Chris Nicholas: The man who made STAPLE!

STAPLE!, an independent media expo, went on in Austin last weekend. It’s a place where independent creators can come sell their creations — comics, crafts, fiction, and zines. STAPLE! is one of only six independent expos around the country, and people come from all over the country to both hawk and buy media. This year’s STAPLE! was a particular success, so I caught up with organizer Chris Nicholas to talk to him about the expo.

That Other Paper How long have you been in Austin?

Chris Nicholas I’ve lived off and on here since 1986. So quite a while. Seen a lot change.

TOP When did you really start wanting to give people a forum to get together and exhibit their art?

Chris Well, about five and a half years ago my buddy and I started self-publishing a comic we’d been working on. In an effort to promote it, sell it, and get it out there, we ran into a lot of difficulty getting it in local shops and stuff. So we went to shows — there are about five independent shows around the country.

TOP What are some of those shows?

Chris The biggest one is APE, Alternative Press Expo, in San Francisco, and it’s huge. It’s a two-day thing. There’s Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland; SPACE in Ohio; SPX in Maryland; MoCCA in New York. But outside of those, there’s not really anything. So as we were promoting our comic, the more we got around the more we realized there were people doing the same thing we were. And it became apparent that there was a need for a show in Austin. I saw enough talent regionally to sustain a show.

TOP What was your comic about?

Chris The first one was called You Chose Right the First Time. It was like a noir crime gangster thing set in late ’60s Chicago. We worked on that for a number of years — we just finished it up last year. So it turned out being like a couple of hundred pages long. Then we just finished up this comic called That Damned Cat — a supernatural black comedy kind of thing, inspired by a true story.

TOP What was the true story?

Chris It was a news item I ran across a few months ago. Oscar the death cat was what they called him. He was this cat that lived in a nursing home and knew when people were going to die. He was generally aloof — but friendly. He’d make his rounds and when someone had like around two to four hours to live, he’d go jump up in bed with them and then the people would die. He did it about a dozen times and the staff started to notice and they started to monitor him. He kept doing it and in some cases he was more accurate than the doctors. They ended up publishing an article about the cat in the New England Journal of Medicine.

TOP What were some of the challenges you encountered in trying to pull everything together?

Chris Starting out it took about a year to get that first show together. One of the challenges was that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I had never done anything like that before. So I recruited some people to help me from the Austin Sketch Group. The Sketch group is a loose affiliation of local cartoonists, artists, graphic artists that get together every Sunday at the Hideout and hangout, draw, drink coffee, and shoot the shit. Anyway, I had run into some people there who expressed an interest in the idea of putting on a show. I actually ran into ASG’s founder John Rubio up at Wizard World in Arlington, which is a big mainstream comic show that goes on. And it was through him that I found out about the ASG, and I was like, Wow there really are a lot of people into comics in this town. So it just got rolling from there — just sort of figured it out along the way.

TOP And how many exhibitors did you have at that first event?

Chris We had 29 tables and 35 exhibitors that first year, in the Elks lodge over there off Barton Springs. We filled the place up pretty good and, you know, promoted it as best we could and the turnout really exceeded our expectations that first year.

TOP And how many exhibitors do you have this year?

Chris This year we have 80–85 exhibitors. It’s gotten bigger each year.

TOP What’s the process for those who would like to exhibit?

Chris Well, we just sell the table space. This year we put table space on sale right around Halloween. You just have to fill out a form and send your check, and that’s pretty much it. Anybody who’s any kind of independent creator — whether it be comics, zines, fiction, crafts like screen printing, jewelry. Just as long as either you’re making it or you’re involved in making it — you know that’s who we want to have at the show, as opposed to like dealers who are selling toys or back issues of comics or whatever.

TOP What is it about Austin that makes something like this work here?

Chris Well, first of all, there’s just a lot of artists in town — it’s a very eclectic and supportive community. There’s a lot of audience — a lot of interest in music, film, and obviously comics, though I didn’t know how much since we did the first show. One thing that was a big indicator to me about the level of interest, though, was four years ago when they had the first 24-hour comics day. They held the first gathering of that at Austin Books, one of our sponsors, and 40 people showed up. It doesn’t sound like a lot but at that time that was the most in the world to get together and do that kind of thing. Then the next year they had like 70 people. But yeah, there’s just enough trade and business to keep things interesting.

TOP Do you find that you get a lot of people from out of town or is it mainly just Texans?

Chris As far as exhibitors go we get a lot of people from out of state — we get people from both coasts. We get people from Brooklyn, Denver, New Mexico, California, Virginia. One thing that makes this show attractive to exhibitors, even though it’s a small show, is the fact that the people who come here can’t get their hands on this kind of stuff all the time. So when they show up they’re ready to buy lots of stuff. So it’s a lucrative show for exhibitors.

TOP How did this year’s show go?

Chris Well, the success of this year’s show was really phenomenal. Our attendance was up by like 50 percent. I don’t know exactly what to attribute that to. I wish I did — I’d be sure and do it again. We had right around 700 people through the door. We had two sponsors, Austin Books and Rogues Gallery Comics. Their sponsorship takes the form of bringing guests to the show. So this year we had Eric Powell, the creator of The Goon, and we had Brian Wood, who I would say is up and coming, but he’s already arrived — he does DMZ, Northlanders, and sporadically he’ll do a comic called Local — each one is set in a different city. He’s done one about Austin, though he hadn’t actually been here at the time. But it featured some local spots like Beerland. And they spoke at the show — did some Q and A. And we had a web panel with Scott Kurtz, Danielle Corsetto, David Malki, and Kris Straub — and that went over very well. So it was a success.

TOP What would you say to an aspiring comic artist?

Chris Best of luck. Hang in there.