SPACE Columbus- the artists!

Well, right off the bat, I started following Katie Omberg at her blog. She does a comic called "The Very Real Story of a Real Gay Kid," an autobiographical comic following the story of her own coming out. The drawing style is cute, loose but not sloppy. Go look at her work, it's on her blog and on The New Gay.

Next up is Nate Powell, whose style really reminds me of Jillian Tamaki's. I bought his "Please Release" comic, but after reading it, I wish I had bought at least one other one. It is autobiographical, thoughtful and definitely worth a few more reads to take it all in. Look at his gallery of illustrations as well as his comics, I think they're really freakin awesome.

Ryan Dow won the SPACE prize last year for best webcomic, and I totally see why. In the spirit of Sinfest, but more personal at the same time, his Lil Buddha comics are hilarious and honest.

I got really excited when I saw Michael R. Neno's "Pictures of Benevolence" minicomics, because they are really similar to what I'm working on currently. His are more specific (and more ambiguous at the same time). I can't really describe them properly, but he can.

John Porcellino's King-Cat Comics are also autobiographical in nature, more anecdotal than some of the others in this list, but still really thoughtful. His drawings are sparse, but well executed and buoyed by his excellent writing. I got two of his and I'm thinking of getting some of the earlier issues, too. Here is his publishing blog.

I really loved one of the many free comics I received, called "FYI, IDK," by Max Ink. The drawing are lovely and the characters really well-formed.

Another free comic I received was titled "Sacred Heart" by one Liz Suburbia. I loved the character design, it kind of reminded me of Damon Albarn's Gorillaz designs, and also of Daniel Clowes' Ghost World. (Side note on two things--I bought myself a copy of Ghost World at Half-Price books while I was in Columbus, yay, and Gorillaz has some new tracks up here, holy smokes!)

There were a few people at SPACE doing hand-bound comics and one of the nicest was by Jessi Zarbarsky (and I'm not talking staples here, it was really nice paper bound in the 5-stitch method). I bought the one titled "Thursday," which has this adorable little out-of-panel character hanging out just outside the panel border on some of the pages. The drawing style is distinct and very clean, I'm definitely going to explore her work some more.

The last comic artist I bought a comic from is Nathan Kissel, who has really really nice color work. I bought his "Deserted Aisles" comic about a grocery store clerk who meets a magic genie, and it's well written and the main character is so forlorn-looking you just want to give him a hug.

I got some sweet business cards from about a kazillion people, so I'll just roll out a short list here, click at your leisure:

Evan Yeti by Mat Washburn.

Kenn Minter, comics and graphic design.

Peculiar Comics (this guy was handing out mustaches, I wore mine around until it started to itch).

E.J. Barnes had the cutest/ funniest greeting cards ever for sale. Example A.

I could go on and on and ON, but those were the highlights. Here is a picture of our table, with Carol Tyler's books there at the front.

From right to left: Allison Weyda, Amanda Ashley's coat (I have no idea where she went, she managed to avoid my camera the whole trip), Meredith Waddell.