When people asked me what I was doing this weekend, I simply told them that I was ‘going to a comic convention’, since ‘comic convention’ was a lot easier to say than ‘a small gathering of independent press outlets, artists and aspiring creatives’. Sure, ‘comic convention’ conjures up frightening images of sweaty awkwardness, but it was still easier than trying to succinctly explain MOCCA Fest, which slyly escapes a simple definition.

MOCCA Fest is the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s annual ‘convention’ event - usually small enough to be comfortably held within a relatively compact space, and wall-to-wall full of awesome. This year, MOCCA took over a couple of floors in SoHo’s hip Puck Building, just as they did last year. Assembled therein were a great collection of artists whose main specialty was ‘narrative illustration’, almost none of it superhero related, if that helps set the tone. Yes, most of the attendees and exhibitors were of a gentler sort, their preferred comics being about humiliating autobiographical foibles, tales of subtly bizarre human interaction, and the occasional lonely robot / sasquatch / squid. Plus, most of the visitors and artists were pretty attractive.

I’d attended MOCCA last year as a spectator and had every intention of gathering together a collection of my own works to vend this year, but those plans had fallen though without much warning, and I found myself without a table to experience the event from. Regardless, after checking out the exhibitor list and seeing Chip Kidd’s name, I was compelled to make the trip, if only so Kidd could sign my Bizarro comic. I had no other goal, except to maybe get myself another original Batman drawing from a talented artist somewhere. If absolutely nothing else, I’d emerge inspired.

After traversing most of the well-arranged Festival floors, I found that about 75% of everything on display were things that I’d seen, bought or passed on buying last year. This isn’t to say that the attending artists weren’t being wonderfully productive during the intervening year, nor to say that selling the same stuff two years in a row offends me in any way, but I just didn’t find myself in a buying mood. Maybe it was the record heat and my body’s sudden decision to produce an inhuman quantity of sweat that left me feeling awkward, or maybe it was the lack of assigned respite spaces where one might sit and collect one’s thoughts and/or mop off, but I was out of sorts. The top floor of the Puck Building had a skylight, which illuminated everything wonderfully, but also made the floor feel like a greenhouse. I was grateful that the audience was of the hygienic sort.

After searching for a while and being unable to get help from the volunteer MOCCA staff or the attendee program, I just couldn’t find Chip Kidd. While I really, really wanted that signature, I’d tried and failed at signatures before, so I was prepared for the crushing disappointment. I still managed to find my highlights, and I consoled myself with a great little pre-framed Batman cartoon by Neil Fitzpatrick. His table was set up with small framed drawings of all kinds of pop culture icons, and I fell a little in love with all of them. How can you not love The Noid? He had his own video game where he killed things with a yo-yo! Let’s see Chuck Norris do THAT.

‘Small paintings’ seemed to be a recurring theme at the show, with every other booth displaying quantities of original mini-art - some clearly made for profit, and some made out of love and energy. The price range fluctuated wildly, all the way from $10 to $60 for similar works, but it was nice to see affordable, transportable art at MOCCA, clearly sympathetic to the poor creator who also would like to support other poor creatives with limited living spaces.

The most surprising part of the day came while we were wandering around and just happened upon a table where notable (and my personal favorite) film director, Michel Gondry, was set up behind a magic marker sign and just kinda hanging out. The fact that Gondry was not announced as some kind of attending demi-god completely boggles my mind, but only slightly more so than the fact that there were no lines to meet him. I wasn’t even aware that he’d be there, and I was star-struck just long enough for him to get up and wander casually off without noticing me. I later found out that he was signing his new book, and drawing portraits of his admirers in the margins - something I’ll forever kick myself for not pursuing more actively. Still, it was enough to just walk on by and witness the creative unpretentiousness that I love him for.

I’d brought 5 copies of my own comic, Coptopus, to hand out to deserving and / or notable people, but only had the presence of mind to give one to Kristin Hogan, a girl who was selling some breathtaking squid dolls. Her propagation of cephalolove simply warranted a free copy of Coptopus.

Noted artist Tara MacPherson refused to look up at anyone who visited her table, and I don’t think it was bashfulness as much as ‘get me the hell out of here’. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

If you plan on attending MOCCA, or any small press event, bring lots of small bills, since most of the folks there aren’t going to be set up with credit card machines or cash registers. It’s strictly hand-to-pocket, and they’ll be grateful if you leave them with a bunch of singles. More than half of the comics you’re going to buy aren’t regulation size - so your backing boards and bags aren’t going to help you too much. Learn to embrace the xerox copy - some of those, even if hastily assembled and completely devoid of monetary value, are some of the more amazing things you’ll ever read.

