APE 2009 Wows San Francisco Comics Fans!

APE -- the Alternative Press Expo -- once again opened to capacity crowds at San Francisco's Concourse Exhibition Center the weekend of October 17 and 18. The 2009 edition of the indie comics event -- one of the largest in the country -- featured over 325 exhibitors in an amazing Exhibit Hall, filled with the very best in alternative comics, art, zines, and DIY stuff.

The special guest roster for APE 2009 featured Jamaica Dyer (Weird Fishes, courtesy SLG), Phoebe Gloeckner (A Child's Life), Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma), Batton Lash (Supernatural Law), Lark Pien (Long Tail Kitty), Dash Shaw (Bottomless Belly Button), and Jeff Smith (Bone, Rasl).

The programming schedule included spotlight panels on all of APE's special guests, plus panels devoted to webcomics, the San Francisco comics and art scene, "Personal Stories" (autobiographical graphic novels), the annual APE queer cartoonists event, Keith Knight's "Indie Cartoonist Survival Guide," R. Sikoryak and Isabel Samaras's "Pop Perversity: Parody in Comics," and the CBLDF Live Art Battle, featuring Jeff Smith, Dean Haspiel, Larry Marder, and other artists in a lively tag-team sketch-off that had to be seen to be believed.

The Alternative Press Expo remains one of the highlights of the nation's comic book convention schedule. It's an incredible oasis of creativity, devoted entirely to the output of indie cartoonists and publishers doing the thing they love most. APE comes back to San Francisco and the Concourse, October 16-17, 2010, for its 17th big show. Plan now to be there!