SPX 2006
This year's SPX may have been in a new location, but it was as vital a gathering as ever, with plenty of new work to go around. We'll be doing our best to detail our haul here on this page. Please bear in mind that this is only just a start. Please check back when you get a chance as there is plenty more in our massive haul that we will be reviewing here.
Pittsburgh customers should just come on down and grab what you like while the going's good. The sad truth is that some items will sell out before we get a chance to list them here.
Where to begin...
Well, seeing as how this year saw the biggest ever Pittsburgh presence at SPX, how about starting with the home team?
The SPX home base for Team Pittsburgh was the Unicorn Mountain Booth, where they hawked their wares, namely Unicorn Mountain #s 1 & 2 (which we've already written about), along with their new collaboration with Encyclopedia Destructica, Wolfman's Got Nards: A Compendium of New American Monsters, a swell, limited edition, cloth covered, hand bound book that sells for a mere $5.00.
Also on hand was Paulette Poulet along with her Ignatz-Award-nominated comic book, Comicore, Jr., which is a unique hand-crafted work of wonder that includes a cover hand cut in the shape of the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, a folder containing a hand-numbered mini-portfolio of linoleum block portraits of "The Comedians of the Eighties", a unique, single page collage (a different collage graces single every one of the 350 copies of this limited edition marvel), a couple cool fold-outs and more. All for only $5.00! Where else but Pittsburgh can you get this kind of value?
Then there's the comic tailor-made to offend everyone (except, obviously, those who share Mallis's deviant sense of humor): Nobody Loves Me by Michael Mallis. This one stars Baby Lucifer and features Jesus, Judas, and God. You have been warned. With the devil's toolkit clearly close at hand, Nobody Loves Me sports the tempting price of only $1.00.
Questor
by Chris Cornwell
Premiering at SPX, this 40-page, horizontally-formatted, black and white piece is the debut full-length work by Pittsburgh-based artist, Chris Cornwell. Fans of Fort Thunder who are looking for an artist who understands the visual vocabulary of its artists and is capable of intelligently building on their legacy, who has the ability to create a coherent narrative entirely in carefully rendered, visually appealing images, who takes the time to think things through, and whose vision extends far beyond the borders of the comics world need look no further -- this is it! And, of course, one need not be a fan of the Fort Thunder crowd to appreciate this work, as it is, after all is said and done, quite an original piece. Questor is a work of pure comics. What you find here, can't be as fully expressed in any other form.
copacetic price - $2.00Cold Heat #2
As the co-creators of this next item both have Pittsburgh roots, it's only a hop skip and a jump to another great SPX premiere, namely:
by Ben Jones and Frank Santoro
Picking up where the first issue left off, Cold Heat #2 revs it up a few notches and takes us on a whirlwind ride through the dis-united states of the disturbed American psyche. Series artist, Frank Santoro once again refuses to play it safe. This time around he pulls out all the stops and takes the chances that most other artists wouldn't take even if they could. Leaping into the artistic no man's land between the well established borders of pre-existent genres, Santoro combines the propulsive narratives of mainstream American heroic adventure comics, the exaggerated expressiveness of Japanese manga, and the naivete of self-published autobiographical comics with his own experimental ideas to create a totally unique comics cocktail that will knock you for a loop (You don't have to take our word for it: Check out this double-page spread). Cold Heat takes the outside in and then brings the inside out -- demonstrating how our internalization of international affairs creates monsters in our minds that are every bit as dangerous as anything we'll meet on the street -- and by so doing helps us see our place in and find our way through the mess of our world.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $4.00
Closed Caption Comics
Here's a group of hard working youngins who are producing some original hand-crafted comics in attractive packages.
Closed Caption Comics V
FIrst up is their flagship anthology title. This is a big 80-page 8" x 8" comic book printed on a dozen or so different paper stocks with a hand silk-screened front cover that contains the work of eleven different artists working in a wide variety of styles.
copacetic price - sold out
Toads N Chodes
Starting out with a hyperflourescent silk-screened cover, this 28-page square format 7" x 7" book contains three stories more or less in the tradition of Fort Thunder artists Matt Brinkman and Brain Ralph, but with more overt (is still somewhat obscure) themes of power, sexuality and despair.
copacetic price - sold outHoward, or "Howie"
Madame Leila Odebenga
by Ryan Cecil Smith
This one's a little mini, but still sports a hand silk-screened cover and tells the story of an angry muscle lman whose anger gets the better of him in this one-of-a-kind hand-ripped edition.
copacetic price - sold out
by Molly Colleen O'Connell
This one's a nifty little package that's hard to describe but contains a tiny tale of fortunes told.
copacetic price - sold out
Crepusculine
by Conor Stechschulte
A 36 page 5" x 5" mini sporting a silk-screened green and black on grey cardstock cover, Crepusculine tells the tale of tale told by an old man to a kid in a tent about something that happened (or not) a long time ago.
copacetic price - sold out
There Is No Cred Like Street Cred
This one takes the prize for the best title! It's a mini-anthology. 32 4" x 4" pages featuring many of the same contributors from their flagship listed above.
copacetic price - sold out
Well, sadly, this was by far our lamest write up of an SPX. There was simply too much going on this year to get stuff written up before it sold out. Sorry! There is, however, plenty more to read about at these other swell SPX pages:
Copacetic Commodities
prices and availability current as of 31 October 2006
