I’m with you. ”Artist Alley” is always my favorite. I think sometimes you’re better off making discoveries at the smaller cons, as table rent prices at the bigger ones are not insignificant and keep some small press away!
I’m also disappointed that in recent years, while I see a lot of great art, I rarely see finished small press comics for sale. Admittedly they are more work and likely less sales than the art prints game nowadays.
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I know what you mean about the lack of press comics. I think because of what you mentioned (the cost to produce vs. art prints) and the fact that a lot of content is read online nowadays, perhaps a lot of artists are not too eager to invest more $$ on putting out some physical comics for sale. Although there might be a million reasons on top of that. For example, I was at the Los Angeles Comic Con last year, both as a seller and as a tourist (it was my first time there), and I decided that if I were to sell there again this year, I would have at least one issue of my comic out for sell there. I was motivated by a friend of mine who did something similar with his comic at a different con. Anyway, after doing a bunch of research it came down to a compromise of cost vs. quality: big printers both overseas and in the US providing the better quality of paper/print and cost per unit require bulk orders of over 1 grand plus to make it worth their while; but then there are smaller printers that do more of a print-on-demand kind of thing, which is convenient for small batches, but you end up paying more per unit and the quality of paper/print isn't as good as offset printing. Maybe a lot of artists are put down by that choice and would rather wait until they have more content or a kickstarter going or something. Who knows really, but I do just love seeing indie comics at cons -- some are just so good.
Everything you point out is spot on. And digital comics & webcomic platforms are absolutely fantastic for enabling even more diversity and a lower barrier to entry for artists. But I think they have “thinned the herd” in Artist Alley setups and I’m just slightly nostalgic for the past!