 Illustration by Monica Meehan |
Editor’s Note: Arlington-based comic book editor Jason Rodriguez is sending us his dispatches from a cross-country trip investigating the comics scene around the country. Read Part I, Part II and Part III.
Santa Fe, NM
The night I arrived in Santa Fe, Bram and Monica Meehan took me out for New Mexican food. Carne Adovada. I got it with the red chiles and I sweated through the entire meal. I love spicy foods (I got that from my mom), but I sweat when I eat something with pepper on it (I got that from my dad). I went through a stack of napkins, trying to keep the sweat out of my eyes.
The Meehans were two of the founding members of the DC Conspiracy. Several years ago they decided to move out to Santa Fe, NM. They instantly fell in with a local group of comics creators called 7000BC. Just like the DC Conspiracy, 7000BC meets once a month to drink and draw. They produce an anthology called String. The individual members have their own books representing a wide range of genres and styles. Unlike the DC Conspiracy, 7000BC doesn’t have the benefit of having four major comic shows within a four-hour drive. We have the Small Press Expo up in Bethesda, Baltimore Comic-Con, MOCCA, and New York Comic-Con. These are easy shows for us to get to where we can network, distribute our books, and find collaborators for new projects. The comic book convention is a must for anyone trying to take their comics to the next level. And while 7000BC has been represented at Phoenix Cactus Comic-Con, STAPLE (in Austin), Wizard World Chicago, and SPACE (in Columbus), they’re done. No more conventions this year. The Meehans weren’t even sure what next year looks like, given the rising cost of travel.
I think the uncertainty of where they’ll be going next guided the discussion we had over breakfast. It was me, the Meehans, artist Jamie Chase, and True Believers co-owner and manager Kevin Drennan. Our conversation primarily dealt with what 7000BC (and True Believers) can do in order to ignite their local scene. Santa Fe is the third largest art market in the world. You can’t turn a corner without seeing a couple of studios, and a year-round snapshot of the demographic seems to be 50 percent artists and 50 percent tourists. It would seem logical, to me, that this crowd can really dig the more literary-minded comics 7000BC puts together and any shop in the area should see copies of Mome, Kramer’s Ergot, and The Rabbi’s Cat flying off of their shelves. But neither of those things seems to be the case, and we spent our morning trying to get to the root of why that is.
