At a glance

Small Press & Alternative Comic Expo Northland Performing Arts Center, 4411 Tamarack Blvd. www.backporchcomics. com 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday free and another about romance and breaking up.

An assistant manager at a restaurant, White spends his days off working on his current project — “Heart Light Constellation,” about a group of friends who drop out of society after the 2008 economic recession.

He looks at SPACE as the perfect opportunity to display his new comic to hundreds of strangers and prepare his pitch for an agent or publisher.

“The goal is to become a published author,” White said. “I have a burning desire, a passion. If I could walk into Barnes & Noble or an independent bookstore and see my graphic novel on the shelf, that would be it.”

Lauren McCallister

23 Linden During her first year with a table at SPACE, McCallister won the SPACE Prize, a juried festival award, for mini comics for a work very personal to her.

A little too personal, she said with a laugh.

“I love to look at the faces people make when they see the cover of my ‘Bad Sex’ comic,” McCallister said.

“Bad Sex” is a collection of six, three-page stories about her experiences with that topic. It will be one of several different comics she’ll be selling at this year’s event.

McCallister fell in love with comics at a young age by reading her father’s old “Archie” comics. While in high school, she began combining her passion for drawing and writing in the medium before heading to the Columbus College of Art & Design to study illustration.

“It’s perfect for a control freak like me,” she said. “I can control every aspect of what the audience is seeing and hearing.”

She began by doing short — and small-sized — mini comics about everyday occurrences in her life. Currently, she’s in the middle of a series called “Teen Girl Killed,” which mirrors her experiences in high school. (The main character’s name is even Lauren.)

With three issues of the story completed — she’s planned seven or eight — she hopes to eventually turn it into a graphic novel.

“It’s about coming of age in suburban Ohio and focuses on relationship dynamics, of friendships, of teenage girls,” she said. “It’s aptly timed with social issues. It deals a lot with rape culture and consent, which I didn’t intend, but as I re-examine my life, they’ve become important themes.”

Terry Eisele

50 Grandview

Heights

Ten years ago, when Eisele first heard the story of a woman who, during World War II, survived the Holocaust and a massacre in her hometown of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, he knew the tale needed to be told in more than just his master’s thesis at Ohio State University.

But he couldn’t settle on the best medium to use.

“I felt that it was a story that should be out in North American culture,” said Eisele, lead assistant professor of English as a second language at Columbus State Community College.

“But a novel, I wasn’t capable enough to do that. I wasn’t crazy enough or talented enough. Short stories, maybe.”

As he considered his options, the college held a writers’ conference that included a session on comic books and graphic novels.

“Halfway through it, I was like, ‘This is the form I need to do it in.’”

Although he had enjoyed superhero comics as a child, he admitted he hadn’t read one in more than two decades. He immersed himself in the genre to catch up on what he’d missed in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now, graphic novels are all he reads.

Along with local artist Jonathon Riddle, he finished three issues of “With Only Five Plums,” about the Czech woman. All of them are in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.

His current project, with illustrator Brent Bowman, is about a 14-year-old Somali refugee living in Columbus.

“I’ve taught thousands of Somali students at Columbus State,” he said about “Far Tune.” “That was my inspiration for this. I’ve been inspired by what my Somali students have been able to overcome.”

Cailey Tervo

22

Gahanna Tervo wasn’t interested in comics until her junior year at CCAD.

And then it was only because a man she was dating was into the genre.

However, as she learned more about the medium, she realized that many of her early artistic influences created comics. Tervo decided to try her hand.

During her senior year, she was paired with a professional writer from Marvel Comics to do some illustrations as part of a school project.

Now, she’s hooked.

“I consider comics a part of what I do,” said Tervo, a designer for a children’s apparel company who also does freelance illustration projects.

Her comic-book work, she said, “takes on adult subjects with more childlike images.”

“I think more in shapes than in lines,” she said.

Her current project, “Soulcial Anxiety,” is about a ghost who has carried his anxiety from the physical world to the afterlife. Something she suffers from herself, anxiety can make the smallest of social interactions seem like a big deal.

“I want to help people who might have anxiety know that they are not alone, that they are not weird,” Tervo said. “Those people who don’t have it, I want to educate them and tell them not to take social situations for granted.”

She’ll have a number of comics available at SPACE, but she’s more interested in what others might be bringing to the convention.

“I like to go around and see all the work being done,” she said. “Columbus is going to be really big in comics. SPACE keeps growing, and more people from outside Columbus are coming.”

“I’ve taught thousands of Somali students . . . . I’ve been inspired by what my Somali students have been able to overcome.”

— Terry Eisele “I want to help people who might have anxiety know that they are not alone, that they are not weird.”

— Cailey Tervo “It’s perfect for a control freak like me. I can control every aspect of what the audience is seeing and hearing.”

— Lauren McCallister