The Short Run Comix Festival was held at Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion on Nov. 2, 2024. There are related events on the days before and after the day of the show, but the main attraction is always the show itself. Short Run consistently welcomes 4,000 attendees or so each year, and somehow, a one-day show lasting seven hours manages to be the most important day on Seattle’s comics calendar.
The Festival sports a slightly different name now — “And Arts” was removed to focus solely on comics and cartoonists. The Executive Director of Short Run, Kelly Froh, said, “It was our attempt at doubling down on what we feel is the heart of the show, alternative comic art. Now that Seattle has an annual art book fair and a zine fest, we felt that we could finally go this route.”
Other changes are afoot, too. The show was supposed to move to a new venue this year, but they were able to secure the Fisher Pavilion for one last hurrah. The show will relocate to the Seattle Design Center in 2025.
Short Run is always well-attended. During peak periods, there are so many people jockeying for position to look at the sellers’ wares than it can be hard to maneuver. While heavy crowds might make some people uncomfortable, most consider it to be a feature of the show rather than a bug. The Festival is a one-day affair, and that means that buyers and sellers are eager to transact business. There is no second day, and therefore no second chances. Quite a few artists reported selling through all or most of their stock. Local cartoonist Brett Hamil sold out of everything he brought and regretted being so conservative when deciding what to bring to the show. Milwaukee-based cartoonist Cris Siqueria had a nice stack of copies of her comic Cicada that were fanned across her table, and by the end of the day that table was bare.
There seems to be a special effort made to ensure that cartoonist “elders” have a place at the show. Robert Gregory and Donna Barr, who loomed large during Seattle’s comics heyday in the 1990s, tabled together. Pat Moriarity and Jim Blanchard, also comics veterans from the ’90s, are regular exhibitors at Short Run and their tables are always worth a visit. The late Michael Dowers, a longtime publisher who passed away earlier this year, was at the show in sprit. His daughter had a table with back stock from two of his publishing endeavors, Brownfield Press and Starhead Comix. The table was loaded with older work by Pacific Northwest cartoonists, from Peter Bagge to Ellen Forney to Triangle-Slash. Underground cartoonist Bruce Simon was also on hand, selling some of his comics as well as HOO-HAH!, a book-zine devoted to classic American cartooning. His table had more first-rate cartooning inside a few square feet than a lot of comics shops have in their entire store.
Several publishers were tabling this year, too. As always, Fantagraphics (full disclosure: Fantagraphics is my employer and owns this website) had a big table with a lot of books, and business seemed to be brisk. Silver Sprocket, based in San Francisco and a presence at many cons and shows throughout the year, was there in full force. Sprocket’s head honcho Avi Ehrlich was behind the table in their trademark pink jumpsuit, selling books to eager customers all day. Portland’s Floating World, a world-class comic shop that also publishes a diverse range of comics and graphic novels, seemed to be doing well, too, despite their relative geographical proximity. It was hard to shop from Glacier Bay Books, a boutique publisher that specializes in indie and alternative manga, because of an ever-replenishing crowd at their table. One of the more intriguing exhibitors was Bored Wolves from Kraków, Poland. They publish a mix of poetry, zines and comix, and curious passers-by kept stopping and picking up their offerings.
Unlike last year, there didn’t seem to be a “book of the show.” In 2023, Anand Shenoy’s Stories from Zoo captured people’s attention, starting with his hilarious reading a couple of nights before the show, and the buzz continued through his interview at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and into the show itself.
This year, the diversity and variety of the exhibitors was the star, which is usually how Short Run works. Most small press comic shows try to bring in “big names” in the hopes of attracting attendees, much like their mainstream comic convention counterparts. However, Short Run eschews big name cartoonists and casts a wide net when it comes to bringing in special guests and exhibitors. (Shenoy is a great example. What other small press show would fly in a cartoonist from India that almost no one had heard of?) Regarding the selection process, Froh said, “Overall, I feel fairly confident as a curator that I’m able to come up with a new “vision” for each year’s show, and that it’s fresh, and varied, with popular artists and many, many artists that should be more popular than they are.”
