Alright – so Expozine was an exhilarating and exhausting seven hours yesterday.

I sold a bunch of screen prints and about 80 or 90 books; about half of those were the new Ojingogo mini-comic. I am overwhelmingly pleased (most of the time) with the print quality of the books. This year I got them printed at Centre D’Affaires (located on Rue St-Laurent in Montreal); who were very helpful and cooperative. I highly recommend them. The books will be for sale on this site very soon.

One of the highlights of the day was meeting and chatting with Jillian Tamaki, who to my mind is easily one of the most exciting illustrators working today. A glance around the room showed most people had purchased her compilation/sketch book, Gilded Lilies. I finally bought her comic, Skim (written by her sister – also present – Mariko Tamaki). And I was blown away when she agreed to do a sketch for me.

It’s of a woman and a chihuahua. Here it is!

I also picked up Jimmy Beaulieu‘s new book, Quelques Pelures. It’s a compilation of a bunch of short comics he’s done for varfous anthologies. Jimmy’s stuff is fantastic. Here’s a sketch Jimmy did for me (the scan doesn’t do it justice):

Toronto artist, Rosemary Mosco, gave me a very funny comic called, mid-cambrian morning. Check out more of her comics here.

Gabrielle Bell was at the Drawn & Quarterly table, launching her new book, Lucky. I picked up one of her zines called, My Affliction, which looks really engaging. I had to leave the D&Q table very quickly though, because I was very tempted to buy everything on it.

All in all, great day. The organizers pulled off a really rich and diverse event. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more comic conventions this year. This was a lot of fun.

More Expozine photos at Flickr!