Linework NW this weekend!

Sparkplug will be at Linework NW here in Portland this Sunday!  Linework is free and open to the public - doors open at noon.  We'll be debuting our newest book, Ce/Ze by Suzette Smith.

I (Virginia) will also be part of a panel on LBGT comics at some point on Sunday (time TBA).  Linework is a great little festival and the lineup of guests and exhibitors this year is fantastic - I highly recommend coming out for both days!  Hope to see you there!

Sparkplug Highlight: Wicked Chicken Queen by Sam Alden

Wicked Chicken Queen is a story of birth and death, loneliness and loss, told in two parts. An isolated island community discovers an egg that hatches into an enormous chicken. The society flourishes under the chicken queen’s rule, but is eventually destroyed in her death throes. The mythical narrative of the chicken queen’s origin transitions into the narrator’s portrait of her own life in a modern city: coffee with her daughter, laying awake in bed at night thinking about her estranged husband, a lingering sense of incompleteness.

The comic consists of single-page illustrations accompanied by text. Alden depicts the constantly shifting geography of the island with fluid, spontaneous lines, guiding the eye in a winding path through the little vignettes of island life contained in each image. The use of graphite, complete with smudges and erasures, gives the comic a sense of immediacy, as if you’d pulled the pages out of the artist’s hands. Fans of Alden's work will not be disappointed with this trippy fairy tale.

(24 pages, black and white with color cover, 6.5" x 10.5", Retrofit Comics, $5.00)

Wicked Chicken Queen is available for purchase here.

Check out Sam Alden's website for more of his awesome work.

ATTN Retailers! Free Comic Book Day solicit for 2015

Sparkplug, Teenage Dinosaur, Snakebomb and Floating World join forces again to bring you their 2015 Free Comic Book Anthology - FREE STOOGES.

Eight Portland artists present new masterpieces guaranteed to take your face on a wild trip. These line wranglers have harvested the freshest comic jams for your hungry eyeballs. And best of all it's FREE!

Featuring all new comics by Amanda Blix, FuFu Frauenwahl, Ross Jackson, Rusty Jordan, Reuben Storey and Anna Vo!

Covers by Bwana Spoons and Emma Bagley.

32 pgs, b&w interior, fc cover
Mature Readers
FREE - (you just pay the shipping cost)

Ordering info:

Email: virginia@sparkplugcomicbooks.com
to place your order by April 16th to guarantee arrival by Saturday, May 2nd.

We have two shipping options:

30 copies = $5, shipped media mail

100 copies = $12.35, shipped in a flat rate priority box

Sparkplug Highlight: Bird Girl and Fox Girl by Yumi Sakugawa

This minicomic follows the threads of Bird Girl and Fox Girl’s lives after the dissolution of their friendship. Bird Girl moves from the desert to the city, where she works as a secretary, eventually saving up enough money for surgery to look like a human girl. Fox Girl becomes a daredevil model, only accepting potentially life-threatening assignments. Her photos inspire of viral trend of teenage girls taking selfies before committing suicide; her popularity plummets and, jobless and homeless, she leaves the city. Years later, both transformed, Bird Girl and Fox Girl meet again in the desert. The comic’s lack of dialogue produces a distance from the reader in which the text echoes. The art is spare yet intricate; the rhythmic pacing and text create a poetic, haunting story.

(32 interior pages, black and white with color cover, 5.5" x 8.5", $6.00)

Bird Girl and Fox Girl is available for purchase here.

Our next book, Ce/Ze by Suzette Smith, will debut at Linework NW this month!

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Ce/Ze, a minicomic by Suzette Smith, is slated to come out in April 2015 in time for a debut at Linework NW.

Smith’s quiet, loose style spins a new take on sci-fi/fantasy in Ce/Ze.  Honey Czarny and Amelia Smith are 7th graders who share fragmented memories of past lives in which they were powerful beings named Ce and Ze. A rival king’s plot to murder Ze forced her to flee her kingdom. Ce and Ze study and emulate human behavior but wish to return to their realm, where nobody goes number two.

Ce/Ze is the fourth book in the Sparkplug Minis Series, a series of short-run (500 copies) mini comics by new and/or underappreciated artists. (28 pages, black and white with color cover, saddle-stitched, $6USD, ISBN 978-0-9854150-4-4)

Suzette Smith is a comics artist, writer and editor living in Portland, OR. She grew up in Detroit and still sleeps with her boots on. Her work has appeared in Comics Workbook, Bitch Magazine, Sandy the Zine and The Portland Mercury.

Please stop by our table at Linework NW to pick up a copy or visit our online store here to pre-order.  Wholesale orders, please contact Tony Shenton: mailto:shenton4sales@aol.com

Sparkplug at RIPE!

Sparkplug is going to be in Providence for RIPExpo on March 28-29!  I'll have a good selection of our books, plus new minis of The WHYs, my webcomic.  I'll also be on a panel about small press publishing on Sunday the 29th.  RIPE is free and open to the public, and we'd love to see you there! More info here.
-Virginia

Sparkplug Highlights: #FOODPORN by Meghan Turbitt

#FOODPORN details Meghan’s sexual obsession with anyone and everyone who makes or serves her food or drinks. A repulsive pizza chef is transformed through the act of food preparation into a sexy pizza-delivering god. Meghan eats tacos off of the taco guy's chest and serves herself to a sushi chef nude but for the sushi he has prepared. Will she find true love with the barista who makes her the perfect cup of coffee?

