This weekend: SPX in Maryland!

This weekend I’ll be returning to Bethesda, Maryland for the annual Small Press Expo! I’m on a panel too:

Constraint Based Cartooning : Saturday 5:00 pm
A blank canvas and an infinite palette can be liberating—and intimidating. Most work ultimately ends up operating according to a set of self-generated rules which govern its scope. Bill Kartalopoulos will talk to David Malki ! (Wondermark), Brian Ralph (Daybreak), Karl Stevens (The Lodger) and Daniel Spottswood (Disquietville) about producing comics which operate more explicitly according to a governing set of aesthetic, stylistic and formal principles.

SPX was one of the first shows I ever considered attending, back in the early 2000s when I would buy their annual anthologies at my local comic book shop. I’ve now been going since 2006, and ever since I discovered that North Bethesda is just a short train ride from the Library of Congress, I’ve made a habit of building an extra day into my trip. Saturday and Sunday I’ll be at the show, and then Monday I’ll be in DC researching some strange Victorian children’s books for a future “True Stuff from Old Books” installment.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: Earlier this summer, I was honored to be invited to Google Boston to speak as part of their excellent “Authors@Google” series (which can be viewed for free on YouTube). This version of “True Stuff from Old Books” runs about an hour long and is full of some of my favorite finds from Victorian-era magazines and newspapers. Enjoy!

As you can see, “True Stuff from Old Books” is full of hilarity and wonder, and throughout all the strangeness, it uniquely illuminates the modern human condition through a sepia-tinted lens of the past. If you’re part of an organization that might be interested in hearing me speak, please drop me a line! I’m constantly adding new weird old tidbits as I stumble across them, so the talk has yet to be the same twice.