I was recently asked to write a post on the Pittsburgh Small Press scene for a gallery show currently running in San Diego, California. The show, DO ANYTHING, is curated by my friend Chris Kardambikis and features a number of Pittsburgh artists. My article was posted on the show's Tumblr page, but I wanted to archive it here as well. Some of the topics I cover here I have already written about in some detail in previous posts.
For more info on DO ANYTHING check out their Tumblr at http://doanythingexhibit.tumblr.com/
Here's the article:
When Chris asked me
to write a post on the Pittsburgh small press scene for this exhibit
I was both flattered and a little overwhelmed. I don't know what's
happening in other cities, but Pittsburgh is exploding with DIY
publishing in a wide variety of formats and fields. Try as I might, I
will not be able to mention everyone currently involved. So, rather
than try to make this a comprehensive listing I decided to instead
offer a little historical perspective.
I've been involved
in the comics and small press scene here for a little over thirty
years. The phrase “Elder Statesman” has been uttered about me by
a number of people. I don't know about that, but I have been witness
to a tremendous amount of change in self-publishing and the 'zine
community.
I first started
publishing mini-comics way back in the late 80's. These were the days
when once you wrote and drew your own comic you then had to figure
out the layout and then spend hours at the local copy center doing
paste up, making copies, collating and stapling your own books. A lot
of people still do this, I realize, but back then it was really the
only option.
There was a huge, by
the standards of the time at least, underground community of
self-publishers selling their mini-comics and fanzines through the
mail. A magazine called Factsheet Five provided a place to get
your work reviewed and advertised. There were others, but F5
was the big one. A very small handful of friends and I jumped into
this headfirst, following in the footsteps of Underground Comix
pioneers like R. Crumb, contributing to music and comics 'zines as
well as publishing our own.
This brings me to
what I see as probably the biggest change since then. There were, to
my knowledge at the time, four people in Pittsburgh participating in
this scene. I know better now, but then we simply had no way of
discovering or communicating with them other than random encounters
at comics shops or finding a local address in one of the 'zines. The
Small Press Artist's Alley was not yet a part of conventions around
here either. Other than minor feedback from the few people who
ordered our books we were operating in a vacuum. Those days are gone.
Last year I attended a 'Zine Fair at a small gallery on the city's
Northside and was thrilled to see over fifty vendors with an amazing
variety of product: Comics, music 'zines, poetry chapbooks, art
'zines, political commentary, feminist essays, autobiography and
fiction. I would have killed to have found that kind of community in
1989.
A mini-comic called
Grey Legacy that I produced with my friend and collaborator
Fred Wheaton ended up winning one of
the very first Xeric Grants from Peter Laird in 1993. This gave us
the opportunity to experience self-publishing on a national scale in
the pre-internet, pre-Print-On-Demand era. We were guests at the very
first SPX in Bethesda.
I don't have a list of guests from that show, but there were maybe
twenty of us, including established creators like Dave Sim and Steve
Bissette. Nowhere near the hundreds who participate now. Nowhere near
as many as at the Pittsburgh 'Zine Fair for that matter.
I'm
not the only Xeric winner in Pittsburgh. Tom Scioli, one of the
contributors to this exhibit, won in 1999 for The Myth of
8-Opus. I wrote a cover feature
on him for a local newsweekly at the time. Pittsburgh is also home to
Rachael Masilamani, 2001 Xeric recipient for RPM Comics.
At
the same time that I was publishing Grey Legacy
I taught a class on Comics For Kids through a local community
college. One of my students was a very young man (like 8 or 9 years
old), named Eddie Piskor. You can see his work in this exhibit as
well.
In
1997 I started working at Phantom of the Attic Comics (nominated for
the Eisner Spirit of Retail Award in 2009). Phantom has always been
supportive of the small press and while working there I have seen the
scene explode. Our store has become one of the centers for this
activity and, I like to think, has helped foster the community by
carrying their product and facilitating connections. It was there I
first met Chris Kardambikis and saw the amazing books being produced
by Encyclopedia Destructica.
It was there I saw Unicorn Mountain
go from an idea in Curt Gettman's head to an amazing series of art
books. Jim Rugg brought us early mini-comics years before he became a
well-known professional. Pulitzer-nominated editorial cartoonist MattBors sold us mini-comics versions of his now nationally syndicated
strip Idiot Box while
he was a student here.
In
addition to Phantom Pittsburgh is home to Copacetic Comics.
Proprietor Bill Boichel is a long-time fixture of Pittsburgh comics
and runs one of the most idiosyncratic and Indy friendly stores
you'll find anywhere. We also have the Toonseum, one of only three
museums in the country dedicated to comics art. Both of these serve
to connect and expand the comics community here. 2009 saw the launch
of PIX, the Pittsburgh Indy Expo to huge success. We're not SPX yet,
but the first two years of the show have been very strong.
I
continue to see new work by local artists, self-published and digital
and fully believe we have not seen the end of successful comics in
Pittsburgh. It is very gratifying on a personal level to see this
world I have been involved with for so long continue to grow and
expand and begin to be taken seriously. An exhibit Like Do
Anything would have been
unthinkable not that long ago.
