But the one year I did manage to get there was AWESOME. Best show ever. It really recharges you batteries — no matter how mainstream your sensibilities, the sheer enthusiasm for comics as a medium simply too infectious to resist, and you ALWAYS find stuff you’d never have looked at otherwise. And the crowd itself tends to be much pleasanter than most other cons; taking the acquisitive, driven collector-types out of the equation does enormous good in ramping up the average courtesy of the attendees.

And I think you probably do, even if you don’t realize it yet.

One concern for me at this show was that there were so many exhibitors, and since I don’t know much about who’s who in the Alternative world, I just had to wander around and hope I find something cool. I just don’t know enough to seek out specific exhibitors. This turned out not to be a problem – I was able to at least glance over pretty much every table, and I no problem finding a number of cool comics. In many cases, it was the creators sitting at the booths, so I was able to get some of the things I bought signed, too, which was fun.

There is a downside to the creator-operated booth, however. There was one lady, who seemed very nice, who was trying to interest me in a couple of her books, but the art just looked terrible. Now, I’m sure it would be right up someone else’s alley, but I just wasn’t interested at all. So, I ended up feeling like a little bit of a jerk because I didn’t want to buy her book (although I did try to be polite about it), even though she was nice, and trying hard. Oh, well – not everybody wants to buy my album, either. (I still felt bad, though – I know that it’s tough as a creator to shill your work and have people be uninterested.)

Anyway, I picked up several cool things. I haven’t had time to read them all yet, but the big (literally!) find in the lot seems to be Beowulf – A Graphic Novel Translation by Tom Biby and Jonathan Fetter-Vorm. This huge 14″ x 17″ book is volume 1 of a proposed 3 volume set. (Volume 1 deals with the poem up through the encounter with Grendel. I assume that Volume 2 will be Grendel’s dam and Volume 3 will be the dragon, but I couldn’t find anything specifying how they were going to divvy up the next two parts.)

The art is magnificent – it combines the best of “heroic” comic art with a medieval illustrated manuscript feel. One really cool touch is that it is in black and white right up until the battle with Grendel starts – then it switches to full color. I hadn’t flipped ahead, so this surprised me and really cranked up the intensity of the art at that point.

I should probably point out that Beowulf is my favorite poem. (I’ve been slowly working on learning to read Old English (the West Saxon dialect, to be specific) just so I could finally read it untranslated.) So, I was ready to either be really impressed or really annoyed with this comic – and I’m really impressed. The authors seem to be striving to be very faithful to the poem – this feels closer in spirit to a good verse translation (like Seamus Heaney’s) than it does to most attempts to put the story into a different medium (like some of the atrocious comics and movies that have been made in the past).

And I probably wouldn’t have ever known this comic existed if I hadn’t gone to APE today. So, if you’re within driving distance, go to APE tomorrow and check everything out – I’m glad I did.

APE was always a wonderful show, not only could you meet all sorts of creative types (local and otherwise) but every now and then there’d also be some gem like a random guy with a booth that only sold old vinyl. I’ve been to alot of comic conventions, but only one where I came home with a Dean Martin record.