This weekend, I went to the Small Press Expo. This is about that.

Lately, I have been embracing the nuance in life.

It feels as though I am, at nearly all times, both thriving creatively and perpetually tumbling down a proverbial staircase of unlucky life events.

A photo of a doll head with button eyes lying upside down. — This is how I feel. Also, I made this doll head and I will tell you about it later.

A friend of mine who consorts with the stars asked if I am currently undergoing my Saturn returns. I consulted an old screenshot of my birth chart in my favorites folder, but my crop was not forward thinking, and I remain unsure.

However, I sense my lack of luck is not cosmic, but seasonal.

It is the Edge of Autumn haunting me.

The cover of The Edge of Autumn. A frog and a bunny in heavy fall sweaters hold masks and sit on pumpkins. The image has yellow text that says "Frog & Bunny". Beneath the image is a yellow title that reads "The Edge of Autumn by Mili St. John"

My fault, of course. I was the one who started the (originally) 16-page mini comic in 2022. And I am the Dr. Jekyll who couldn’t let it go. Who pulled it apart and mashed it back together time and time again. Experimenting. Creating the monster it is today.

Every September, the Edge of Autumn returns to check on my progress and I am forced to bear witness to my Frankenstein.

No doubt aggrieved to be trapped indefinitely within my meandering pages, it moans and rattles and distorts the calm of my life into chaos.

But I like the rattling.

It gets bigger and louder as I get closer to setting it free.

And isn’t it nice how big and loud it is lately?

In preparation for SPX, I bound a few copies of my new mini comic “Sometimes I Feel Something”. They took forever to make, I love them very much.

I toted them around the exhibition in a glossy red steel serial-killer-core toolbox, and handed them to people who’s work I love and admire.

And then they would say: Do you have anything longer that I can read?

And I would say: No.

Almost.

And the monster would rattle and shake my brain.

Three copies of a small black comic book with a frog on the cover sitting on a glossy red toolbox

I hate flying.

I can’t fly without coming to terms with my own death first. It’s a superstitious thing, like knocking on wood, and saying ‘rabbit rabbit’ first thing in the morning on the first day of the month.

But those things are easy, and accepting death is emotionally taxing. And lately, I’m not so sure I’m ready to die without finishing something longer for people to read.

Friday evening, I met up with Isabella Rotman in DC, a new but already very dear friend who I admire deeply. Together, along with Teppi Zuppo and Christina Silva, we are organizing CAMP, a new independent comic arts show in Portland, Maine.

I was in DC because the first time I ever met Isabella, she asked if I was going to the Small Press Expo. And I said that I honestly wasn’t sure. And she said: You should come, you can sleep in my bed.

And so, there we were.

We went to a release party at Fantom Comics, which is located above a Subway chain store, a risky and potentially devastating blow to any other comic shop. But in Fantom’s case, I can attest that the signature Subway scent doesn’t permeate through the floor, and the employees have the coolest tattoos I’ve ever seen.

During the readings, I watched the four incredibly talented, freshly published artists sit behind the beautiful, perfect monsters they’d made, and I wondered if their heads had finally stopped rattling so much. Or if maybe, a new dull rattling was already plaguing them.

From left to right, these were their comics. I bought all of them and you should too:

The party rocked.

There’s a strip mall plaza next to the Marriot hotel where SPX takes place that artists flock to between panels and workshops.

It has a Phở restaurant, and a bagel deli, and a Papa Johns. There are other stores too, but they are more liminal than the three I mentioned and I doubt the map would load if I tried going in them.

I like the strip mall very much.

An unknowable, liminal space.

A part of the plot, but only once a year and only when the plot is about comics.

This year, a rival trendy new plaza had opened down the street. It didn’t feel so liminal and unknowable, and the bagel place had metal bottles of water with pink illustrated dolphins that claimed to contain “Artisian Deep Aquifer Water”. So I stayed loyal to the strip mall.

I did buy a bottle of water though.

On Saturday afternoon, a woman behind me in the elevator told me I should never worry about what other people think.

I don’t remember why she said that. But I appreciated the reminder.

Some one minute sketches of Bab’s Newd from their incredible workshop “*Figure Drawing for Cartoonists with Babs New and Danielle Corsetto*”

For lunch, I ate a delicious tofu Bánh mì from the strip mall Phở restaurant with normal water bottles.

I thought about how a great many strangers probably have a great many memories of the liminal strip mall that don’t involve independent comics, and how is it probably not so liminal to everyone.

The enormity of the world made me feel queasy.

I later found the identity of one of the strip mall strangers with a great many strip mall memories that don’t involve independent comics, plastered to the wall behind the register of the liminal strip mall bagel deli.

I like it when things make less sense instead of more sense. So I felt less queasy.

SPX was, as always, special in a way I don’t have all the words for.

It’s nice to love something really deeply, while surrounded by others who love the same thing really deeply.

Like breathing for the first time in months.

Floating in sea of neatly folded and stapled adventures.

Little stories, big stories, feelings drawn in ink that you never knew other people felt too.

An infinite plain of glittering treasures and perspectives.

Comics displayed in shows pulled together by magic tricks, and held together by miracles.

Shows run by volunteers blowing on candles as the flames try to fade away.

Important and delicate. In a big impossible way.

Saturday evening, Isabella and I sat perched together listening intently, trying to hear over the party artists buzzing on the patio behind us. The chirps and chatters of people who love the same things, who hadn’t seen each other in a very long time, and who won’t see each other again for a very long time.

We were talking to Comic Critic Rob Clough, one of the organizers of SPX, who was giving us advice for CAMP.

“Shows are fragile.”

“You have to nurture them.”