And with any luck, you’ll be buying a plethora of comics from my table next year.

Within the world of comic book production, there are two major camps.

There’s the camp that we all see - the Marvels and DCs and Dark Horses, all of which encompass the lion’s share of the superheroic universe as we know it - they’ve all been around for a long time, and they have the financial backing and decades of fan support to perpetuate them. From here, we get Spider-Man and Superman and Hellboy, all of which have their own merits as epic and fantastical journeys into visual fiction. Toiling dexterously away behind that big scene, however, are the innumerable ‘small press’ books.

The small press escapes a clear definition (besides ‘everything that isn’t Marvel, DC, Dark Horse or Image Comics’), and while loosely based in the conventions of mainstream comic culture, these independently produced comics can range from cleanly published, machined books, all the way to hand xeroxed and stapled items, and even into strangely assembled boxes of abstractly, hand-printed narratives - and barely any of them are superheroic. And yes, I still enjoy them immensely. I also enjoy sushi dinners and holding hands, ladies.

After attending the MOCCA fest this past February, and feeling formally indoctrinated into the whole small press & indie art scene, I’d travel almost any distance to embrace the culture again. So, I made plans to travel all the way down to Bethesda, Maryland to attend the Small Press Expo, or ‘SPX 2007’, on October 12th and 13th.

Nowhere but these artist gatherings have I felt such a collective focus on art and the production of comics for the love of creation, without the element of profit (beyond basic human survival needs) really entering into it strongly. The small press almost universally embraces a free-form approach to creating comics - no rules, no set sizes, no narrative conventions - just draw your damned story for all you’re worth, and let us see. This open-door policy allows for a lot of amazing, but well-hidden, creators to have a venue for their beautiful work - and it also allows a great deal of substandard and ‘outsider’ work through. It’s your job, dear reader, to politely sidle away from those things that don’t meet your own particular standards of excellence.

Like MOCCA, SPX was a vast collection of folding tables, spread thick and colorful with the wares of their creators, who sat lovingly behind these displays and exhorted passers-by to partake of their creations. Because of the idea of ‘small’ press, most of these items were only printed in very limited quantities, and more than a few times, I witnessed a complete sellout of certain comics on the tables, be they photocopied stories about the author’s cat, or full-color zombie comics. Some items went numbered in editions, and others still were produced to order, with the true number of existing copies, being run off at Kinko’s every month, being far less important than the sharing of the work. Unlike a mainstream comic convention, there was nothing in the way of flashing lights and pomp and TV screens set up around every corner to show off an upcoming video game. Which is not to say that the cute art girls don’t completely compensate for the lack of things to ogle.

Still, the more important of the pleasures of attending these indie cons is that you’ll be exposed to work that no amount of conscious internet digging will reveal to you - much of what I discovered was pure coincidence while walking down the aisles. You won’t find most of this stuff in comic shops - and even better than finding new and exciting stories is the fact that behind every table is the story’s creator and artist, excited to talk about it with you. You can’t beat that kind of interactivity.

Coincidentally, that’s why you also shouldn’t start loudly critiquing the work after you flip through a few pages - you’ll likely shatter the artist’s little ink-stained heart when you fail to notice that he’s standing RIGHT THERE. Fortunately, when I started talking about how much I loved Jeffrey Brown, it was all positive observations. You’d think that I’d connect the dots that the guy standing behind the piles of Jeffrey Brown books, signing a Jeffrey Brown book, would be Jeffrey Brown - but those key pieces of evidence didn’t really connect within my brain. I revere these artists and storytellers so deeply that I fully expected some kind of penumbric halo surrounding him - and also, that he’d be as wiry and tiny as his self-portrait version of himself, which populates most of his comics.

That’s another awkward detail of the small press. So many of the comics are so deeply autobiographical that when you meet the artist who created them, you know such a penetrating level of detail about their lives that there’s no comfortable barrier of mutual ambiguity between the two of you. You’ve seen them naked, and you’re a fanboy standing in front of their table and trying not to come off like a complete loser. Which, might I add, I usually completely fail at.

SPX was smaller in size and population than MOCCA Fest, but it attracted many more important creators, and creators of a higher caliber. The Bethesda Marriott, which hosted the event, was a clean, beautiful hotel - even though their TVs are not set up for you to hook up your PS2 and play Guitar Hero all night long, which remains a point of dissatisfaction that will surely have me ornery for days. Regardless, off I went, with a wallet full of small bills (essential at any comic convention) and my ever-present Bizarro Comics book in hand, expecting the unexpected.

