Small Press Expo has announced the first group of Special Guests for SPX 2026. The show takes place on Saturday, September 12, and Sunday, September 13, with programming and workshops about the amazing world of independent comics as well as an exhibitor floor featuring over 450 creators.

Additional Special Guests will be announced over the next few weeks.

SPX 2026 is honored to have the following creators as Special Guests to this year’s show:

Lisa Hanawalt

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Horses and Sex marks the long-awaited return of Tuca & Bertie creator and BoJack Horseman producer/production designer Lisa Hanawalt to comics. This is the honest, silly, horny and vulnerable memoir of a horse girl, now in her forties and reflecting back on a lifetime of obsessions.

Whether Hanawalt is confronting large life issues like whether or not to have kids, being an anxious lil freak, caring for a sick horse, revisiting childhood trauma, or dealing with a major breakup and the ensuing lustfulness—she delivers a reading experience that’s relatable, affirming, and almost always hilarious. In lush colors and kinetic lines, she charts the strange terrain of life, one bumpy, dusty horseback ride at a time.

Julia Wertz

Julia Wertz is thrilled to be coming back to SPX after over a decade of absence. The last time she attended, she was single, urban-exploring dirtbag living in NYC and she’s returning this year as a married mother living in California, but probably still kind of a dirtbag. She’ll be selling/signing copies of her newest book Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here) as well as some of her older books. And maybe some hats. Come say hi! 

Peter Bagge

We are so excited to announce that Peter Bagge is a special guest at SPX 2026! He is is one of the primary architects of the alternative comics genre that exploded in the 1980s and 1990s. His bestselling comic series, Hate, is arguably the Great American Grunge novel. Part screwball comedy, part soap opera, part loose autobiography, Hate is an enduring chronicle of the 1990s as well as riotously relatable to anyone bumbling through their twenties.

Frederick Nolan

Frederick Nolan is the auther of Major Taylor: The World’s Fastest Man from Drawn & Quarterly. Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor, a Black man who was one of the greatest American athletes of the early 20th century. Taylor was born in 1878 in Indianapolis and came of age during the height of the Jim Crow era, facing racism at every turn. 

Cartoonist Frederick Noland is a cyclist himself and in this epic biography of America’s first Black world champion, he thrills in the records Taylor broke and the adoring public he found across around the world. Noland documents how racism inflected Black life in the post Civil War era: cyclists would collude to injure Taylor, and he faced segregationist policies even in liberal cities such as San Francisco.

Jared Cullum

Jared Cullum is a Reuben Award (Best Graphic Novel) winning | 2-time Eisner Comic Industry Award nominated Author-Cartoonist and traditional painter of things. He’s best known for his award winning graphic novel series, Kodi, and work on the spin off series Usagi Yojimbo: Kaito ’84. Top Shelf is proud to present the sequel, Kodi 2: A Place to Call Home at SPX where Jared will be signing and showing original hand-painted watercolor and gouache pages.