Expo badges of honor (the one on the right drawn by my table buddy, Niem):

So we had fun at APE this past weekend. There was such a huge amount of creative activity and merchandise crammed into the Concourse, it was hard not to experience some sensory overload when walking around. It’s not everyday, though, that I find myself sandwiched between entities called Scary Art Comics, Sassquach Comics and Dumm Comics, or have Spidermen come by and pick through my wares. Within our block, artists showcased work encompassing psychological superhero thrillers, abstract pen illustrations, urban/collaborative art, goth/metal comics, autobiographical work, cute/mildly twisted comics (we mostly fell into that category)– all of the usual unusual suspects. I got to trade one of my books for a cool art book by two Vietnamese brothers, Lamnho and Lam Giang. Our aforementioned Dumm neighbor, Gabe Swarr, turned out to be a vet in animation and maintains the justifiably popular weekly web comic, “Life in the Analogue Age.” Niem gleaned some good tidbits from Gabe about how the key to success is simply devoting a couple of hours to working on your comics everyday. Niem also got to hang out with one of his heroes Jim Woodring (good stuff), and SF-based zine-maker MariNaomi even appeared and gave us copies of her latest zine, “The Evil.” So, some pretty neat moments, and I was happy I got to share most of them with my friends and boyfriend who all came out to lend a hand.

So, yes, the action doesn’t stop there. The practice of daily art devotion stays. I’m leaning more towards just writing these days, but there is some appeal to keeping up a fun if sloppy weekly comic. Welp, I’ll show you whatever I happen to sketch up.