CXC features events taking place over four days, with the participation of a who’s-who of top independent and literary comics creators including Art Spiegelman (Maus), Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets), Craig Thompson (Blankets, Space Dumplings), Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant) and dozens more. CXC is sharing some programming with another festival called SOL-CON, focusing on creators of color, giving fans of diverse styles of comics plenty to choose from.
An arts festival, not a Comic Con. There’s always been a tension between comics as commercial entertainment and comics as a medium of artistic expression. These days, as comic-oriented properties dominate the media landscape, the most visible comic conventions seem more devoted to celebrities, merchandise and fans in costume than to the celebration of creators and their work.
In the shadow of the billion-dollar fan convention business, a different kind of show has become increasingly popular with people interested in comics that operate on a smaller scale, using the medium of sequential art to tell personal stories or explore topics beyond the fantasy genres associated with the more commercial comics industry.
It’s not quite right to call this movement “alternative,” in that it tackles material that would seem more broadly interesting to a mainstream audience than superheroes. Nevertheless, its events attract crowds in the thousands, not the hundreds of thousands that flock to the mega-cons. And they have a much different flavor.
Columbus discovers comics. CXC was the brainchild of cartoonist Jeff Smith, creator of the highly-acclaimed all-ages comic Bone, and his wife, publisher Vijaya Iyer, who wanted to institutionalize the informal and sporadic events taking place around The Ohio State Univeristy’s acclaimed Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum into a regular stop on the festival schedule. They brought on board noted comics journalist and critic Tom Spurgeon to serve as Festival Director and announced plans to continue the festival annually through at least 2019.
“Our focus is different [from commercial conventions],” explains Spurgeon. “It’s on reading comics as opposed [what] some of comics' best creations share with TV and movies and [merchandise]. Our focus is on authors and creations as opposed to corporations and product. Our focus is on [providing] a wide variety of ways to cartoon and comics works instead of a few being dominant and the rest finding a place anywhere they can. I look forward to giving a wide variety of comics their time on stage.”
Lots of bang for the buck. Spurgeon says attendees to CXC can expect a highly-concentrated dose of cartoonists, panels, and comics and artwork sales. “We have a giant Expo on Saturday featuring 45 curated, high-end exhibitors. We have spotlight panels and information-packed presentations, Friday AND Saturday. We have a night of rare cartoons on Thursday. We have Jeff Smith, Kate Beaton aned Craig Thompson together on stage at OSU Friday evening, and Jeff once again this time interviewing Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman at Columbus College of Art and Design Saturday evening. We even have Superman's original TV suit up at the historical society.”
Only three of CXC’s events are ticketed, and all three together cost only $15. Spurgeon says the majority of the show: both big night-time presentations, the CXC Expo on Saturday, SOL-Con — are all free.
Influence attracts sponsorship. That deal is made possible in part by support from an interesting sponsor: comiXology, a subsidiary of Amazon and the main digital distributor for DC, Marvel and the rest of the big commercial comics industry.
What’s their interest in this kind of offbeat, alternative event? “We support a broad range of comics,” says comiXology VP or Marketing Chip Mosher. “Our commitment to independent creators stretches from our earliest days to current programs like comiXology Submit [digital self-publishing platform]. Supporting an event like CXC fits right in with that mission.”
Spurgeon concurs. “I think what interests them is that first and foremost we treat the art form and medium seriously, and we feel that cartoonists are valuable, important creators.” However, he adds, an event like CXC also gives Amazon a chance to interact with independent cartoonists in a public setting, and an opportunity to promote their services to a highly influential group of creators.
That points to the real paradox of the comics-as-art/comics-as-pop-culture split: the ambition, experimentalism and prestige generated on the “alternative” side of the business exerts a lot of influence on – and provides a lot of air cover to – the more commercially-minded big publishers.
The growing festival calendar. There are already a number of well-established alternative and small press comics shows in North America, ranging from the Small Press Expo (SPX) that just took place in Bethesda last weekend to the Alternative Press Expo (APE), the MoCCA Festival, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) and ShortRun in Seattle. Most of these are centered in big cities or on the coasts. CXC is an opportunity to bring the experience of a smaller, arts-oriented comic event to the Midwest.
“Columbus is an amazing, comics-supportive town and an under-appreciated Great American City,” says Spurgeon. “[It offers] the institutional support from places like the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum [one of the nation’s leading centers of comics studies], The Wexner Center For The Arts, the James Thurber House, and our gigantic library system, all of whom are participating in the show with a dozen more of their institutional peers this year and from now on. It's really been incredible how the community is stepping up.”
As far as how CXC stacks up to other shows on the arts festival circuit, Spurgeon is hopeful that CXC will soon be listed among the top shows in the country. “We have a broader mission than some shows in terms of the kinds of cartooning that are on fully display: animation, strips and editorial cartooning aren't always at the top of small press show lists in the same way they'll be with us,” he says. “We're also always hoping to get a mainstream comics creator or two — which isn't something you see a ton of [at arts festivals]. I hope that as we develop programs to look towards the future of cartooning that this gives us a year to year continuity along programming lines.”
