It's hard to describe the week leading up to a comic convention. It's kind of like the last week of summer before school starts back. You're excited to get out of the house, do something different and see friends you haven't seen in months. But as you get older, you start to wish there was a way to do it without having to go back to school. I'm the Assistant Editor and Webmaster at Oni Press, and in the Oni office I'm like the elementary school kid. I haven't had the years of cruel classmates, mean teachers, and scarring experiences. Conventions are still fresh and exciting, especially the ones with a more independent comic focus like APE.

APE, or the Alternative Press Expo for the uninitiated, started in San Jose, California as a convention to showcase the independent creators and publishers of comics. In 2000 the con moved to San Francisco and experienced a break through year. Last year's show was my introduction to most of the Oni creators and was one of the best cons I've ever attended.

So, eager and enthusiastic, I joined Oni Editor In Chief Jamie S. Rich on a journey down the coast to the City by the Bay ...

Friday -

After several assurances that we did indeed have e-tickets (see Jamie's write-up of the last convention we attended, SPX for the difficulties of e-ticketry- http://www.onipress.com/bigtalk-sep00.shtml), Jamie and I were off to the airport for our morning flight. The plane trip was rather uneventful and we easily caught a shuttle from the airport to our hotel on Lombard.

Once we got to the hotel Jamie headed off to find food and I met up with Blue Monday creator Chynna Clugston-Major, her husband, colorist Guy Major, and their ever-expanding entourage for an afternoon of window shopping and hanging out. Hanging out with Chynna and Guy has a tendency to be a little surreal. The more you time you spend with them, the more the line between the real world and the world Chynna's created for Blue Monday begins to blur. For example, this trip Chynna brought her friend Lissa. Lissa is great. She's funny. She's fun to hang out with. She's a Blue Monday character. I don't mean metaphorically, I'm talking literally. Sure, Chynna cleverly hides her as "Rissa," but it doesn't take a genius to see the Lissa, and other nuggets of truth, in Chynna's comics.

After a harrowing cab ride that included our cabbie hitting on women in an adjacent car, talking about how badly he needed a joint, singing along with whatever song was on the radio and bottoming out the cab on every hill on the trip, we finally made it to Haight Street. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through vintage clothing shops and record stores. For the most part I was window-shopping in an attempt to keep the trip within my personal budget, but even I couldn't resist an import single of Robbie William's "No Regrets" and "Ant Music." By the end of the afternoon Guy had tried on more pairs of shoes than any girl I'd ever met. I was more than ready to head back to the hotel to prepare for the APE "Welcome Party" Oni was sponsoring that night.

Convention Tip: It is never a good idea to rely on any party you're meant to be atending for food. With this in mind, I joined Rumble Girls creator and artist of the upcoming Oni series Killer Princesses Lea Hernandez for some delicious Vietnamese food, and together we headed out for the pre-party. The Welcome party was fairly tame, everyone was quietly chatting in little groups and snacking on a surprising variety of food, but there were some interesting people wandering around. After briefly chatting with AiT/PLANETLar front man Larry Young and re-introducing myself to Batman writer Ed Brubaker, I stumbled to the bar to get a drink. Eeks! The hotel bar choices left much to be desired and what they did have was expensive, not hotel bar expensive mind you, but pricey enough to ward off my penny pinching pocket book. Chynna had been whining about karaoke all day anyway, so we decided to leave the party for an establishment that would cater to our combined alcoholic and bad music needs.

Karaoke is strange. It seems like a good idea at the time, but always results in the kind of personal embarrassment often associated with karaoke. After many, many drinks, Chynna and Jamie somehow convinced me to perform Robbie Williams' "Millennium", much to the whole bar's regret. In fact, I was so bad, the supervising karaoke guy tried to cut off our group for the rest of the night! Luckily, Jamie convinced him that I was not representative of the rest of our party and the whole bar was blessed with Jamie's stunning rendition of Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". You'd almost think he was the one found in a compromising position in a men's public restroom (You might be right too...). Chynna even got into the act, and joined her friend Lissa on stage for a heart felt version of The Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed"! Their act was impossible to follow (or was at least impossible for me to follow) so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel for some rest before...

