Toys, T-shirts and Indie Books at APE
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on April 11, 2006 Sign up now!
by Douglas Wolk, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 4/11/2006
 Top Shelf publishers Brett Warnock (l.) and Chris Staros |
As always, the larger indie publishers showed some big debut books and held nearly constant signings at their tables. Fantagraphics' biggest new book was Mome volume 3, for which they held a release party Saturday night. They sold out of Will Elder's Chicken Fat and premiered The Sandman Papers, a collection of essays about the Neil Gaiman series, as well as the second volume of their Dennis the Menace collections. Top Shelf unveiled Renee French's The Ticking and Jeremy Tinder's Cry Yourself to Sleep, and featured both of those cartoonists as well as Alex Robinson and Jeffrey Brown at their table.
A few booths away, at Oni Press, Root Nibot and Colleen Coover's Banana Sunday and individual comics by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly (Local) and Ted Naifeh (Polly and the Pirates) sold briskly. But the big question was when Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, the latest volume in the series, would be on the shelves. (Answer: it's finally done, so sometime in May.) Slave Labor Graphics had the largest display of any company present; they brought along special guest Black Olive and sold a bunch of single issues of Rex Libris and Corporate Ninja, as well as Roman Dirge's Lenore: Cooties collection.
 Dan Clowes signs at the Fantagraphics Table |
APE is historically a good place to catch rising cartoonists who are still self-publishing. Special guest artist Raina Telgemeier, previously best known for her self-published minicomics, had copies on display next to her Scholastic graphic novel The Baby-Sitter's Club: Kristy's Great Idea; she'd sold about 45 copies of the latter by Sunday morning. A few self-published books were the subject of excited chatter on the floor, especially Jason Shiga's insane 500-page "Choose Your Own Adventure"-on-steroids opus Ctrl-Z and Matt Silady's photorealistic minicomic The Homeless Channel. On Saturday night, local comics store Isotope held its annual awards ceremony for minicomics; the winner was Danita Novgorodoff's A Late Freeze.
The biggest trend of this year's show, though, was product diversification. A lot of young cartoonists are launching their creations on the Internet and making merchandise even before books (there were innumerable stuffed toys and T-shirts), or thinking about books as a sideline to limited-edition prints and objets d'art. The Nucleus table had signings by a group of the Flight creators—the third volume is due in June—but in the meantime, there were prints galore for sale. In general, the most crowded booths were the ones that had books alongside both cheaper and more expensive merchandise. Even special guest artist Carol Tyler, promoting her new Fantagraphics hardcover Late Bloomer, was selling decorated seed packets.
APE attendees appear to want most beautiful objects that have something to do with comics. Gingko Press did well with Systems Design Limited's book-and-vinyl-toy combination Fusion; Last Gasp blew through a stack of Elizabeth McGrath's art book Everything that Creeps, and fielded lots of queries about the imminently available, deluxe $45 Japanese hardcover collecting Mark Ryden's work. And a few booksellers wisely brought Penguin's new line of trade paperback classics with covers by the likes of Chris Ware and Anders Nilsen, which were snapped up. Voltaire and Upton Sinclair at APE—who'd have thought?
