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Every year, Comic-Con gets bigger. And every year, the same refrain echoes: Hollywood has taken over, and the Machine has devoured Comic-Con's soul like some IP-licensing Galactus. (Caveat: this is not a very catchy refrain.) And sure, judging from the Hall H panel lineup, it would be easy to think that big-budget blockbusters have displaced the art of comic books. But while the banners festooning San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter celebrate Comic-Con as a celebration of "the popular arts," the lifeblood of of the show is still comics. Specifically, it's the Small Press Pavilion, that section of the Convention Center show floor where mostly independent illustrators, writers, and craftspeople gather to show their work to the world.
These aren't the names that get tossed around in comic-book-shop conversations, or the books that show up on bestseller lists. Yet they're as passionate and driven as any of the most popular comics writers and artists--they simply just engage their passions at night, after they get home from their day jobs, and self-publish their own work. For many of these creators, Comic-Con is the big show, that single burst of limelight that helps sustain their comic-book dreams for the rest of the year. On the press-focused Preview Night, before Comic-Con's official Thursday opening, we headed to the small press area to talk with some of them.
Above:
Neil Segura & Ray Mendivil, Forever Freshman
Band camp. Social awkwardness. High school. When you have 20 years of friendship and embarrassing stories to draw on, how could you not work together on a semi-autobiographical comic book? Segura and Mendivil's shared Orange County adolescence provide all the material they need for Forever Freshman, a Wonder Years-style look back at teenage shenanigans. Mendivil's the writer and Segura's the artist, although both of them are still moonlighting. "It wasn't until we started making our own comic book that I got a real appreciation for the storytelling involved," Segura says. They submitted the first FF to Comic Con in 2011 and were accepted to the small press area, and have come each subsequent year with a new issue. Day jobs complicate matters, but Mendivil maintains that they're going for the big guns this year: "Two issues! Look out!"All photos: Ariel Zambelich/Wired 
