Two SPX Steering Committee Members Resign Over Issues Surrounding Pending Move to Baltimore Comic-Con

Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics Books marketing director) and Tom Devlin (Highwater Books publisher) have resigned from their positions on the steering committee of the Small Press Expo. Among the grievances cited by Reynolds and Devlin was SPX Director Greg McElhatton's failure to inform them of the SPX board of directors' decision to move the Expo from Bethesda, Md., to a hall alongside the Baltimore Comic-Con until after the move had been announced publicly. Though McElhatton has argued that the con and the Expo will be separate but adjoining events, Reynolds and Devlin both expressed the fear that association with the con would destroy the Expo's identity as a haven and showplace for independent/alternative comics.

The SPX board later changed its mind and announced that the eight-year-old Expo would remain in Bethesda at least for 2003. But the International Comic Arts Festival, which has shared the premises and cost of bringing guests with SPX since 1997, had already decided to split from the Expo following announcement of the move. Communications problems surrounding the decision to move and then not to move have alienated several parties, including ICAF, the Baltimore con's Marc Nathan and members of the Expo's own steering committee.

Amid the controversy, the Expo, the most prominent event on the alternative/independent comics social calendar, has reached a crossroads that could mean, depending on whom you ask, a new phase of unprecedented growth or a betrayal of everything the event stands for. The story will be explored from all sides in a report in TCJ #251.

Doubleday Graphic Novels: Alive or Dead?

Doubleday's new graphic-novel line (the first such imprint from a major book publisher) appears to have expired only a year after it was launched, though it's hard to find anyone at Doubleday to admit it.

Two books were released last fall, Jason Little's Shutterbug Follies and Lance Tooks' Narcissa, but a third announced book, In the Drink, never appeared. In the Drink was an adaptation by Emily Ryan Lerner of a prose novel by Kate Christensen. Lerner and Christensen told the Journal Doubleday had pulled the plug on the book, but when the Journal spoke to Doubleday editor Anne Merrow and publicity director Alison Rich, both insisted that no books had been canceled and that the line was still ongoing. Little told the Journal he had proposed a followup to Follies through his agent and his agent had been told the line was canceled.

The full story of the Doubleday line's rise and apparent fall will appear in TCJ #252.

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