I met a bucketful of artists, purchased way too many comics, and finally got to meet Jeff Smith for a signature in the aforementioned Bizarro book. You might recall my ire that I was forcibly prevented from meeting him at New York Comic Con earlier this year.

More details to follow on Saturday and Sunday.

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This is what $200 in small press books looks like. While I had every intention in the world to hit another ATM machine and deplete my savings completely, I found myself inexorably drawn to a few items that I had to immediately purchase and take home with me for inspiration. I can’t feel guilty about spending such a large sum of money on art, because my heart is in the same place as these aspiring and inspired artists, and hope that someone will one day come along to my own MOCCA table and chat me up about artwork and drop a few bucks on me.

I had planned on purchasing a whole bunch of sketches and original art, but the only original art item that I purchased was this panel from Matt Kindt’s Super Spy. Very interestingly, Kindt originally published Super Spy in a digital format, and panel by panel. These panels could be viewed online or downloaded to a PSP for your viewing pleasure. The completed book assembled this huge collection of panels onto multi-panel pages, along with additional panels to adjust the comic’s pacing and format. All of the individual panels were for sale, though, in a small box on Kindt’s table and for only $30 each. I rifled eagerly through them as we discussed the differences between approaching a comic panel-by-panel as opposed to page-by-page, and I eventually settled on an image of three frog men riding an underwater missile, painted in black and sepia and wonderfully graceful and fun. I’d seen his work profiled in art magazines before, so it was a pleasure to speak with him about it and see it firsthand. Everything looks better in its original form.

In addition to the original painting, I purchased three sizeable anthologies from other tables. ‘The Annotated Wondermark,’ which is an online comic I’m fond of, uses royalty-free, turn-of-the-century styled clip art to tell its often hilarious tales in strip form. ‘Out Of The Woods’ is the School of Visual Arts’ 2006 cartooning class portfolio and features a great collection of student art. I’d spent some time at their table lamenting the fact that I didn’t go to a ‘real’ college and surely boring the pants off of them. ‘Muscles and Fights’ was being sold at Zander Cannon’s table, a man who has the coolest name in all of comicdom. The book presents a collection of artists working under the theme of, simply, ‘muscles and fights’, and prompted by a conversation with a comic fan which used the phrase disparagingly, again illustrating the strange crevasse between ‘mainstream’ and ‘indie’ comics.

‘Life Meter’ is a much smaller anthology of comics, again by a wide variety of artists and in many styles, all focused around the theme of video games. In the same vein as the annual I Am 8-Bit art show, artists deliver a single image or a few pages of an imagined narrative involving their favorite video game. After two issues, it sent my nostalgia into high gear, as the artists really picked up on the surreal video game quirks and logic - things that are nestled into my brain from those early years. Where DID Abobo go when you knocked him off of the conveyor belt? What does a Lakitu do all day? It’s great stuff.

My love of vinyl records was sated over at Jim Campbell’s table. In addition to various comics, he had the Numark PT-01 set up, playing his 45-sized records, which were actually recorded at 33 RPM speed (to maximize play time, no doubt). I purchased both Paper Fleet’s ‘Trapped Inside’, along with a split 7” between Ancient Justice and The Ottomen. These came with uniquely handprinted covers and xeroxed comics inside, relating to the songs on the album itself.

Such were the items of note that I managed to get my hands on. Along with some beautiful mini-comics by Nate Doyle, Rosemary Mosco, Mark Burrier, the team at Calavera Comics (who couldn’t make change of a $20, but gave me an awesome poster to make up the difference), and the countless other artists who took the time to talk to me even though I couldn’t buy anything. The MOCCA Fest was an inspiring, comfortable, and well-run success. It comes with my full endorsement, and if I’m lucky, I might even have a table set up there next year. Be sure to swing on by and shower me with adulation and dollar bills.

This past weekend was a significant one for New York comic nerds of all ilks, from those exclusively into spandex and punching to those collectors who prefer their comics brooding and embarrassingly autobiographical. Not only was the seven millionth annual Big Apple Comic Con happening across the street from Madison Square Garden in the decrepit Hotel Pennsylvania, but the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art was having their amazing annual Festival. It would seem that I had a big weekend ahead of me.

On Saturday, June 23rd, I attended the MOCCA Festival, located at the Puck Building (in the ridiculously trendy NoHo / SoHo area of NYC). The Puck Building, or at least the areas that we were allowed to access, was comprised of a series of large, interconnected ballrooms. In each one, artists and small publishers had set up simple 6-foot folding tables to display their works. There was no ridiculous fanfare, no corvettes decked out with TVs and people blasting out Guitar Hero tunes, no Marvel Comics shilling their latest galaxy-spanning, glossy-covered saga. The deceptively subtle, unadorned ballrooms were the perfect quiet atmosphere for artists to practice their art and explore each others’ works, without the constraints of ‘the industry’ telling them what was and was not appropriate. It would seem that a large portion of the overhead lighting wasn’t completely functional, but no one seemed to mind too much.

