Avram's journal

This year’s MoCCA Art Fest was held at Metropolitan West, on West 48th St, all the way over on 12th Avenue, even further west and more inconvenient than last year’s venue. I guess next year’s’ll be in a barge, mid-Hudson.

Here’s my shoulder-cracking haul:

Books

• New Contruction by Sam Alden.
• A Stray in the Woods by Alison Wilgus.
• Beef With Tomato by Dean Haspiel.
• SVA’s 2014 comics school anthology. (Not sure why I didn’t already have this, since they give ’em out free every year, but the cover was distinctive and didn’t look familiar.)
• Fantastic Life by Kevin Mutch.
• Uptight #5 by Jordan Crane. The eye-catching cover made me pick it up and flip through it, the interior art made me buy it, and not till I got home did I notice it was by an artist whose work I already know and like. I expect I’ll want to hunt down the earlier four issues.
• Valor, a gorgeous anthology book edited by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton, who are also among the many contributors. I sprang for the hardcover.
• Snackies by Nick Sumida.

Floppies & Minis

• Ink, Winter 2015 issue, another SVA comics school anthology.
• Lacunae & Aftermath by Evan Dahm.
• Welcome to Chinatown by Feifei Ruan.
• Welcome to Showside #1, by Ian McGinty and others.
• Hard Luck #1 and Sundrenchers #1, both by Wyeth Yates.
• The High School of Art & Design’s class of 2016 Cartooning Anthology. This one cost money, because I guess an NYC public high school doesn’t have the budget of a private college.
• Love Bite by E Jackson.
• Carver: A Paris Story #1 by Chris Hunt.
• Frontier #11 (“BDSM”) by Eleanor Davis.
• The Age of Elves #1 by Colin Lidston.
• Forward Looking Statement #2 by Jess Johnson.
• 4 Stories About Girls & Magic and Queens of the Steppe, both by Molly Ostertag.

Other

• A pair of Winsor & Newton pigment markers, Neutral Grey 6 and Violet Blue Deep! They were giving out free samples, and when I said I’d like either a blue or a dark gray, I got one of each!

Oh, right, MoCCA! I see, looking through old entries, that I neglected to write up 2008’s art fest. Which is annoying, because one of the reasons I do this is to help me keep track of what I buy, so I don’t wind up buying it again the next year. Grmph.

Anyway, this year I missed a day of MoCCA for the first time ever, to hang out with papersky, roadnotes, pnh, tnh, and bugsybanana at Green-Wood Cemetary, and then go see a stage adaptation of Dhalgren (joined by baldanders, stakebait, redbird, and cattitude). Patrick took photos, which will probably wind up on Flickr at some point.

That left Sunday for MoCCA. I got there around 2 PM, and soon ran into Sumana, who I followed around so that I could use her charm as a shield for my own general lack of social ability. (Seriously, kent_allard_jr tells me that I’ve got more social ability than a lot of our circle of friends, but next to people like Sumana and cadhla I feel like a bear who’s been shaved and toilet trained. And the shaving hasn’t really taken.) Also chatted a bit with Glenn, squeed a bit at Yuko Ota, and saw some cool animation at a panel. (I should probably make more effort to attend panels at future MoCCAs.)

On to the loot:

Books

• The Anthology Project, edited by Joy Ang and Nick Thornborrow, design and cover illo by Joy Ang. Were you aware that Holy-Crap-Gorgeous Full-Color Comics Anthology was a growing genre? Well, it is, and here’s another one.
• Green Monk by Brandon Dayton. Also titled Зелёный Монах on the cover, but a quick skim doesn’t show me any Russian inside.
• The 12 Labors of Gastrophobia, by David McGuire, collecting the webcomic of the same name. McGuire, as many cartoonists do, will draw sketches in the books people buy from him at cons. He asked me “Any requests?”, and (unable to decide which character is my favorite), I said “Sing ‘My Melancholy Baby’!” The result:
  
• Awesome Stories, a portfolio anthology published by the School of Visual Arts cartooning department. I don’t remember the school being anywhere near this supportive of the cartooning majors when I was there. They were giving this book away free!
• School of Visual Arts Portfolio 30, another freebie. Pieces from cartooning and illustration students graduating in 2009. The pages are perforated cardstock, so you can use them as postcards.

Floppies

• The Unwritten #1, first issue of a Vertigo comics series by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Another freebie, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered. I go to MoCCA for indie stuff, especially the stuff I can’t get in stores.
• Static Fish #1, an anthology magazine published by the Pratt Comic Club. They also had a full color hardcover book, but that isn’t what I got.

