MoCCA was a whole lot of crazy and I'm still not entirely sure how this all worked out. Sophia and I applied for a half table back at the beginning of March but we were wait-listed. Until last Monday when I got an e-mail at 3 in the morning saying 'Hey, remember that table you applied for? Do yous still want it?...' Unfortunately Sophia was already in San Fransisco by this point but I had been planning to make some stuff to trade with people so I managed to make a few copies of some older stuff as well and grab a random assortments of prints to decorate the table with before we headed off for New York.
Comics!
On the bus
Main Entrance to the Armory
Everything was little bit late in getting started on Saturday but ultimately it all went smoothly. I had traveled down to New York with Alexandra and Ali and we met up with our friend Jose before heading over to the Armory. Since there were four of us we were able to take shifts manning the table so we all got to walk around and see what was going on.
The Alexandras runnin' the booth
I managed to go to a couple of the lectures on Saturday. Making Good Comics in a New Era with a whole bunch of different folks (Alvin Buenaventura, Mats Jonsson, Tom Neely, Brett Warnock, Julia Wertz, and Dylan Williams) was all about comics and the economy and to sum up its basic conclusion: Comics are too small to fail. Most of the self-published pannelists said they hadn't really seen a significant decrease in people buying their stuff because of the economy and Brett Warnock, the guy from Top Shelf said while they'd had to push a lot of books back, they hadn't had to cancel anything yet, which is good, I suppose? I don't know but it gave me hope for being only normally screwed rather super extra screwed when I graduate next spring. The other pannel I went to was the final one of the day, Paul Karasik's The Twisted Genius of Fletcher Hanks which was also pretty awesome. I love Paul! He's the coolest dude! I had him as a professor for the past semester and he has been super encouraging and extremely hilarious and you should all go buy his books because their full of wacky shit. The first one won an eisner and the second one just premiered this past weekend and together they collect all the work of Fletcher Hanks who's this crazy cartoonist from the late thirties. Paul's done some other nifty stuff too so I will direct you to his
website to check it out. Anyway, the lecture was mostly about how strange Fletcher Hanks and the story surrounding him are and it was quite entertaining.
Hamlet Regrets Not Being Sold
Jose went back to Jersey late Saturday night and Alexandra left for Denver early Sunday morning so Ali and I were left to man the table Sunday. We hadn't really done that well on Saturday but a lot more people bought comics on Sunday and a many of them were interested in the screenprints I'd brought with me which I was able to sell because of some paperwork issues. (damn New York tax laws!) (btw if you were one of those folks and you're looking at this
e-mail me and we'll work something out) Sunday was also good because I ran into Paul first thing and he said 'Here take this' and gave me a giant stack of minis! Ali and I read through them while we were chilling at the table and picked up our own copies of our more favorite finds including Indestructable Universe Quarterly by
Morgan Pielli and Freddy by
Melissa Mendes.
Mini's!
The other thing I did on Sunday was go to the Gary Panter and Frank Santoro panel which was all about comics and fine art which is a topic close to my heart bein' a RISD kid and all. It ended up being a sort of crash course in 20th century art relevant to comics and I wish I could remember the names of half of the people they talked about but it an information overload. A lot of it was just the two of them talking to each other which was pretty entertaining in itself. I know the guy I was standing next to was filming it so I'm hoping it will end up on youtube so I can get the names of all of those artists...
I'd only been to MoCCA once before, as an attendee last year and even then I thought it was pretty mind blowingly awesome and it was even more fun as an exhibitor. I guess really my favorite thing is just that at least half of the people walking around in there are other comics creators and it's fun just to be able to see what everyone's doing and trade comics and meet new folks and all that jazz. It was a ton of fun and I'm planning to go back in 2010 and hopefully Sophia will be there as well this time. That's about all I've got. Let's make it a a year full of comics between now and then!
What's with this you being on the other side of the country thing...
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