BUDDIES

The Rhode Island Independent Publishing Expo (RIPE or RIPExpo) is just over a week away, so it's probably time to start talking about BUDDIES! Walker and I were both honored to be Special Guests of the show, and decided to show our appreciation to the RIPExpo and the Providence comics community by collaborating on an ENORMOUS anthology that would serve as a Providence "scene report" in book form. That book is called BUDDIES (or, more accurately BUDDIES 2015. we're hoping it will be a yearly census), and it contains comics from close to 50 artists living and working in Providence, RI.

Luke Boggia designed the hypnotic cover:

Featuring some beautiful new work from Heather Benjamin:

Puke Force makes an appearance, courtesy of Brian Chippendale:

The return of USA TRUCK from Mickey Zacchilli:

And some Doofus pages from Rick Altergott:

The printing and folding is (mostly) done, now we just have to put the dang things together...

Look for BUDDIES at the RIPExpo, March 28-29, right here in Providence, RI!

CAB and Heather Benjamin

This weekend the Hidden Fortress can be found at the first ever Comic Arts Brooklyn! Gabe Fowler, besides being a really sweet guy, and running my favorite store in Brooklyn (Desert Island), AND putting out one of the best comics newspapers in the country (Smoke Signal), he has been involved in organizing some of the best comic shows in the area over the last several years. Recently, he was one of the founders of the tour de force known as the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, and this year he's forging his own path with CAB. And we're excited to be a part of it!

After the show, Heather Benjamin has an opening at Мишка in Brooklyn, which I highly recommend attending. Heather is brilliant, one of my favorite illustrators currently working; we were lucky to have her drawings grace the cover(s) of the new MONSTER book. The letterpress covers she designed for the individual books are difficult to photograph clearly, so I thought this would be a good time and place to show off her work:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

I'm looking forward to seeing you all there

M-M-M-MONSTER!!

the Hidden Fortress wagon is fully loaded with boxes upon boxes of books, and we're about to begin the harrowing journey to distant Bethesda, MD 

the new MONSTER is finally upon us! 200 pages of comics, offset printed in two colors, with letterpress and silkscreen covers by Heather Benjamin. here's a shot of the fully unfolded wraparound cover:

here is a full list of the contributing artists:

Tom Toye, Edie Fake, Brittany Hague, Jon Vermilyea, Leif Goldberg, Mike Taylor, Sam Dollenmayer, Michael Deforge, Keith Jones, Mickey Zacchilli, Marc Bell, Molly O'Connell, Seth Cooper, Devin Flynn, Lale Westvind, Jordan Crane, Brian Ralph, Mollie Goldstrom, Paul Lyons, Mat Brinkman, Roby Newton, Walker Mettling, Andy Neal and Kevin Hooyman.

that's a lot of talent to cram into 200 pages!

the book will be available this weekend at SPX, come by and take a look!

this book is now available in our store

TCAF

Last weekend, the Hidden Fortress descended upon Toronto, Ontario, Canada for TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and brought some copies of the freshly printed second volume of the three-part MONSTER comic. This volume features the work of Sam Dollenmayer, Michael DeForge, Keith Jones, Mickey Zacchilli, Marc Bell, Molly O'Connell, Seth Cooper and Devin Flynn, and once again has a beautifully printed letterpress cover by Heather Benjamin:

here's one of Marc Bell's pages, painstakingly reproduced on the Ryobi:

TCAF and Toronto were wonderful. Every chance I got to walk away from the table, I found a different nook or cranny where more tables were set up, with more people selling more comics. It was both overwhelming and awe-inspiring. 

here's a picture of Cheryl Kaminsky commandeering the table while I wandered off on one of my forays:

SPX 2012

This weekend, Hidden Fortress Press manifested at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. We brought the first volume of the Monster 2012 anthology with us, with a super limited edition SPX exclusive dust jacket. Monster 2012 is just under 200 pages long and will be collected in three volumes, each with a beautiful letterpress cover printed by Roby Newton and designed by Heather Benjamin, who is also designing the slipcase that contains the three books.

That's Roby Newton and Ignatz award nominee Mickey Zacchilli representing at the Hidden Fortress Press table. We were psyched to also have Ignatz winner Lale Westvind parked at our table; Hot Dog Beach is well deserving of it's accolades, and Lale is pure badass. 

It was an incredible weekend, we met a ton of wonderful people, saw some dear old friends, met a lot of our heroes, discovered some new heroes, and brought home suitcases full of beautiful books.