Oh, fuck it: I’m moving to Montréal again.
I woke up unusually early Saturday morning to catch a ride with Chuck McBuck, Melissa Mendes and José-Luis Olivares to Expozine 2009. It was a sleepy, drizzly drive, but as we crossed the Pont Champlain into Montréal proper the car grew abuzz with anticipation. I was particularly overcome with reverie at the sight of my old adopted city’s skyline, as memories of last last summer came flooding back of my idyllic, Unibroue-smeared months subletting in The Closest Thing North America’s Got To Europe.
We traversed the snarl of centre-ville, arriving just in time for the convention’s opening. The free (FREE) parking directly behind the event was my first clue that this would not be like the cons I was used to.
Now, for the remainder of this enormous post you will have to please allow me to climb up again upon my well-scuffed soapbox. For some of you — maybe only my fellow indie (read: broke) cartoonists — the word “comic convention” is likely to conjure a certain familiar folio of images. Big-business megamall locations; usurious table prices; processed, overpriced refreshments; awkward and mandatory badges; long lines of tense fandom; exasperated volunteers herding crowds with megaphones; stripmall lunches; corny fountains of chocolate fondue; vain searches for a proper liquor store; pricey, far-off hotel rooms; profit-eating cab rides; pedantic live-at-home baby-men cradling armloads of bagged-and-boarded Fantastic Four back issues; Naruto headbands; derivative pseudo-indie superhero barbarian pap; precious in-jokey “gamer” webcomics you’ve never heard of; acres of fancy portfolios showcasing abortive mimics of c-list manga; cynical Industry players with three agents and no souls; creepily earnest furry porn; blimp-titted plastic fantasy figurines; painfully naive attempts at counterculture chic; leather kilts; plus-sized Klingons… you get the idea. Even “indie” comic conventions have been tainted by this dull flavor of commercialism, as even the internet-boosted New Commodification of the “art comic” and graphic novel has proven an ineffectual antibody to our old, dear, deathless parasite, the Fantasy Superhero Genre.
So it is with the most hysterical overflowing of glee that I am able to report here that Expozine possessed none of the above qualities. NONE. Not so much as a single not-quite-ironic Link cosplay could be found on-site. In fact, Expozine seemed almost intentionally designed as the antidote to everything shitty about your average American Comic-Book Convention. Instead, there was just this vast unpretentious buffet of all the amazing francophonic and anglo-canadian comics, zines and posters you never knew existed. Admission was free, tables were dirt cheap, the “true believers” were replaced by actual adults who looked like they were capable of talking about something other than Natalie Portman and Doctor Who, the venue was right in the hip part of town, and there wasn’t a single corporate ad or DC logo in sight. They sold delicious samosas for $1, and you could walk out the back door for fresh air any time you liked. And even the token 16-year-old goth kid turned out to be disturbingly talented and entertaining (not to mention bilingual). He insisted on giving me a button of his grandma. “She is greatest grandma ever,” he explained. “She makes ze best beans.”
Oh, and also — both my books sold out in record time.
After the first day of expo our L’employé du Moi friends, Max de Radiguès and Sacha Goerg, invited us to a party at a French-Canadian cartoonist’s collective studio. It was some of the same group of people who, with Max and Sacha, had made a beautiful broadside anthology called 48 heures de la BD de Montréal to give out free at Expozine, so we were duly intrigued and intimidated. After dinner and a beer to bolster our resolve, we marched into the quiet, damp warehouse district with a coffin-sized case of Labatt’s. We found the building and, stumbling into a dark, empty room, figured we’d been pranked. But then we found the actual party room around the corner, a tableau of friendly francophonic cartoonists. Apparently, in Montréal one does not adhere to the quantity-over-quality rule when selecting beer. We endured much good-natured ribbing over our block of shitbeer, which is apparently usually only consumed by belligerent hockey fans in this town. Which makes sense, because the cheap stuff’s not that much cheaper than the microbrews anyway.
The studio was basically a cartoonist’s heaven. The front had all the comforts of an actual apartment — fridge, sink, counter, bathroom, a couple sofas, a coffee table and stereo. Beyond this a long, high-ceilinged room stretched out, with work stations along the walls piled with pages. Various scruffy yet dignified French-speaking partygoers dotted the scene, obviously other cartoonists. With the help of the beer, we managed to have a few really excellent conversations with BD-ists like Ariane Denommé, Sébastien Trahan and David Turgeon, who were kind enough to speak English with us. Then things devolved into outright drunkenness, and we started jumping on a pilates ball and dancing to some kind of Slavic club music. At some point we might have discussed how to find me a green-card wife, but I can’t be sure now.
The next day of the expo was much the same, only with a hangover. People seemed to really like Monsters, and it wasn’t long before I’d run out of all the copies I’d brought — even though I brought triple the amount my publisher recommended. I’d already run out of Welcome to the Dahl House the day before, as it had been listed in the expo program as having won the Expozine prix for best English-language comic book last year. I also got the chance to meet and talk with some amazing Canadian cartoonists like Joe Ollmann and Marc Bell (succeeding in unintentionally and epically insulting the latter). My one big regret was chickening out and passing up a perfect opportunity to talk to one of my heroes, Julie Doucet, who was just sitting there behind a table like a regular human being and not an ethereal majestic 1/3 of the whole reason I even ever wanted to draw comics in the first place. But at least I got to catch up with my old Canadian pal Erica, if only for a short minute. And me and José had a fine couple of hours wandering around mile-end, eating stuff and looking at comics.
I was really sad that we had to leave so soon after the convention ended. But Max joined us for the ride home, and there was much indulging in post-con comraderie, gabbing about our weekends and comics and Canada and chocolate wine as the daylight faded to blackness. When even the US border guard kindly waved us through after a couple simple questions, it was clear that this whole weekend had been blessed by divine providence. As we sped through Vermont and the landscape vanished beneath a nebulous fog, I found myself sleepily imagining that, if we did plow into an errant moose on I-89, and I died that very night, I could safely greet my eternal negation with a rich and satisfied smile of contentment over this fine comicking life that I have lived.
Anyway, I’ll post more bridgepix soon. Check the links list at right if you’re into that sort of thing — I added a lot of new ones last night, and will probably keep adding.
