“So you’ll do this until the day you die?”

“No, I do this to live,” Tony Chavira quips. I deserved that. It must’ve been the march down Zombie Lane that led me to ask an independent comics author such an absurd question.
 
Tony Chavira is just one of the talented independent comic creators attending San Francisco’s 2011 Alternative Press Expo (APE). Chavira produces the web comic Tuna Carpaccio PI and is a writer/creator for Minefield Wonderland Comics, a publisher that “presents a mix of the curious and the grotesque, providing supernatural explanations for many bizarre occurrences throughout history.” Minefield Wonderland works with artists throughout the world to create comics, a genre many of these artists have not previously considered. Their label currently sports four titles from the Nazi-era Mirage Post-meridian drawn by Hillary Bauman to a border story called The Silence of the Weeping Woman drawn by Manuel Chucilla.
 
So back to Zombie Lane. It appears the zombies have eaten all the werewolves and vampires, or at least some of the vampires have hightailed out to suburbia. So the undead gentrification of comics dominates the neighborhood with artists like Scott Campbell moving over from Sesame Street with his new Zombies in Love, written by Kelly DiPucchio, about Mortimer, a zombie looking anywhere and everywhere for love. But he’s a bit of a stiff dancer and he can’t pick up any girls at the gym since his arm keeps falling off. There’s a plethora of zombie cowboys, including those on Zombie Ranch, written and drawn by Clint and Dawn Wolf and featuring a group of cowboys and cowgirls in the future Wild West along with their zombie herd as they shoot a reality show for the folks in the Safe Zones. There is also Dust (Semantink Publishing) written by James Ninness, a gritty, no-holds-barred western featuring mercenaries, pirates, and cannibals. John Narcomey draws the violence with brutal energy that will keep readers cringing. Whether it’s zombies, cannibals, vampires, or werewolves, it’s the story that matters, and these author/creators can write a good story, a story to live for.
 
Speaking of good stories: Craig Thompson was staked out busily signing his 670-page Habibi (Pantheon) for those who schlepped, or bought, that door-stopping tome. Don’t let its size deter you. Its black-and-white artwork twists, turns, and winds its way through the pages as its wrought-iron calligraphy slides into the narrative, adding wonder to a story that weaves its way through the human condition creating a beautifully wrought bit of storytelling.
 
At the other end of the Concourse, Matthew Thurber was marking his West Coast premier of 1-800 MICE. The Eisner Award winning Shannon Wheeler, creator of Too Much Coffee Man, inspired new and experienced illustrators at programs such as the “Indie Cartoonist Survival Guide” and “Drawing Inspiration: The Secrets of Comics Creativity.” Kate Beaton also offered tips at “Drawing Inspiration” and on Sunday the author of Hark! A Vagrant offered her take on history through a modern lens. Adrian Tomine of Optic Nerve (new issue coming out this fall) attended the panel with Daniel Clowes, hosted by Dan Nadel, the publisher of PictureBox, as the two critically acclaimed, award-winning cartoonists talked about their work, friendship, and the comics medium.
 

 
But before Clowes and Tomine could take the podium, The Comics Claptrap went live with a podcast hosted by (pictured above, from left) Rina Ayuyang (Whirlwind Wonderland), Thien Pham (Level Up), and beat reporter Josh Frankel (Hungry for Brains). Their guests included Mike Dawson (Troop 142), Scott Campbell (Zombie in Love), Levon Jihanian (Danger Country), and Esther Pearl Watson, creator of Unlovable. Mike Dawson, a former scout, was promoting his award-winning, Troop 142 (Secret Acres), about a fateful outing that illustrates what makes men and boys, well, men and boys. It seems everybody at the table had a scouting story, including Levon Jihanian, who hated scouts so much that when his mom dropped him off for meetings he just waited outside on the curb. Thankfully, the author of Danger in Country (Teenage Dinosaur) gave up scouting for Dungeons and Dragons, leading to a bildungsroman covering a quest through The Diseased Land. Jihanian was rewarded with two Ignatz nominations for his work.
 
Esther Peal Watson had experienced scouting’s female alternative the Brownies, although she claims it was false advertising, “No one was offering brownies.” Her Unlovable (Fantagraphics), about those awkward teenage years and 1980s culture, is loosely based on diary entries, her husband, and growing up in Wilie, Texas. As a painter she describes her style as white trash meets Grandma Moses and loves to treat comics as painted quilts. Another panelist, Scott Campbell, Zombie in Love, is working on more Great Showdowns—look for those princess matches—while Amazing Everything: The Art of Scott C. (Insight) celebrated its release at APE.
 
