SPX Spotlight 2013: Oily Comics

Welcome to another entry in the 2013 SPX Spotlight series!  For the next month, I'll be highlighting creators and publishers who will be at the best convention, the Small Press Expo.  You can check out all of my spotlights for SPX from both this year and prior years here.

Oily Comics, like Retrofit, is another subscription-based comics publisher who will be at SPX this year. As longtime readers know, I'm a big fan of the idea of subscription-based mini-comics and have been working my way through my Oily subscription, offering reviews month by month. Run by Chuck Forsman, Oily in its subscription form is 5 quarter-size mini comics delivered every month for a little over a dollar an issue.

While Oily does have a stable of artists, including Melissa Mendez and Forsman himself, the comics rotate in and out of the monthly offering, with usually only one to two comics appearing from the same author every month. This means that you never quite know what you're going to get when you open up the envelope beyond the fact that you'll have several cool creators using the mini-comics form in varied ways.

You can find my Oily Comics reviews here.

The publisher of Oily Comics, Chuck Forsman, is having a great year of his own. His Oily-first series, The End of the Fucking World, was recently published as a collected edition by Fantagraphics, and he'll be doing some signings at their table during SPX. I really enjoyed the parts of that series that I got to read, and I'm very happy for Forsman that it was picked up by a publisher to give it a wider release.

As part of Oily's table for SPX, Forsman will have a mini-comic called Working on the End of the Fucking World, which he describes as a "sort of making-of" zine. Also available, and one that I'm definitely looking forward to checking out is a real-world horror comic called Tell God to Blow the Wind from the West, which relates to the tragic events of September 11th.

Forsman will also have copies of a combo fanzine comic put together by Melissa Mendez about Friday Night Lights, called Can't Lose. Featuring work from a variety of creators who are fans of the show (makes sense!), this is one for folks who miss the iconic program about high school football.

Naturally, Oily will have copies of its issues in single form, which will look a a bit strange to me since I only ever see them as part of my subscriptions (and on the spinner rack at Atomic Books). This is a good chance for you to sample the style of the comics and see why subscribing will find you with a little bit for everyone.

In addition, Forsman will also offer Oily Subscriptions for the months of October to December 2013, finishing out Oily's publishing year. If you like what you see at the table, don't hesitate to subscribe on the spot. Orders for subscriptions help keep Oily going, and I want to see Chuck's work continues to thrive into 2014.

Car needs oil and can't make SPX? You can find Oily Comics on the web here, with links to buy directly from the publisher.