Comic Arts Brooklyn 2014

We'll be touching down at Mount Carmel church in Brooklyn this weekend for COMIC ARTS BROOKLYN, our second to last show of the year!  

We'll be back in the church basement again, it's a pretty sweet spot... Mickey Z made this handy map for locating all of our dear friends downstairs:

We'll see you there, Brooklyn!

Showtimes

I'm starting to fill out the Hidden Fortress travel plan for 2014, and it's shaping up to be a pretty exciting year...

April 12th we'll be making our west coast debut at Linework NW in Portland, OR. I think this is the inaugural year for this show; it's being organized by Zack Soto and Francois Vigneault, and I get the sense that it's going to be one of the really good ones. Plus I've never been to Portland! I've heard that I will dine like a vegan prince while there...

On the weekend of May 10-11 we'll be making our triumphant return to TCAF in Toronto ON. Last year was my first visit to TCAF, and I was blown away! Such a good show, with fantastic programming, and a huge turnout. And Toronto is absolutely beautiful.

We'll be traveling to Chicago on the weekend of May 31 - June 1 for CAKE. This will be CAKE's 3rd year, and I'm proud to say that we've been with them from the beginning. It's always one of the most fun shows of the year; so many good, talented folks in Chicago!

September 13-14 is SPX weekend. Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD is the premier indy comics show on the east coast, maybe in the whole country, and I'm psyched that we'll be participating in it once again. SPX is so important to our scene, on so many levels, it's hard to imagine a world without it... I'm looking forward to being a part of this show for a long, long time.

There are a couple more shows on the horizon that I'm hoping to add to my calendar, like the Rhode Island Indy Publishing Expo this summer and Comic Arts Brooklyn in the fall, but they both seem to be in a developmental stage right now. I'll have more information about them in the future.

The Hidden Fortress is working on a number of projects for release in 2014, which we'll be rolling out over the course of the year at these shows. Here's a preview of one of those new books, an anthology honoring those glorious combatants of the squared circle:

Box Brown has been slaving away on a highly anticipated Andre the Giant biography which will finally be seeing the light of day sometime this year. I'm thrilled that he drew this harrowing tale of Abdullah the Butcher (the greatest blader in wrestling history) for our book! He has a number of beautiful portraits of wrestling superstars for sale at his store, go check em out

SPX 2013

Did SPX seem a lot bigger this year? The Hidden Fortress Press set up shop at one of (what seemed like) hundreds of tables in the ballroom, selling our new MONSTER book, some old favorites, a new book by Cybele Collins, and a ton of PCC books.

We had the good fortune of sitting next to Michel Fiffe (I'm kinda in love with his COPRA book), Melissa Mendes (who debuted Can't Lose at SPX, her new Friday Night Lights fanzine), Chuck Forsman (whose TEOTFW collection disappeared so fast he had to cancel his second book signing), and Ian Densford (who made some awesomely action packed, and beautifully printed, minis).

I didn't get many chances to walk around on the showroom floor, but here are some of the things I found during my brief forays:

Frans Boukas released a super limited edition (of 30!) print version of his contributions to the BARTKIRA project. His work is awesome, and deserves to be printed much, much larger...

Technically not new, but new to me, is this OBJECT 10 book from Floating World Comics. Killian Eng is one of those super young super-talents that drives me mad with envy; the vast amount of beautiful work he's produced in a relatively short period of time makes me feel like I've been seriously slacking.

This Frontier series from Youth In Decline is only 2 issues deep, as of this writing, but I'm already a superfan. The first issue focused on the work of Uno Moralez, someone whose work I'd seen for a while but never connected the name with the face, and this second issue focuses on the immensely talented Hellen Jo. I'm psyched to see where it goes next...

I could go on, there is so much beautiful work being done right now, but I'll have to save it for later.

On our drive home, we delivered the new MONSTER to every decent comic shop along the way. You can now purchase it in our store, as well as these fine establishments: Atomic Books, Chapel Hill Comics, Floating World Comics, Drawn and Quarterly, Big Planet Comics, Ada Books, Armageddon Shop, and (soon) Desert Island and the Million Year Picnic. I'm going to try and get it into as many stores as I can, so keep an eye out...

Roby and Paul

3 years ago, I conned Roby into helping me print a new Monster anthology. She was running the offset press at Black Cat Graphics, and printed most of that over-sized Monster book there after hours. It was kind of a hellish experience for the two of us, getting that book done in time for SPX. I think we finished stitching them around 2am the morning of the show, and I promptly jumped in the car and drove overnight to Maryland.

And apparently we learned nothing from all this, because here's a new MONSTER book, and it's another back breaker, with SPX breathing down our necks yet again...

Here's a glimpse at the comic that Roby drew for the book:

and I did this thing:

CAKE 2013

the Hidden Fortress Press is thrilled to be returning to the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo on June 15-16th! Walker Mettling, of the Providence Comics Consortium, has been kind enough to provide this Providence comics family cheat-sheet for finding us all out there on the floor:

just looking at that map, and without even knowing who's at the rest of those tables, it's easy to tell that this show will be a tour de force. Leif Goldberg is one of the most talented folks i know, i'm sure he'll be bringing some wondrous wares to Chicago; i know that Cybele and Olivia will both have amazing new books; Walker has a talent for getting some of the best cartoonists alive to work on the PCC anthologies with him; Mike T and Mickey Z are two of my favorite people, and favorite artists. i'm sure they'll have new comics too, possibly a RAV8 from Mickey?; Caroline Paquita and her Pegacorn Press can work wonders with a Risograph; and Jo Dery is one of the greatest and most talented people i've ever met. oh, and she did all the promotional art for CAKE this year too.

i'm sad to say that i won't be able to make it this year; the show looks to be a great one, with so many wonderful people under one roof! in my absence, Roby Newton will be there to run the Hidden Fortress table. you should stop by and see her, she's the bee's knees

Hidden Fortress Press Webstore

hey look, i started a Hidden Fortress Store over at BigCartel, where you will be able to purchase the following comic books:

Monster anthology

Fantasmancer #0 by Roby Newton

Thirteen Sided Die #1 by Paul Lyons

Realm Rider by Roby Newton

Some Giants Have Sad Eyes by Paul Lyons