Back out on the floor, dozens of new artists manned booths. Josh Finney (pictured at left) and Kat Rocha teamed up to create Titanium Rain (Archaia), a near-future story set after the 2030 Chinese Civil War, which expanded into a global conflict. Some fighters must exchange biotechnology for flesh, which makes the author ask, “Is this the ultimate corruption of nature? Or the birth pains of a new chapter in human evolution?” Titanium Rain is done in a slick four-color hardcover presentation that the Chinese wouldn’t print, meaning the near future is now!
 
 
 
Steve Oliff was selling what one of his customers called “historical relics” of cyberpunk Akira art. Oliff offered Akira pages, “the first comics colored by computers,” which he had beautifully airbrushed, painted, or penciled, and then scanned. He estimates he produced some 40,000 pages, taking from half an hour to several hours to complete. On-hand, he had stacks of these physical relics, but for those who couldn’t attend, his works are also available through Olyoptics.com. It’s artwork definitely worth framing.
 
Nomi Kane didn’t have far to look for talented new undergraduates for the Vermont campus of the Center for Cartoon Studies. She was handing out the center’s guidebook, which contains one of my favorite definitions of cartoonists “visual linguists who use (and add to) a pictorial vocabulary that has been established through trial and error over the course of centuries.” You can study all genres of comics, from superheroes to indie-style graphic novels, with an all-star teaching cast including James Sturm and Jason Lutes.
 
There was news floating around the APE floor. Peter Laird’s Xeric grants, a staple for many of the self-publishers present at APE, are ending this year. According to Xeric’s website, “The advent of essentially free web publishing has forever altered the way aspiring comic book creators can get their work out into the public eye. With this in mind, I have decided that it makes sense that the Xeric Foundation will no longer provide grants to self-publishing comic book creators, and instead devote all of its available grant funds to charitable organizations.” That was a huge letdown for many of APE’s creative exhibitors and this reader. There is just something to be said for holding pages in your hands, smelling the ink, and not having to worry your battery is going to run dead.
 
Speaking of the Xeric Award, Ben Costa won a grant in 2008 and used it to publish Pang: The Wandering Shaolin Monk (Iron Crotch University Press), a story steeped in Chinese history about a monk who escapes death at the hands of the emperor and then tries to find his friends, who are guarding the writings of his monastery. He meets a girl, falls in love, and then fights, chops, grabs, and cracks his way across 17th-century China in a kung fu action adventure.
 
Another comic with a historical fiction bent is Shade: A Graphic Noel (www.nathanheigert.com). The author describes his work as “Star Wars meets Homer’s Odyssey”and is the story of a dying world in search of a hero. Nathan Heigert fashions a world that is somewhat Dunesque, but with artwork that is at times part Egyptian tomb meets Roman amphitheater, beautifully wrought and carefully crafted. Heigert is a true independent whose print work is available through his website.
 
This year’s APE has spread throughout San Francisco’s Concourse. What used to occupy one building, then two, now occupies the entire site. It is filled with artists, creators, collaborators, famous, not so famous, and even infamous cartoonists. I had to scoot past Darn Tootin’, a booth featuring Heroes and Bandits based on the gothic country music genre to get to Samuel Farinato’s art with illustrations of some of my favorite classic works. On display was his book, The Hyperquizzitistical Alphabet According to Edgar Allan Poe, a whimsical trip through the letters using Poe’s stories, poems, and themes.
 
A few tables down, Alejandro Pina sported XMAS on TV, a mini shaped like a remote, illustrating the horrors of a world taken over by Xmas (hmm, sounds an awful lot like my Christmas). Then there’s the sophisticated Burger Force, the fast food chain with fries and spies, complete with killer nerds and abundant Audreys, written and directed by Jackie Ryan.
 
Daniel Cooney, the author of Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel (A&C Black), also featured the noir assassin Valentine. An aisle over, Joseph Remnant was available to talk about his upcoming Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland (Top Shelf). The Nightsproject previewed One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, as Regina Legaspi, Jeremy Huxley, Taryn Dufault, Tiya Pryor-Knell, and Cindy Liu beautifully illustrate this classic work. Their different styles make this a treat to peruse.
 
The cliché of “So many books, so little time” tells the story of APE. I couldn’t collect enough promo cards and I’m looking at this stack trying to determine how many more books I should buy, especially since I broke the bank at APE. There is something to be said for talking to creators, especially those whose enthusiasm just oozes across the table, to float the bills right out of my wallet. My advice: Support your local comic book creator and buy those independent comics.

—Doré Ripley

Commenting closes after a story has been up for 2 months.