Long time no update! SF Zine Fest and APE were wonderful. Aside from selling comics, I made some pretty awesome purchases at both cons. Behold!

Papercutter (Tugboat Press):
An award-winning comic anthology I discovered at SF Zine Fest this year. I was really impressed with how strong a lot of the stories were in here. I've included my two favorite issues above. Issue 10's feature story was "Willy" by Damien Jay. The story was set in a quasi-medieval world, and was incredibly eerie, engaging, and hard to get out of your head after reading it. While visiting his website, I noticed he has a series of other comics set in the same world which I am very interested in buying. Issue 8 included an autobiographical comic by Corinne Mucha called "Growing Up Haunted". This story focused on Mucha's childhood fear of being kidnapped in the night by a group of witches she believed to be living in her house. This story had me laughing out loud a number of times. All in all, I can assure you none of my Papercutter purchases were regretted afterwards.

Amazing Everything (Scott C.):
I'm a long-time fan of this guy. I'm more interested in his Great Showdowns series, however his playful style and awesome watercolor skills made this well worth the purchase for me. And he signed it too! Yay!

Hark! A Vagrant (Kate Beaton):
It's hard to find someone who doesn't like Kate Beaton. Her take on famous literature and history is fresh and extremely funny. When signing my book, I asked her to draw me a picture of Jane Eyre (I'm a fan of the book and she had done some other comics on it). The left picture was the result. She even got the umlauts on my name right! I was super pleased.

Habibi (Craig Thompson)
I wasn't even aware Craig Thompson was going to be at APE until I saw him at the Lee's Comics booth. I was impressed at how patient and friendly he was with everyone in line, despite the ridiculous number of books he was signing that day. Additionally, I really appreciated his encouraging words and advice about comic-making he gave me while signing my book. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to read Habibi yet, but judging by how much I adored Blankets, I'm sure I'll love it.

Eight Herbs Mtn: The Rice Patty Kid (Ben Costa):
Last year at APE, I purchased Ben Costa's other book, Pang: The Wandering Shaolin Monk, and have been hooked ever since. Despite graduating with an East-Asian studies minor, my focus was more on Japan, so I know very little about Chinese history. This is part of the reason why I love Ben Costa's work so much. His comics are informative and hilarious at the same time and I really look forward to buying up more of his stuff in the future once he releases it.