Saturday -

Our first task Saturday morning was to get the 8 boxes of comics Joe had shipped to our hotel over to the Fort Mason Center where the convention was being held. We knew we had boxes waiting for us at the Center, too, and neither one of us could quite figure out why Joe decided to send these eight to the hotel instead. Even with the eight full boxes of comics in the trunk, we still didn't bottom out the cab even once. The cab ride to the Center was short and uneventful (but dull, the previous day's ride may have been a harrowing experience but at least it was memorable) and in no time we were setting up at our table in the same spot we were set up last year. The hall that has hosted APE the last couple of years is almost like a big hangar, and even though we had arrived a few hours before the show was scheduled to start the place was crawling with people getting situated and wandering around. Larry Young was set up right across from us with the creators of his recent Sky Ape collection. Just a little bit down from their booth was Crazyfish guy and Soulwind creator Scott Morse and his lovely bride-to-be Danielle. They were setting up tables for Scott, Jim Mahfood, Mike Huddleston, and Kelley Seda. On the mirror side of the exhibition hall was Slave Labor Graphics and scattered throughout the room were booths for Last Gasp, Comic Relief, Strangers in Paradise creator Terry Moore, comics revolutionary Scott McCloud, and many, many more.

While we finished getting our books out and figuring out where we were going to put the creators sitting our booth, a line started forming outside. The hall still had about a half hour until it was scheduled to open and the energy in the room seemed to be building steadily. Once the con finally opened, the place blew up and there was a rush of people that never really seemed to end until they closed the doors at 5. The massive amount of attendees Saturday kept me trapped behind the table for most of the day. While I hocked the Oni wares and hyped upcoming projects like Jetcat Clubhouse, Alison Dare, Queen & Country, and Marbles in My Underpants, Chynna, Dan "Nocturnals" Brereton , and Judd "Barry Ween" Winick signed comics and did little sketches for their adoring fans. In one of my brief free moments, Sparks creator Lawrence Marvit came by to show us some of the background paintings he'd done for Scott's upcoming Cartoon Network cartoon Ferret & Parrot, along with a few of his beautiful animation style background paintings for the Spaceman one shot he's doing with Mike Allred. Busy days always fly by, and this one was no exception. Before I knew it, we were packing up our stuff and heading back to the hotel to get ready for another night on the town.

A group of us had tickets to see Stereophonics, a Welsh bar band, play at a small club called Slim's, or at least we hoped we did. Chynna had bought the tickets weeks before but in the time between buying them and her trip up to San Francisco, an ATM swallowed the debit card she used. All she had to prove that the tickets were hers was a very fake looking temporary card. Nothing is easy with Ms. Clugston-Major, no siree bob! Fortunately, all our worry was unnecessary. They not only had the tickets for the group, but we ended up with one extra! Before too long, a pair of teenage girls looking for a second ticket approached us. They had this odd story about how one of them went to boarding school in England and was never allowed out after 4 PM. After seeing her spaz out when Chynna sold her the extra ticket, I could see why. Just as it was starting to look like everything was going to work out for everyone, the girl, who may or may not have been enrolled in an English boarding school, overheard Jamie complaining about a lackluster Coldplay show he'd been to the week before. She was appalled that he would dare to say anything bad about one of her favorite groups and somehow managed to blame him for single-handedly preventing her from seeing them the week before. Jamie tried to explain that he was there as a reviewer and hadn't purchased the ticket, but by the time he was through the line was moving and the girl had stopped caring.

