My first ever Small Press Expo, way back in 1996.This was the...

My first ever Small Press Expo, way back in 1996.

This was the tail end of Box Office Poison as a mini-comic (you can see my publishing empire spread out optimistically before me) and only a month before Antarctic Press would publish the first “real” issue. I’m wearing a tie, since it was only my second show as an exhibitor (the first, for those keeping score, was the I.C.E. show in Chicago, part of Dave Sim’s “Spirits of Independents” tour).