His goofy Midwestern aura and let-your-freak-flag-fly swagger translated into Death Star-size firepower on the spoken-word stage.

Upcycling retools that nasty juice pouch, for example, and converts it into an even better product.

Carolyn Giordano extracts the bold colors and fonts of '50s and '70s print culture and repastes them into contexts that hold telling clues about our culture.

Look closer at Cici McNair's own title — private investigator — and you'll realize this detective thriller is more self-referential than your average crime story.

Conventional capitalist wisdom would have you believe that markets require, well, money.

Harris beckons the reader into a sacred, long-loved cookery where iron pots of gumbo and the aromas of praline and molasses speak to the centuries, continents and cultures traversed by African-Americans.

Flash Rosenberg's got her sights on Philadelphia, the wellspring of her "sketchy" brand of humor — and the town where she first stood on stage wearing nothing but camouflage underpants and a body full of Sharpie ink. (More on that later.)

The Vidocq Society, a nonprofit, pro-bono club of the world's foremost crime fighters and forensic experts, has been mulling over unsolved murders since 1990. The group is, by nature, secretive; luckily, former Inquirer reporter Michael Capuzzo has cracked the case.

This trio calls upon myriad verdant aesthetics — some seed-planted, others mass-produced — to tackle the tensions of our controlled landscapes.

What antics take place in a roomful of indie gagsters with a penchant for "melty" pinkish monsters and bawdy zines? Not a clue — but rest  the Philly Alternative Comic Convention already has an off-kilter 'strip on the subject.