I'm never quite sure what to make of opening acts in small clubs. The guy who came on first had an acoustic guitar, a pair of pants that looked like they were made out of window curtains and a Mickey Mouse shirt. He performed a bunch of typically bad folk/rock songs and closed with a song improvised from a phrase given to him by the audience. His short set seemed to go on for hours and by the time he finished, I was ready to go to bed. I could only hope Stereophonics would be better. For a band known for its bar room rock, Stereophonics played a wonderful, almost subdued, acoustic performance. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, even though their mellow set put a couple of us to sleep. Some took this as a hint to go back to the hotel and passout. I, on the other hand, ignored Mother Nature's cue and decided to follow Chynna, Guy, and Lissa on an expedition to find another bar. Lucky for me the mission aborted itself after a few blocks and I was back in bed struggling to sleep through Jamie's snores.

Sunday -

The second day of the show was much calmer. We still had a lot of people come by the booth, but I also had time to walk the floor a bit. My first stop was the Pulp table. Alvin Lu and crew put together the best monthly anthology in comics and I wanted to stop and shower them with a little praise for the magazine and the graphic novel series Eagle. I got to jabber with Eagle editor and all around good guy Carl Gustav Horn and during the conversation he revealed that they were using a quote from my Savant (www.savantmag.com) Essential of Eagle on the back cover of the March volume! To top it all off I even got a Strain volume I'd been missing!

After a while all the zines and mini comics really start to blur together, but there were a few interesting books I came across on my little jog around the room. For starters, there was Jim Mahfood's We Love Porn comic published by Dave Walker and BadAzz Mofo Magazine. We Love Porn collects a bunch of different strips Jim did for a local adult magazine. I think Jamie put it best when he called it, "Stupid Comics with boobies." These comics have the same acerbic wit and biting commentary his Stupid Comics had. And naked ladies. I also found the second issue of John Pham's one-man anthology Epoxy. Pham is a talent to watch out for. His stories use a variety of art styles and storytelling techniques. Some of them work very, very well and even the ones that come up a little short still display a kind of raw emotional energy that's hard to find. My last find of the day was the Kelley Seda mini comic Bunny Love. Those of you who haven't checked out Kelley's Slave Labor miniseries Rare Creature are getting another chance at redemption when SLG releases the collection this summer. Kelley has one of the most unique creative voices I've seen in years. Bunny Love combines black and white photos and line art to tell the surreal story about Bunny Love's trip to grandma's house and why it's not a nice place to visit.

After I'd goofed off enough I came back to the booth so Jamie could catch the end of novelist Michael Chabon's panel and before I knew it the day was over! We packed up our stuff, cleaned out areas, and headed to dinner. Any outing with the Clugston-Majors can easily snowball into an event. A quiet post-con dinner ended up being a party with about 20 people. I arrived with the Chynna & Guy group, and we were eventually joined by Judd Winick, his fiancé Pam, Jamie, CoolJapaneseToys.com creator Ben Holcombe, Queen & Country artist Steve Rolston, Judd's cousin Stacy and a few of her friends. Despite me begging Jamie to save me a seat by him, I somehow ended up at the opposite end of the table with a group of friendly strangers. My personal highlight of the evening was throwing a paper airplane across the table to Jamie with the words "HELP ME!" scrawled inside. Little did I know the note would wind up under Judd's chair only to be found later and frighten poor Judd a little until Jamie explained.

Part of the group journeyed on to a dance club after an attempt to go "Virtual Bowling" was foiled by silly hours of operation. The club was in the midst of a "Ball Room Blitz meets New Wave City" night and had several different rooms. All of them were loud, but the music was a good mix of 80s tunes, Brit pop, electronic, and even a little hip hop. Drinking and socializing and dancing continued until the wee hours. Somehow the last night of a con always involves the heaviest drinking. It's hard to pinpoint what actually happened that night. It's all kind of a drunken blur.

What I do know is that I ended up staying out all night and that I was nowhere near coherent the next morning. In fact, I'm sure I'd have missed the plane home without Jamie's mother hen like assistance. The flight home was filled with sleep and dreams of my own bed. For now, I still love cons. I'm just glad I have five months to rest up for the next one.

James Lucas Jones is the Webmaster and Assistant Editor at Oni Press.
Oni Press Homepage - Visit the Oni Press Homepage!
PopImage Forum - Discuss this message at the PopImage forum.