Biting Off More Than I Can Chew: APE 2009 Part 1

FULL DISCLOSURE TO NEW READERS: I am a lapsed X-Men geek who hasn’t regularly read comic books since 1996. I know next to NOTHING about small press comic publishers.

Now, everyone at APE was friendly and really happy to talk to an honest-to-God web journalist who wanted to take pictures of them. I was generally up front about the whole thing — I’d come up to the booths, one by one, and say:

“Hi, I’m blogging this event for a new site called Indifferent Mechanics. This is kind of a spur of the moment thing and I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I was hoping I could get a picture of the artist and maybe a business card so I can link to your site?” And most of the exhibitors were more than happy to help me out, tell me a bit about their products, give me a card, and smile for my camera. One group, however, sticks out in my mind — the kind folks at IKKI Comix. They were absolutely overjoyed at my offer to help promote their company, introducing me to the talent they had on hand –

Kit Fox Monster Manga Editor (left) and Coffy David-Shea Monster Anime DVD Producer (right)

Now… the problem here is… and I really feel bad about this… being the complete amateur that I am, I completely forgot almost every name I was given and therefore cannot identify the people in this picture! Now, some people would say “Well, why not just give up, hang your head in shame, and go crawl into a hole somewhere before you embarrass yourself any further?” (Someone was nice enough to let me know in the comments) That would be because the aforementioned kind folks at IKKI were nice enough to let me walk away with this little gem:

That would be a manga story called Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi, a critically acclaimed manga artist I’d never heard of until yesterday. In fact, Children of the Sea is the ONLY manga I’ve EVER read. I am VERY impressed with it and will be posting a full review of it later. If the quality of Daisuke’s storytelling is any indication of the larger genre, then IKKI Comix may just have created a lifelong fan. I urge anyone unfamiliar with them to check it out.

UNRELATED NOTE: I didn’t go back to the Expo today because I resolved to stay home and wade through the tons of business cards and pictures — I left the Richard Starkings autographed copy of ELEPHANTMEN that Starkings himself gave me in my roommate’s possession, fearing it’d get damaged, so I won’t be showing that off until after he gets back from APE.