Minis

• Dead Winter #2, by S Dave Shabet. I thought I got #1 last year, but I don’t see it listed. Maybe it was the year before.
• Billy the Dunce, by Jason Week. I also geeked out a bit with Week about inking. And I got a small print of one of his illustrations.
• A whole bunch of stuff from Bob Stevenson, who had a great package deal for $10:
  • Journey into History #1 ashcan
  • The Recessionist Comics Review
  • Kenya
  • Pulped #1
  • HB Comics and Stories #1 and #2, which are so big I shouldn’t be listing them here under minis, especially #1, which has a glossy cover and ads in the back.
  • An illustration and a printed comic strip.

This was a very purchase-light MoCCA for me. I’ve spent the past few weeks sorting through books, packing some, throwing away others, and I can’t look at books now without thinking about the fact that I don’t have space enough for the one’s I’ve already got. And worse for floppies and minis, which I can’t just stick on a shelf.

So my self-imposed limit this years was: No floppies or minis, only books with actual spines. I only bought six or seven, and left them over at the Brooklyn apartment, since why bring them to Jersey City only to box them up and bring them to Brooklyn in three days. So, this year’s MoCCA haul:

Books:

• Sordid City Blues, by Charles Schneeflock Snow, who I also got to chat with.
• Abraxas and the Earthman, by Rick Veitch, an SF treatment of Moby Dick, which ran in Epic umpteen years ago.
• Scott Bateman’s Secret Sketchbook of Shame, by Scott Bateman and shame. I think it’s been a few years since I’ve seen Scott.
• Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda, by JP Stassen.
• And two or three other books, which I’ve already forgotten. This here’s a placeholder, and I’ll go back and fill it in at some point when the books and I are in the same state.

I missed out on getting a copy of I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets, the Fletcher Hanks collection (about which Coop said “looking at those panels is like eating a whole bag of Cheetos made of heroin.”). It sold out on Saturday.

Another MoCCA festival come and gone. Ran into: tinpan, Rachel Kadushin from NYSFS and BxSci, Izzy from CUGC. Didn’t run into: bigscary, negativeq, scottbateman. Next year: Make plans to meet people at specific times, get group together, maybe go for lunch or dinner; also really oughta do comic blah blah blah. This year’s haul:

Books:

• 5 Sketchbook by Alberto Ruiz. Lots of sexy girlie art and really good caricatures.
• Horus vol 1 by Johane Matte. Very nice. Smooth, professional art, funny story. I’d seen the sketches and previews on her website a while back, and jumped at the book when I saw it on her table.
• Death Comes to Monkeysuit, volume 5 of the anthology collection by Monkeysuit Press. I always get me the latest Monkeysuit, and it was $4 cheaper at the show than it will be in the stores.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, volume 2 of the Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley. I like this volume even better than the first.
• The Amazing Cynicalman by Matt Feazell. I neglected to ask if Feazell if there was any chance his "Dimension 10 1/2" stories from the back pages of Zot! would ever be collected.
• Punish the Dead vol 1 by Toby Craig, which many people saw being bound, thanks to the magic of the Internet.
• Philadelphia Cartoonist Society Anthology, Book One. These cool folks reserve a page in the back of their collection so they can doodle in the copies people buy at cons.
• Moxie, My Sweet, the various artists of Seattle’s Fine Comix collective drawing stories written by Mark Campos.

Floppies:

• The Justice Seven by Erik Craddock, who I met on the subway a couple years ago, and who’s been shaming my ass with his prolificity ever since.
• Super F*ckers by James Kochalka, a very rude superhero story.
• Nothing Better advance preview #1 and 2 by Tyler Page.
• Nisha #1 by Robert Gavila.

Minis:

• Take-Out #7 by Raina Telgemeier, who used to live a block or two from me in Brooklyn.
• No In-Between #2 and 3 by Marion Vitus (aka marionv), documenting her trip to Europe. I got #1 last year.
• Bare Bones, a mini sketchbook by Mike Huddleston, who doesn’t seem to have a website. Bad Mike, no link!
• Jellaby #1 and Exit Music #1 and 2, by Kean Soo, who’s one of the best colorists in webcomics. Sadly, the minis are in black and white.
• O’ ’Deer by Joseph Grivelli. I dunno, he was handing ’em out free.
• Friendly Fire by David Stanley.
• Fragile Ego #5 by Denise Ozker.
• Understanding Mimicomics by Matt Feazell.
• Platform #1 by Elizabeth Genco. This isn’t comics, it’s the journal of an NYC woman who busks Irish fiddle in the subway to get over her stage fright. She also hacks Perl code. Yeah, I’m swooning, just a bit.

Oof. I don’t feel quite as invigorated as I did last year, but I enjoyed myself. Got to chat with scottbateman, kuronekogirl, and a few people who (as far as I know) aren’t on LJ (yet!). Somehow missed nihilistic_kid. Spent too much on comics, and could easily have spent twice as much. Here’s the loot: