Tag Archives: walter scott

Small Press Expo announces more special guests

Small Press Expo has revealed even more Special Guests for SPX 2024. The show takes place on Saturday September 14 and Sunday September 15 with programming and workshops about the amazing world of independent comics and an exhibitor floor with over 500 creators.

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

Jeffrey Brown

New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Brown (Darth Vader & SonLoved and Lost, Jedi Academy) gets back to his autobo roots (sort of?) with a new collection of bizarre statements from and interactions with his youngest son, Simon. 

Kids Are Still Weird, a follow up of sorts to Kids Are Weird (about his older son, Oscar) that will debut at SPX! Come say hi to Jeffrey and get Simon Says, a risograph mini-comic of bonus material free with purchase of the book.

Lonnie Millsap

Special Guest Lonnie Millsap, will be signing copies of his latest book, titled ‘My Owners Were Chewy!’. ‘Chewy’ is a collection of humorous, single paneled cartoons that are laugh out loud funny. Millsap will also be signing prints of his work from the book and prints of his New Yorker cartoons.

Stan Mack

Stan Mack drew a comic strip every week for decades based on what he saw and heard in his native New York City, famously using verbatim dialogue for his graphic dramatizations.

A mixture of humor, spontaneity, serendipity, and weirdness, Mack’s comic strip snapshots caught New Yorkers — whether it is an extortionist calligrapher, a baby evading arrest at her first protest, a stroll up Broadway with a ferret, an evening with a male liberationist, or an unlucky-in-love dolphin trainer — being who they are in all their unguarded and uninhibited glory. He’ll be signing copies of Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995 at the Fantagraphics booth!

Laura Pérez

We are thrilled that, thanks to the generosity of Spain Arts & Culture, Laura Pérez is a Special Guest at SPX 2024! She’ll be discussing and signing copies of Ocultos from Fantagraphics, an entrancing collection of graphic short stories explores the occult forces that touch upon our everyday lives.

Celebrated for her previous graphic novel, Totem, Spanish comics artist Laura Pérez presents another entrancing vision of magic and mystery. Artfully rendered in her signature wispy, atmospheric pencil lines punctuated by splashes of color, Ocultos is a spiritual, reflective work that will leave you spellbound.ianate storytelling that draws on stylistic elements found in illuminated manuscripts. A poetic and evocative exploration of destiny and survival.

Chris Gooch

Chris Gooch will be traveling from Melbourne, Australia to promote his recent graphic novel In Utero from Top Shelf. He will also be signing his previous three books with Top Shelf, Bottled (2017), Deep Breaths (2019) and Under-Earth (2020). 

‘In Utero’ follows twelve years after a disastrous explosion, young Hailey is dropped off by her mum at a holiday camp in a dilapidated shopping mall. Alienated from the other kids, she connects with an eerie older teen named Jen… but soon dark horrors awaken, and the two new friends are caught up in a cataclysmic battle between two terrifying creatures who have been lying dormant all this time.

One of Australia’s most acclaimed young graphic novelists, Chris Gooch expertly crafts a taut and intimate thriller about mothers and daughters, the monstrous and the mundane, and the power of friendship in the midst of catastrophe.

Walter Scott

When Wendy is nominated for the coveted National FoodHut Contemporary Art Prize, all of her millennial dreams seem to be coming true. But not even achieving bona fide art star fame can hide the truth: a never-ending struggle with imposter syndrome. After she cracks in an online interview and gets dragged in the comments section, she heads straight to a local watering hole to drown her sorrows.

Walter Scott’s, ‘The Wendy Award’ from Drawn & Quarterly, incisively skewers the art world with its corporate overlords, performative activism, generational wealth, and weaponized therapy speak—a showcase of Walter Scott’s deft wit and social commentary. Walter Scott is an interdisciplinary artist working in comics, drawing, video, performance, and sculpture. Scott is Kanien’keha:ka from the Kahnawake Mohawk nation.

Sig Burwash

Sig Burwash is a visual artist whose practice includes watercolor, collage, ceramics, animation, illustration, and comics. They have had their works exhibited in the United States, Europe and Canada, where they live on Cape Breton Island.

Sig attended the Centre for Cartoon Studies to work on their debut graphic novel, Vera Bushwack from Drawn & Quarterly. The uniquely emotive pastel pages follow a journey of rage, joy, and self-acceptance in the rustic landscape of Nova Scotia. This is Sig’s first time attending SPX.

Small Press Expo Announces Joel Christian Gill, Ashley Robin Franklin, Walter Scott and Matt Madden as Special Guests for SPX 2021

Small Press Expo has announced the second group of Special Guests for SPX 2021. The virtual festival takes place on Saturday September 18 with live and pre-recorded programming about the amazing world of independent and small press comics, as well as a livestream of the annual Ignatz Awards. Additional Special Guests will be announced over the next few weeks.

Joel Christian Gill

SPX 2021 has revealed the following creators as Special Guests to this year’s show:

Joel Christian Gill

For the third book in the bestselling Tales of the Talented Tenth series, Joel Christian Gill brings Robert Smalls to life by telling the true story of the enslaved African who pulled off one of the most daring and largest heists of the Civil War. Come along for the adventure as Robert earns a job working for the C.S.S. Planter, escapes to freedom, goes on to become a first-generation Black politician, and makes history by writing and leading the passage of legislation that led to the United States’ first free and compulsory public school system. Tales of the Talented Tenth is a historical comic series that focuses on the adventures of amazing African Americans in action.


Ashley Robin Franklin

Ashley Robin Franklin

Fusing sexual intimacy with cosmic dread, Ashley Robin Franklin’s latest work, a queer horror tale One Millions Tiny Fires from Silver Sprocket follows Briana and Cassie, a couple in an isolated Texas farmhouse, whose rural fantasy has soured into a tense nightmare.

After discovering an unknown object that had crash landed from the sky, Briana begins to suspect that something uncanny is happening to her partner.


Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Wendy is an aspiring contemporary artist whose adventures have taken her to galleries, art openings, and parties in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Toronto. In Wendy, Master of Art from Drawn & Quarterly, Walter Scott’s sly wit and social commentary zero in on MFA culture as our hero decides to hunker down and complete a master of fine arts at the University of Hell in small-town Ontario.

At its heart, this is a book about the give and take of community—about someone learning how to navigate empathy and boundaries, and to respect herself. It is deeply funny and endlessly relatable as it shows Wendy growing up from Millennial art party girl to successful artist, friend, teacher—and Master of Art.


Matt Madden

Matt Madden

Matt Madden’s most recent book, Ex Libris from Uncivilized Books, revolves around a character trapped in a room with nothing but a futon and a bookcase full of comics. As they peruse covers, read stories and fragments of stories, they begin to suspect that the comics contain hidden messages and… a threat. Fiction and reality blur; sanity and madness become increasingly intertwined as the reader becomes convinced the key to their predicament hides between the panels of the strange books.

With a dizzying array of inventive visual and narrative styles, Ex Libris continues the line of exploration and play that Madden initiated with 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. Ex Libris is a tribute to the meta-fictional tradition of writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Vladimir Nabokov, and Italo Calvino.

Small Press Expo Announces the 2015 Ignatz Award Nominees

2015 Ignatz AwardThe Small Press Expo (SPX), the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels and alternative political cartoons, has announced the 2015 nominees for the annual presentation of the Ignatz Awards, a celebration of outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning.

The Ignatz, named after George Herriman’s brick-wielding mouse from his long running comic strip Krazy Kat, recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. The Ignatz Awards are a festival prize, the first of such in the United States comic book industry.

The nominees for the ballot were determined by a panel of five of the best of today’s comic artists, Lamar Abrams, Cara Bean, Robyn Chapman, Sophie Goldstein and Corrine Mucha, with the votes cast for the awards by the attendees during SPX. The Ignatz Awards will be presented at the gala Ignatz Awards ceremony held on Saturday, September 19, 2015 at 9:30 P.M.

ComiXology will be sponsoring this year’s Ignatz Awards.

The 2015 Ignatz Award Nominees


Outstanding Artist

  • Emily CarrollThrough The Woods
  • Ed LuceWuvable Oaf
  • Roman Muradov (In a Sense) Lost and Found
  • Jillian TamakiSuperMutant Magic Academy
  • Noah Van SciverSaint Cole

Outstanding Anthology or Collection

  • Drawn and Quarterly, 25 Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels, edited by Tom Devlin, Chris Oliveros, Peggy Burns, Tracy Hurren, and Julia Pohl-Miranda
  • An Entity Observes All Things by Box Brown
  • How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
  • Pope Hats #4 by Ethan Rilly
  • SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki

Outstanding Graphic Novel

  • Beauty by Kerascoët and Hubert
  • The Oven by Sophie Goldstein
  • Rav by Mickey Zacchilli
  • Saint Cole by Noah Van Sciver
  • Wendy by Walter Scott

Outstanding Story

  • Doctors by Dash Shaw
  • “Me As a Baby” from Lose #6 by Michael DeForge
  • “Nature Lessons” from The Late Child and Other Animals by Marguerite Van Cook and James Romberger
  • “Sex Coven” from Frontier #7 by Jillian Tamaki
  • Weeping Flower, Grows in Darkness by Kris Mukai

Promising New Talent

  • M. DeanK.M. & R.P. & MCMLXXI (1971)
  • Sophia Foster-DiminoSphincter; Sex Fantasy
  • Dakota McFadzeanDon’t Get Eaten by Anything
  • Jane MaiSoft
  • Gina WynbrandtBig Pussy

Outstanding Series

  • Dumb by Georgia Webber
  • Frontier edited by Ryan Sands
  • March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
  • Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly
  • Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster-Dimino

Outstanding Comic

  • Borb by Jason Little
  • The Nature of Nature by Disa Wallander
  • The Oven by Sophie Goldstein
  • Pope Hats #4 by Ethan Rilly
  • Weeping Flower, Grows in Darkness by Kris Mukai

Outstanding Minicomic

  • Devil’s Slice of Life by Patrick Crotty
  • Epoxy 5 by John Pham
  • King Cat #75 by John Porcellino
  • Sex Fantasy #4 by Sophia Foster-Dimino
  • Whalen: A Reckoning by Audry

Outstanding Online Comic

SPX will be held Saturday, September 19 from 11AM to 7PM and Sunday, September 20, noon-6PM at The North Bethesda Marriott Convention Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Admission is $15 for Saturday, $10 for Sunday and $20 for both days.

This year’s image of Ignatz, as seen above, was created by 2014 Promising New Talent Winner Cathy G. Johnson.