Every year I say to myself: “I'm going to write a con diary for SPX.” I also say: “I’m going to read all the comics I got and review them.” The latter statement is only partially responsible for my failure to complete the former. Mostly, it’s the slow slippage of time. I get to writing, or thinking about writing, usually about a week after the con. Then, before you know it, it's November with its end-of-year-prep urgency and I’ve only typed up a paragraph or so then it's February and I'm recovering from a different event and then it's April and by this point we’re closer to the next year’s SPX, the moment passed, and it feels like it’s simply not worth typing up anymore.
Wait five months. Rinse. Repeat.
SPX is the only comics convention I attend all year and it feels like I’m doing it a disservice by not talking about the time I spend there, about what the con is like, and about why I continue to go despite living multiple hours and multiple states away. So! Let's remedy that in the only way I know how: a marginally unhinged pseudo-pastiche of a Hunter S. Thompson travelogue.
Normally I'd have this farther in but I didn't want to break the flow.
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SPX! A hotel (okay. One big, main room in a hotel) full of comics; full of books and zines, creators and created, publishers and the unpublished; full of a seething, swirling, undulating mass of the strangest readers slipping up and down rows upon rows of strange art and stranger artists. A convention unlike any other; or, at least, no other I like to attend. Going there is like going home, if home was where I regularly find my wallet suddenly empty and my backpack inexplicably weighing 50 pounds. Who snuck that lead weight in there?!
For the curious and the confused, SPX, or Small Press eXpo, is a two-day convention held in Bethesda, Maryland every fall, usually in mid-September. They focus on showcasing the small, the indie, the micro, the underground, the DIY and the up-and-coming in the comics scene. It’s a real hodgepodge collage of people, from the kid with just a marker and some printer paper, to the webcomic artist with a solid following and a ton of horny prints, to bespoke signings by name-brand cartoonists at name-brand publishers. They also host the Ignatz Awards. Throw that brick you funky mouse!
2024 marks my eighth year of attending (I started going in 2017) though only my sixth convention. 2020 & 2021 didn’t exactly…happen. Something about a global pandemic, which if you believed the other big conventions wasn’t a real problem and who needs a mask or vaccine requirement anyway? Heath and safety? Pfffft.
2024 also marks my third time attending as press, my third time going to the Ignatz ceremony, the fourth time I’ve tried to write this article, or something like it, and the third time I’ve re-written this very paragraph in two years. Carbon date it. I dare you.
Excavations aside, it’s Friday - doesn’t matter when you’re reading this - and I’m driving down to Maryland with my wife, who hasn’t been to the con in a couple years and is bowing out again because, and I quote, “I will be unable to resist all the cat stickers and that will make me happy but my wallet sad.” I cannot argue with the frugality and restraint she shows. I, on the other hand, am fully prepared to make myself happy and my wallet sad; this is the collector’s, the enthusiast’s, the comic buyer’s default relationship.
She would hang out with a mutual friend and go apple picking instead.
But before that, we must first arrive at Chalet Chris in scenic [Redacted], Maryland. We arrive. We hug. Last year, we had what passes for pizza in Maryland (better than you think, not as good as you hope; needs more grease) then watched The Evil Dead and slept like it until the early hours of 10am on Saturday.
This year, we do not eat - dinner is planned for later but, fool that I am, I did not think to pack or pick up lunch - and instead drive out to our mutual friend’s house, hungry like the wolf, to help her catch cats at a colony for TNR before making our way to the local Chabad house for a long delayed dinner. It is delicious and the hosts are wonderful. Alas, we must away! Rest! For on the morrow we ride!
Saturday begins and I prep for the day. That means emptying out my backpack, filling up my water bottle, grabbing my huge Dark Horse tote (the best freebie from NYCC ever,) and packing a light but hearty lunch. These things are key. One must maximize comic book space without sacrificing the energy necessary to get through the next few hours lest you succumb to TWO meals purchased at the con.
Tons of snacks, a big lunch, and water are all well and good until your bag is half Cheez-Its/half hardcovers and you’re not even an eighth of the way into the con and the lunch you ate is putting you to sleep on your feet.
So, I build a sandwich, grab a couple small things I can tuck in a side pocket or leave in the car to nosh on between lunch and dinner, and awaken my friend so he can do the same. We do a final check - phone-wallet-keys - and are on our way!
We arrive around one, after taking fewer wrong turns to the parking garage than last year, and I pick up my pass from the press table. Chris gets his pass and we head outside. It’s lunch time, baybee. Scarf that sandwich. Inhale those chips. We gotta get walking the floor.
Energy acquired, we head into the con space to get the lay of the land, see what jumps out at us, plot a course between “must stops” and do a first pass so we don’t accidentally run out of budget before getting to half the room.
Spoilers: I go over budget and STILL don’t get everything I want to get. C'est la vie.
Chris, being a far more disciplined con-goer, makes careful note of his few items on the first go around. He’s on the hunt for playing cards. Last year, they were in abundance. He fears, and secretly hopes, that will be the case again. I, on the other hand, look around and…
Do you remember being in school and having a teacher tell you to highlight the important parts of a chapter but it all seems important so you end up turning the whole page yellow?
As I said, this is the only con I attend, really, and my self-control in the face of books is woefully inadequate. I am weak and the money flows like water. I tell myself I will only spend what cash I brought. I am afraid to tell Chris how much cash I brought. I am afraid to tell you all here. You will judge me. I judge myself. I spend less than I believe I did. I am more spendthrift than previously. It is still more than I should.
I have no regrets.