Okay, so that took a whole lot longer than it was supposed to, but now the new site is up. Hi! Let’s hope this works.
This is version 3 of Global Hobo, I guess. Jesse Reklaw and Thien Pham had this very good idea back in 2003. Despite the typical hassles that always arise with such things (although the only major mistakes they made that year that I know of are (a) they started a war in the Middle East and (b) they allowed me to go on some bad Internet dates), the project really took off, and made a huge difference to all of us stapler-wielders who were getting a little tired of trying to remember to truck another 5 copies of our little books around to the local stores. Global Hobo was everywhere, from the usual alt-comics shows to cool little events at bars and other stuff that I really wish I had helped out more with. Around the same time, USS Catastrophe was stepping into a similar niche and carrying all kinds of great books. Between these two very different stores, it seemed like we might be starting to revive that critical mass of mail-order community that used to be nourished by Factsheet Five and by John Porcellino and all those legendary creatures.
Well, we still are starting to; stuff just gets in the way sometimes. First, Reklaw got absorbed by Portland, Oregon—which, if you remember from The Lathe of Heaven, is a nexus of shifting dream-universes that constantly threaten to destroy reality—and everyone else got busy with whatever. Fortunately it had never been a “one superhuman guy doing everything by himself in a shack” John P.-type deal, various people continued to help out so there was no big moment of “must stop now!!”... it just slowed way down and some people just assumed we had gone out of business or had renounced our vices or something. Sadly, the Catastrophe Shop really did shut down(*)—although it was for the best possible reason, which is that Kevin and Dan are busy making tons of their own brilliant comics. (* That is, it shut down as a general store/distro; it’s still there as an outlet for books by the core people.)
So then this year in Portland at the Stumptown Comics Fest, a stray piece of alternate reality got into my brain and I started saying things like “Hey let’s re-expand the store and make a new website, it’ll be easy. I can finally help out and be totally organized, after all I’m only working part-time now!” That last part turned out to be very false, but by then it was too late, people were already getting all excited about it. And well they might; this is a really fun thing to do, and (knock wood) this is just the beginning—there are all kinds of grandiose ideas that are patiently waiting in the wings while the basic “buy some books from people and sell the books to other people” part is getting back up to speed. That’s the best part anyway, because—I kind of forget this sometimes—everyone gets to read good things, and there are a whole lot of good things to read.
cheers,
Hob
October 4, 2008:
Show & Tell: Where Grammar & Graphics Meet
11am-12pm, at the SF Public Library Main Branch (100 Larkin St.), Koret Auditorium
Local cartoonists including Lark Pien, MariNaomi, and Paul Madonna.
Ongoing through November 30:
Briana Miller “Small Press Spotlight” at the Cartoon Art Museum