Alternative Press Expo 1998

The fifth annual Alternative Press Expo in wide and spacious San Jose, CA was quite the interesting experience. Coming from New Orleans, I looked forward to the nice, sunny West Coast weather... unfortunately, El Niņo's unflagging persistence turned everything on its ear. Basically it was wet. Fortunately we were staying at the Holiday Inn right next to the exhibition hall--a good thing. The second unexpected thing to occur was that our logo bearing banner (the nice, new one we'd planned to display behind our table) never made it! Part of the shipping horror I'd feared came true. At least we got the books, so we had something to show for ourselves!

Saturday morning we set up at the hall and then waited for the mad rush to begin. The fans came, saw, and bought a little bit of everything. From the known stuff (Terry "SiP" Moore, Jhonen "JTHM", "Squee" Vasquez, Batton "Wolff & Byrd" Lash, Tara "Galaxion" Jenkins, and Mike "Red Rocket 7", "Madman" Allred, et al.) to the more recent (i.e., obscure) stuff: our book, and the work of most of the people around us.

The event was well organized and there were some useful Q&A sessions with various personalities in the industry. One observation, fanzines and mini-comics were extremely popular there. If you have a 'zine, or mini-comic, you want to get noticed, bring it to the Alternative Press Expo. Our book was one of the more mainstream titles at the show. There were countless avant-garde and personal works to be had. If you dig that sort of stuff, APE is the one place on Earth you want to be (providing you can spare one weekend in February)

A special thanks to the following folks:

• Adam, Bryon & Chris from American Mule Entertainment, who shared their sacred black cloth with us and kept the entire affair from getting too serious. Their debut book, the aptly named "The True Adventures of Adam and Bryon" is a hoot. These guys know Sick. They know Funny. Read their book!
• Mark Thompson, Tim and Cathy Stroup from Cold Cut Distribution for their unflagging show of support for small, independent books. If you're looking for that hard to find back issue of your favorite Indy title, check out the Cold Cut website.
• Glen Folland from Diamond Comic Distributors. Glen is our liaison at Diamond and has given me a lot of useful information over the phone these past few months. It was nice to finally meet him in person.
• Rich Koslowski from 3 Finger Prints. Rich is the mastermind behind the monstrously funny and dead-on The Three Geeks. This guy knows his geeks! Thanks for trading comics with me Rich and for creating such a worthwhile title. The turbulent plane ride home was eased immensely by reading your delightfully entertaining work. Good job!
• Brent Anderson, great artist of Astro City, among others, for taking the time to look over Anthony's work and offer insightful criticism.

And let's not forget: the lady at the hotel who showed us the "magic button" trick to getting the elevator to arrive faster and DJ Andy Average for playing such hip music at the Swing Like an Ape party on Saturday night.

We had a good time and learned quite a bit about what's currently going on in the independent marketplace.

Finally, a BIG thanks goes out to my brother, Addo. Addo was the major financier of this little expedition and without him it simply would not have happened. Big hug and thanks to my favorite twin.

Whether or not we're successful in that aim will be for you to let us know over the coming issues.

That's it.

We survived and hope to do it all over again... but not until next year, you know, after that storm out there has settled down.

Thanks.

Fred Barrows
(2/24/98)