatever it was, at least from the period perspective I wish they wouldn't always schedule SPX at the end of the month, since that's when I always get my period ...).
Greatest moments: Ainur winning shared 2nd prize in the Swedish comic book association's little fanzine competition, Natalia Batista's signature in the "A Song for Elise" I bought from her, me making fanart for Ainur's Goldenbird:
(That's Ettore, and I will make a good scan of it later.)
Also check out Fredrik Strömberg's photo of Ainur and me at our tables ...
We stayed with Horst again, which was a lot more fun than a youth hostel. One evening my discussions with Horst were so heated and prolonged that my eyebrow muscles started hurting, and I had to stop talking, since I can't talk without moving my eyebrows ... Ow.
What I got (in alphabetic order):
Annorstädes nr. 4 / Fåfänga fantasmer (Elin Bjurvald / Anthony Åslund) - Annorstädes collects a number of historical comics with fantasy elements, for example about a girl who wants to live with the wolves, and a young postman who really loves books.
La Danse Macabre (Aurora Walderhaug) - cute gothic stories about skeletons doing fun things.
Gryningstimme + Och vi gör vårt bästa för att ingen ska bli kär (Sofia Falkenhem) - little well-produced atmospheric comics in leporello form with ribbons around them, about animal metamorphosis and working hard not to fall in love.
Medley 5 - Ackord! (Lisa Medin) - The shonen manga parody epic set in a world where music is like magic and alchemy (the Full Metal Alchemist definition of alchemy) continues as synthpopper Axel teams up with a metalhead.
A Song for Elise (Natalia Batista) - "100 pages of emo, 20 pages of explicit sex", according to the author. One of the best "openly manga-style" comics made in Sweden.
Till alla jag legat med (Mikael Sol) - usually I get an allergic reaction due to overexposure from Swedish autobiography, but this book actually has an important and universal story to tell about the problematic relationship between sex and love. (... Och den förklarar f.ö. i all klarhet Sols recension av Kompassrosen.)
I have survived the fifth Stockholm Small Press Expo of my life, and the 11th Stockholm SPX in history. Blimey how time flies!
As usual, it was good fun and totally exhausting. The best part, as always, was meeting all my comic artist friends and acquaintances (whom I would probably never have known personally if it wasn't for SPX), like Stef Gaines, Elin Bjurvald, Lisa Medin, Sofia Falkenhem, Tomas Antila (who used my font in his latest work, whee!), Li Österberg, Micke Sol, Natalia Batista, Jenny B. and all the other people my brain is too drained to think of right now and all the people whose names I don't know or remember yet.
It was more fun than usual to sell my stuff at the market, because Ainur had her table next to mine. Whee! I also entertained myself with drawing piggies and some other things:
(Ilan is trying to get me to make a piggy animation, and maybe I will do something with this kind of piggy faces. But I haven't really come up with any good storyline yet.)
Trying to figure out how to draw "Russian eye folds" ... and also "Tatar lines" over the cheekbones.
Still no idea what to do for the cover of the Eva book. :o(
But I think it should be something insane, rather than "atmospheric".
A fun detail was all the foreign people who had come. They grow in numbers every year! Even publishers with books exclusively in obscure languages like German, such as Reprodukt (for the first time this year - I'm curious how their business went).
That brings me to the feedback questionnaire we were given, where one of the questions was something like: "If there was a fee to book a table, would you book a table again next year?"
That question disturbs me a bit. Since its start, SPX has not only grown enormously in numbers of participants and visitors, but it has become more "commercial" every year. The first expo seems to have been pretty much a tiny gathering of quite obscure underground artists and their closest friends. Today the main part of the expo is actually not underground artists who make their own photocopied or digitally printed zines, but small publishing companies, not only from Sweden but from many other countries as well. This year it was particularly obvious, as most fanzine/underground people were assigned tables in a smaller hall, separate from most companies, schools and organisations.
Kristiina Kolehmainen, who does a great job for the entire comic book world in Sweden by organising the fair, has in conversation been enthusiastic about how fun it is to see all the new artists at SPX, struggling on the path "from ape to artist" (as she put it). If everyone would have to pay a fee to book a table, probably considerably fewer of these struggling amateurs could participate.
A sensible alternative if the organizers really need to boost their economy with booking fees (that I of course did not think of when I was filling in this questionnaire) is that companies, schools and organisations (who could afford it without problems) would pay a fee to book a table, while fanzines could get a table for free.
Packing up: unknown, Lenin, Marx, unknown and Stef Gaines. All blurry, because I didn't want them to notice me taking a picture. Me = stalker.
Worst comments: "Tjejerna tar för sig!" (a cliché phrase in Swedish, something like "The girls are coming on strong!" - O RLY), "Sveriges sötaste serietecknarsystrar!" ("The cutest comic artist sisters in Sweden!" - ...)
Best comments: "Sveriges mest kompetenta serietecknarsystrar!" ("The most competent comic artist sisters in Sweden!"), "Det är så fel på så många sätt" ("That's so wrong in so many ways", about the Mochi doll/hot water bottle cover I made for Ainur, which has a huge zipper in its ass for inserting the hot water bottle, and which Ainur used to store pens and change), Lisa Medin trying to think of my character Eva's name and only coming up with "Kajsa".
Worst moments: Me being a total ass to a certain person by accident and my stupidity, and me puking my guts out all Sunday night (something I ate, my onsetting period, general stress? Whatever it was, at least from the period perspective I wish they wouldn't always schedule SPX at the end of the month, since that's when I always get my period ...).
Greatest moments: Ainur winning shared 2nd prize in the Swedish comic book association's little fanzine competition, Natalia Batista's signature in the "A Song for Elise" I bought from her, me making fanart for Ainur's Goldenbird:
(That's Ettore, and I will make a good scan of it later.)
Also check out Fredrik Strömberg's photo of Ainur and me at our tables ...
We stayed with Horst again, which was a lot more fun than a youth hostel. One evening my discussions with Horst were so heated and prolonged that my eyebrow muscles started hurting, and I had to stop talking, since I can't talk without moving my eyebrows ... Ow.
What I got (in alphabetic order):
Annorstädes nr. 4 / Fåfänga fantasmer (Elin Bjurvald / Anthony Åslund) - Annorstädes collects a number of historical comics with fantasy elements, for example about a girl who wants to live with the wolves, and a young postman who really loves books.
La Danse Macabre (Aurora Walderhaug) - cute gothic stories about skeletons doing fun things.
Gryningstimme + Och vi gör vårt bästa för att ingen ska bli kär (Sofia Falkenhem) - little well-produced atmospheric comics in leporello form with ribbons around them, about animal metamorphosis and working hard not to fall in love.
Medley 5 - Ackord! (Lisa Medin) - The shonen manga parody epic set in a world where music is like magic and alchemy (the Full Metal Alchemist definition of alchemy) continues as synthpopper Axel teams up with a metalhead.
A Song for Elise (Natalia Batista) - "100 pages of emo, 20 pages of explicit sex", according to the author. One of the best "openly manga-style" comics made in Sweden.
Till alla jag legat med (Mikael Sol) - usually I get an allergic reaction due to overexposure from Swedish autobiography, but this book actually has an important and universal story to tell about the problematic relationship between sex and love. (... Och den förklarar f.ö. i all klarhet Sols recension av Kompassrosen.)
