Usually, we don't feature arena concerts, but Wednesday night's concert featuring Mute Math, Alanis Morissette and Matchbox Twenty, is well worth it and is something to talk about. First off, who ever decided that those three bands ever belonged together? Strange enough, we kinda think it works (in an extremely 90's kind of way). With the arena setting, hopefully Mute Math will finally get the extra push to become a household name. Their concerts are......

Even though he defected to Los Angeles, we were tickled when local fave Keith Knight took home a Harvey Award. Now another Bay Area sequential artist is up for a prestigious comics industry award. Melanie "Minty" Lewis was nominated for an Ignatz Award for her P.S. Comics #3, a book we bought at this years' Alternative Press Expo and totally loved....

Holy Cow, Bat Segundo! What do you mean you moved to Brooklyn?!? A podcast that's truly fun, quirky, and valuable for fans of literature, this pseudonymously produced program made its home base here in San Francisco until only a few months ago. We were thrilled to come across the show's recent interview with one of our boyhood idols, Mr. Berkeley Breathed (of Bloom County, Outland, and Opus fame); when we contacted the show's proprietor to give him his deserved praise for landing such an interview, he informed us of his relocation. Alas....

Adding to the estimable Alternative Press Expo coverage by Jeremy comes a little more APE coverage, albeit a teensy bit late. (Hey, its been a busy week!) Among our favs of the day were local art collective Germart and of course, Ker-Bloom, which we blogged about here ....

The last of our slightly less-than-timely coverage of the Alternative Press Expo, which took place last weekend, focuses on folks telling their sequential art stories in a longer form. Which, as much as we love the other stuff, is really what we dig the most. We focus on Ted Naifeh, Dave Dwonch, Joseph Costirlos, Von Allan, Jaimel M. Hemphill, and Javier Gonzalez....

Hey, Folks, welcome to part two of our APE coverage. The Alternative Press Expo was this past weekend, and there was so much fun stuff we had to break our coverage into several tasty morsels. If you missed part one and want to read about some folks making with the funny, please feel free. In this post, we're focusing on some creators that combine a less obvious type of humor with some great art and a generally longer form of storytelling....

The Alternative Press Expo (or APE) was this past weekend at the Concourse here in San Francisco. The show, which is put on yearly by Comic-Con International, features indy and small press creators of zines, comic books, mini-comics, and more. After getting Larry Young's help to kick off our coverage, we attended on Saturday. We met so many cool people and saw so much neat stuff that we're breaking our experience into several posts. First up: the funny stuff. ...

The Alternative Press Expo is this Saturday and Sunday, and hot damn we're psyched. Who better to help kick off our celebration of alternative press than one of the guys doing comics right? Larry Young is a fixture at APE -- his company, AiT/Planet Lar has been presenting there for years, exhibiting a diverse and interesting line of OGNs ("Original Graphic Novels") and other comic books. We spoke to Mr. Young about his company and pending projects....

San Francisco artist Scott Campbell is probably the busiest Scott Campbell there is. This is a tall order, since there seem to be pretty ambitious Scott Campbells in every town. (And, no, actor Campbell Scott doesn't count.) We even venture to say that Scott Campbell is also probably the happiest and cleverest person there is, and as his paintings illustrate, the two definitely go hand-in-hand. Scott is the Art Director/Concept Artist at Double Fine Productions, creators of the acclaimed Psychonauts computer game, and he's a regular contributor to the Hickee comic anthology, the latest edition of which is due out this June. His work has also been featured in several various publications. April is especially busy for Scott. He is currently showing his solo work at Cowboys & Angels through June 5th, and the opening is tonight from 7 to 10 pm. Scott is also part of four different group shows this month. Here's an exhaustive list: • "Picks of the Harvest" at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles, opens this Friday and runs through April 27. • "I Am 8 Bit" at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, opens April 17 and runs through May 12. • "The Indie," part of the grand opening of Gallery 1988 in conjunction with the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco, April 21 through May 12. • "Music of Hickee Mountain" at Red Bird Studios in Montreal, April 26. Then, hopefully Scott can take a break until June 7th, when he and the Hickee gang have another show in Portland at the Pony Club. (Jeez, we're just tired from typing all of this out!) You can also buy some of Scott's prints online for a mere $20–30! That is, if we haven't snatched them all up already. ...

We first met Shannon O'Leary at the last Alternative Press Expo, where she was showing the floppy versions of her books Pet Noir and Fortune's Bitch. Now, she's about to publish a hardbound, 120+ page graphic novel version of Pet Noir and, lucky us, we got an early review copy. We share our impressions and condect an interview with Shannon! ...

On a day when the sun finally came back to San Francisco, we thought it best to hide from those destructive rays in pursuit of a hobby often associated with living in one's parents' basement--the collecting and reading of comics. These aren't your typical funnybooks, though--this was the yearly Alternative Press Expo (or APE), wherein the exhibits center on the self-published, the smaller markets, the oft-ignored subjrects and probably the most creative stuff going on in the world of sequential art today. We spoke with Bob Lipsky (Uptown Girl); Alex Robinson (Box Office Poison, Tricked); Randall Christopher (Kleeman and Mike); Deb Aoki (Bento Box); Miriam Libicki (Jobnick!; Towards A Hot Jew; Shannon O'Leary (locally produced Pet Noir); and SFist favorite Julia Wertz of Fartparty.org....