Small Press Expo has announced its International Special Guests for SPX 2017. The festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, September 16-17, at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center and will have over 650 creators, 280 exhibitor tables and 22 programming slots to entertain, enlighten and introduce attendees to the amazing world of independent and small press comics.

SPX 2017 is honored to have the following creators from Europe as Special Guests to this year’s show:

Albert Monteys is a Spanish graphic novelist and illustrator, known for his works in El Jueves, a weekly satirical magazine that he directed from 2006 until January 2011.Albert created the series Carlitos Fax for the children’s magazine Mister K. After his departure from El Jueves, in 2014, he founded a satirical monthly publication Orgullo y Satisfaccion (Pride and Satisfaction) with other cartoonists. That same year Monteys began to publish a science fiction comic ¡Universo! (Universe!) in Panel Syndicate, winning a 2017 Eisner Award nomination for Best Digital Comic. Albert’s appearance at SPX is supported by a grant from Spain Arts & Culture.

Tommi Musturi is a Finnish cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer, and artist. In addition to his current ongoing series Walking with Samuel and The Books of Hope, Musturi contributes to the studio Kutikuti based out of Helsinki, which creates, publishes, and teaches comic art. Musturi co-founded Huuda Huuda in 2006 to translate international comics into Finnish, publish local comic artists, and get the word out about the vibrant Finnish scene by anthologizing the work in English. Tommi latest graphic novel is Simply Samuel from Fantagraphics. Tommi’s appearance at SPX is supported by a grant from the Finnish Literature Exchange.

Anaïs Depommier was born in the late 1980s in a small village in the Southeast of France. Growing up a close friend of Mathilde Ramadier, they can’t do enough sleepovers from one’s house to the other. Inseparable at school, they spend their weekends building huts in the bush, watching the gendarmes go by, playing “Mouse Stampede” on a Macintosh Classic, and reading many comics. When it becomes time to prepare for the entrance exam to art school, they meet later in the evenings at the painter Jean-Michel Pétrissans’ workshop in Valence. Anais first graphic novel, in collaboration with Mathilde Ramadier, is Sartre from NBM. Her appearance at SPX is supported by a grant from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. She will be appearing at SPX on Saturday September 16.

Alex Alice is a French graphic novelist whose works have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His comics in English include the esoteric thriller The Third Testament and the operatic fantasy Siegfried. In his latest, Castle in the Stars from First Second, he draws on Jules Verne and nineteenth-century romanticism to create a watercolor world of adventure and wonder. His appearance at SPX is supported by a grant from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Alex will be appearing at SPX on Saturday September 16.