One of most interesting parts of the Short Run experience is being exposed to a slate of special guests that come from and far and wide, both in the geographical sense as well as running the gamut of the aesthetic spectrum. This year featured four cartoonists from other countries: Joakim Drescher from Denmark (who also designed the Festival’s poster), is the creator of the Motel Universe series of graphic novels; Powerpaola, whose most recent book is All My Bicycles, is a Colombian Ecuadoran cartoonist and was cited by several cartoonists as the guest they were most excited to see at the show; Tetsunori Tawaraya, a Japanese musician and artist, was selling prints and shirts that featured his singular, eye-popping art; and Sarah Leavitt is from just up the freeway in Vancouver, B.C., and was at Short Run to support her newest book, Something, Not Nothing, a collection of short comics about grief in the wake of losing her partner.
The American special guests were no less eclectic. Heather Loase is an auto-bio cartoonist living in New York, maybe best known for Boring Ass Autobio Trash (reviewed positively on this very website by RJ Casey). Julia Gfrörer, also from New York, has had several graphic novels published by Fantagraphics, including her forthcoming book, World Within the World. Cara Bean, from Massachusetts, is an arts educator and her most recent book is Here I Am, I Am Me: An Illustrated Guide to Mental Health. And local comix artist and poet Mita Mahato, a former Short Run Board Member, was on hand to celebrate her new book, Arctic Play, and to participate in programming.
Mahato spoke with fellow guest Leavitt during the show in front of the Pavilion, one of four creative conversations being held as part of "The Short Talk." Each conversation was well-attended by enthusiastic audiences. During a talk between Zak Sally and Larry Reid, Sally went on an intense, almost raw, stream-of-consciousness digression about the necessity of creating art. The crowd was either mesmerized or uncomfortable, but either way it was a memorable moment.
The main focus for Short Run has always been artists tabling and selling their work, but there are other events before, during, and after the show. Back on Thursday, Oct. 31, a series of live readings took place at Public Display Art Community Space. Special guests Loase, Mahato, Bean and Powerpaola read from their work, as did exhibitors November Garcia and Brandon Lehmann. The following evening, there were two events. Mita Mahato led a Comix Collage Workshop at Mam’s Books, where she guided participants in how to cut up found material to create a giant, collaborative comic. Later that same day, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery hosted a Pre-Fest Reception, where a hundred or so people mingled and got themselves ready for the main event. Larry Reid, the store manager, had a conversation with Julia Gfrörer and Conor Stechschulte. The reception was also the launch of the yearly Marathon Art Show, which features originals by exhibitors, and runs for a few weeks afterward.
After the show closed, exhibitors and attendees reconvened for the Short Run After-Party, which has been held at Mini Mart City Park for the past few years. This year the weather was fairly pleasant for a November evening in Seattle, and people chatted and decompressed from the hustle and bustle of attending the show. On Sunday, Nov. 3, a few dozen people attended a presentation by Caitlin McGurk at the Seattle Public Library. McGurk talked about The New Yorker cartoonist Barbara Shermund, the subject of a forthcoming book by McGurk, Tell Me A Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund. Reid called it “The best comics-related talk I’ve ever been to,” and there was a lot of anticipation for McGurk’s book afterword. On Sunday afternoon, a lively crowd of mostly cartoonists gathered for a happy hour/comix swap at Chuck’s Hop Shop to trade their zines and comics amongst themselves and wind down.
Short Run marks the end of the North American small press comics show circuit every year. Hundreds of out-of-towners make their way to join thousands of Pacific Northwest readers just as Seattle is getting darker, colder and rainier, and all together they celebrate comics at one of the truly great shows in North America, small press or otherwise. Next year, the show will move to another part of the city, and it will be interesting to see how that affects the experiences of both artists and attendees. Short Run has grown exponentially over the past few years, but the energy surrounding the show stays the same. There’s no other show like it. Hopefully, that stays true no matter what other changes may happen in the future.
The post A Short Run Comix Festival report for 2024: One last hurrah at an old venue appeared first on The Comics Journal.
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