The last Fluke for me because a year from now (hopefully) I won’t be living in Savannah or anywhere in the South anymore. If I move really far away I just wouldn’t be able to cover the cost of a plane/train/bus ticket, hotel room, and food, since it’s such a small show. Which is a damn shame because Fluke is my absolute favorite comic show, part of the reason being that it is so small and intimate. Plus there is booze.

It’s also the first comic show I ever went to.

I remember the first Fluke five years ago driving up in Yoder’s overly crowded car along with Jon Chad, Wheeler, and Burkhalter, running on no sleep, stopping off at the Waffle King for breakfast. I remember Jon Chad, Knickerbocker, Bullett, Greenstone, myself, and at least five other people if not more all cramming our very shitty minicomics onto a single table no bigger than four feet by four feet. I felt like a fucking rockstar because I made fifteen bucks off of my Grunge Lobster #1. I remember the sleep-deprived car ride back home that night through the pitch black backwater country roads that lay between Athens and Savannah. It was on that car ride that “Ghost Car Press” was born.

I’ve come a long way since then. All of us from that little table have.

I’m going to miss this show. A lot. I don’t even think you know how much I’m going to miss it. Five years ago my views and ideas on comics were completely turned on their head thanks in part to Fluke. I wouldn’t be doing the type of stuff I do today if it wasn’t for this show exposing me to the world of minicomics, zines, and the small press. Fluke was one of the things from that year in my life that taught me that comics are so much MORE than what I thought they were.

I hope the road of my life leads back to Fluke someday, somehow, someway. I guess the dream is to someday be famous and/or rich enough to financially justify the trip back to Athens for another show, but that won’t be for awhile. Maybe a long while. Until then I’ll hang my Fluke poster from that first show five years ago above my studio as a constant reminder of where it all started and of where I’m going.

So here’s to you, Fluke. Here’s to Bizzaro Wuxtry. Here’s to the Grill, the Grit, and that burrito place where I always got my Fluke lunch at but never bothered to remember the name of. To everyone who I ever made the ride up with and to the five of us who slept in Powerfoot’s van in the Holiday Inn parking lot because we didn’t have the cash for a room that one year. To Sundance, the Powervan, and the noble Ghost Car who still forever haunts those roads we traveled so many times before. To the Waffle Kingdom, the Mystery Spot, the Fluke Lobster, and all the other inside jokes and memories. To Tastyworld for four years and now Cine. To the awesome Patrick and Robert for putting it all together.  And to Athens and your bulldog statues that run up and down your beautiful streets.

See ya on the flipside, Fluke.

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Now, with all that said, if you live anywhere near Athens, GA and can make the drive, you really, really, REALLY owe it to yourself to take the road trip to Fluke next year and add it to your list of shows. If you are a SCAD kid and have any interest in reading and/or making indie, alternative, small press, or minicomics you HAVE to go to Fluke every year, you’d be an idiot not to. Seriously, it’s in your own backyard. Go and keep the dream alive!

Tags: amy, athens, brett, cine, fluke, knickerbocker, minicomic, pranas, road trip, scad kids, sick

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 17th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.