(32 interior pages, 7.5" x 9.5", B&W with color cover, self-published, 2014)

Available for purchase here!

The Reich Bundle is here!

You can now purchase all 12 issues of Reich at once, and save $6 off the total cost of the collection!  It's a steal for this great series.  Order here!

Hungry Summer on the High-Low Best of 2014!

 Rob Clough gave a nice little write-up of Asher Craw's Hungry Summer for The Comics Journal.  Clough says:
"Craw updates the myth of Baba Yaga and puts it in a feminist, modern context without removing an ounce of her capricious and sometimes menacing nature. Those who cross her are literally made to lose all corporeal substance. Those fascinated by her do so at their own peril, even when they do her a favor. Transformation, blurred gender, and other forms of identification and the power of everyday magic continue to be Craw’s main themes, but the oblique way they play out here makes them all the more fascinating."

Check out the complete list here!

Sparkplug at LA Zine Fest this weekend!

Sparkplug is going to LA!  We'll see you this Sunday, February 15th.  LA Zine Fest is free, open to the public, and one of our favorite conventions!  More info here.

Sparkplug's 2015 Publishing Schedule Announcement!

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Sparkplug Books is pleased to announce the addition of 5 new titles to the Sparkplug Minis Series in 2015.  The Sparkplug Minis Series (SMS) is a collection of short run, limited addition mini comics by up-and-coming and outstanding artists.  So far the series has included books by Asher Craw, Whit Taylor and Yumi Sakugawa.  In 2015, five more excellent artists will join the roster.

·      Ce Ze (SMS #4) by Suzette Smith will debut in April.  Smith is a graduate of the IPRC comics certificate program.  Her work has appeared in Comics Workbook, Bitch Magazine and the Portland Mercury.  Description of Ce Ze: “Honey Czarny and Amelia Smith are 7th graders who share fragmented memories of past lives in which they were powerful beings named Ce and Ze. A rival king’s plot to murder Ze forced her to flee her kingdom. Ce and Ze study and emulate human behavior but wish to return to their realm. “

·      SMS #5 will be by O Horvath and is slated to come out in June.  Horvath is a printmaker, comic artist and Xeric Grant recipient from Providence, RI.

·      SMS #6 by is by Nalleli Sierra, a.k.a. Naji and is coming out in September. Naji is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago. Her work has appeared in Linework comics anthology.

·      SMS #7 is by Portlander Ebin Lee. The release of this comic will coincide with Short Run Comics Festival in Seattle, WA this coming October. Lee is a graduate of PNCA and an accomplished illustrator and self-publisher.

·      SMS #8 is slated for February 2016 and will be by Solomon Fletcher.  Fletcher is a comics artist from Minneapolis.  They are the author of many minicomics and the sex positive webcomic Goldy and the Bears.

We hope you are looking forward to these new books as much as we are!

Attention Reviewers!

My list of reviewers is woefully outdated, so I am putting out the call!  If you would like copies of Sparkplug titles (pdf or otherwise) please let me know!  You can email me at virginia (at) sparkplugcomicbooks (dot) com.  We put out some great titles last year and want to spread the word.

Sparkplug at Write to Publish in Portland!

Our friends at PSU's Ooligan Press throw a yearly publishing conference here in Portland, and this year, Sparkplug will be tabling at their book fair!  Write to Publish takes place on Saturday, January 31st at Smith Memorial Student Union - there is info about registering for the conference here.  We hope to see you there!

Sparkplug Tentative Convention Schedule, 2015!

Hello, friends! It looks like 2015 is going to be a pretty busy year. We have a convention planned nearly every month from now until September. Here is the schedule so far:

Jan. 31: Write to Publish, Portland, OR (confirmed)
Feb. 15: LA Zine Fest, Los Angeles, CA (confirmed)
March 28-29: RIPE, Providence, RI (confirmed)
April 19: Linework, Portland, OR (confirmed)
June 6-7: CAKE, Chicago, IL (confirmed)
July 18-19: Portland Zine Symposium, Portland, OR
Aug. 8-9: Autoptic, Minneapolis, MN
Sept. 19-20: SPX, Bethesda, MD
And more to come!

Hope to see you at one or more of these shows!

Happy New Year!

Hey all!  I hope you had safe and fun holidays!  I getting back into my rhythm here at Sparkplug, wrapping up our Kickstarter rewards, adding new distro books to the store and getting together our travel and publishing schedule for 2015.

I wanted to remind everyone in case it was overlooked during the hectic month that is December - Sparkplug put out the last of our Kickstartered books, Bird Girl and Fox Girl by Yumi Sakugawa.  Bird Girl and Fox Girl is the story of the end of a friendship and how it echoes forward through the main character's lives.  It is, like so much of Sakugawa's work, a phenomenal example of minimalist storytelling with maximum emotional impact.  Her linework is loose, simple and ragged-edged; the tale it weaves is heartbreaking.

Be sure to pick up your copy of this limited edition book soon!