PR: SPX Announces A Fort Thunder/Monster Debut Event with Brian Ralph and Paul Lyons

Bethesda, Maryland, September 2, 2010 - From 1995 to 2001, the Fort Thunder artists' space and performance venue in Providence, Rhode Island was a fertile creative center. Work produced by artists living at the Fort – both at the time and individually in the years since the space was shut down – has been enormously influential in the worlds of fine art, music, and comics. In addition to a wealth of posters, prints, artists' books and individual comics, two publications served as the venue's de facto comics anthologies: the mini-comics series Monster and the comics newspaper Paper Rodeo. Nine years after the
Fort's closing, a new issue of Monster will debut at this year's SPX.

The oversized (10" x 14") book, featuring offset-printed interiors and a silkscreened cover, will include new and previously unpublished work by Fort Thunder alumni including Mat Brinkman, Brian Chippendale, Jim Drain, Paul Lyons and Brian Ralph, as well as work by friends and colleagues including Keith Jones, Michael DeForge, and Chuck Forsman.

To mark the occasion, SPX Programming coordinator and Parsons faculty member Bill Kartalopoulos will moderate a special panel event titled "Return of the Monster: The Fort Thunder Legacy" on Saturday, September 11 at 5:30 as part of the festival's larger schedule of
programming events. The panel will feature artists and former Fort Thunder residents Brian Ralph and Paul Lyons. The discussion will also include Tom Devlin, who has published work by Fort Thunder artists both through his own former publishing company Highwater Books and now as creative director of Drawn and Quarterly, and PictureBox publisher Dan Nadel, who has extensively interviewed Fort Thunder artists and currently publishes work by Fort co-founders Brinkman and Chippendale.
Please join us for this special consideration of a landmark contribution to recent comics history.

SPX is a registered 501(c)3 which brings together more than 300
artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers and distributors each year. Graphic novels, mini comics and alternative comics will all be on display and for sale by their authors and illustrators.

As in previous years, profits from the SPX will go to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), protecting the First Amendment rights of comic book readers and professionals.  For more information on the CBLDF, go to their website at http://www.cbldf.org/.

The hours for SPX 2010 are 11AM-7PM Saturday, September 11, and noon-6PM Sunday, September 12. Admission is $10 for a single day and $15 for both days.