‘DIY’ or ‘do-it-yourself’ culture has recently found a significant foothold among the 30-and-younger crowd, as evidenced by such sites as Etsy and the vast collection of artists who choose self-publishing as a viable option for dispersing their artworks to the world. Xeroxed copies of small, hand-stapled books weren’t an uncommon sight, whereas that kind of presentation would have once been viewed as unprofessional. Now, the xerox machine has become an integral part of ‘zine and comic culture, as it’s become abundantly clear that the insights that you find in a professionally published book are the same insights that can be found in a cheaply mass-produced work. DIY, at least in a material sense, sprung out of the need for economy, after all - the trendiness was just a coincidence that came along later.

Because of this, the variety of artists and approaches covered the entire scope of the comic industry. From artists who had a few small piles of photocopies, artists who’d handmade books on a printing press, artists who had books professionally bound and printed in color or black and white, and even artists who took the ‘comic’ format and stretched it to its limits by presenting piles of individual panels in small boxes, packaged with 45s, and even as original paintings. Some were published by indie labels, while others were simply there to share their own amateur (and often impressive) creations.

I had my own mission, though, and that was to once again get my Bizarro Comics book signed by Tom Hart, Nick Bertozzi and Jessica Abel, to add to my collection of artist signatures I’ve been accumulating since 2002. By the end of the convention, I’d found everyone but the elusive Tom Hart, and even had a great conversation with Mr. Bertozzi about Jack Kirby and the recent release of the second volume of the DC Archive Edition of Kamandi. With my recent appreciation of Jack Kirby just being explored in earnest, it was enlightening to see the invisible barrier between ‘hero’ comics and ‘indie’ comics being broken down, as they often exist in two very different worlds, and are not always at ease with each other. He signed my Bizarro book right next to his own drawing of Kamandi.

Jessica Abel didn’t seem quite as receptive to my appreciations, but added the seventh signature to my Bizarro book anyhow.

Other attendees included Gary Panter, who was recently profiled in Juxtapoz Magazine for his influence on current ‘pop surrealist’ art culture, as well as his role as designer on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (which was integral in my mental development, probably to no surprise). On the other end of his row of tables was the seven year old daughter of Denis Kitchen (founder of the notable Kitchen Sink Press), Alexa, perhaps with the most elaborate display of all, including a banner heralding her arrival and title of ‘the youngest artist in comics!’, with stacks of pink books overwhelming the table around her, while she continued to draw and her mother looked on proudly. All of this convinced me to come home to my own seven year old niece, make her a pot of coffee and let her burn through a ream of printer paper at high speeds… though this is something that she does fairly regularly anyhow without the aid of caffeine or goading. Coffee would probably blur her to a white-hot light speed from which we’d never recover.

Interestingly, there were a few artists who normally attend the Big Apple Comic Con who opted to lend their support to the MOCCA Fest instead this year, since odd planning had both events on the same days. I can see this as an active support towards the ‘art’ side of things over the ‘industry’ side, so Kyle Baker and Evan Dorkin be praised. You guys made the right choice.

Also of note was Dr. Cube from Kaiju Big Battel, a being of unspeakable evil and megalomania. From behind his table, he grasped at my friend’s complimentary Wizard Magazine and tore it open in order to sign it. When he handed it back to my friend, it read ‘Wizard Magazine is for sucker MCs! Dr. Cube!’. Shortly after that, he snatched someone’s water bottle and wrote ‘WATER!’ on it, and it all became clear. Dr. Cube and Los Plantanos were the only costumed folks at MOCCA. This was a good thing.

The MOCCA Fest spread through four or five ballrooms on the first floor, as well as a large room on the seventh floor. Table spacing was fair, and allowed foot traffic easy passage, which was a bonus as I have limited patience for crowded convention floors. As the day wore on a bit, the ballrooms filled up to ‘crowded’ levels, but the mood remained calm and unfrustrated - which is not something that can be said for the purely ‘BUY AND SELL’ atmosphere of the traditional comic convention.

Another added bonus? Art chicks are HOT. Unfailingly. So… there’s that, too.

By the end of the day, I’d spend $200 in limited edition, small run books, original paintings and records. As I purchased them, I had the opportunity to talk to an inspiring collection of genuine artists, half of whom seemed a bit surprised that I wanted them to sign their works for me, unpretentious and unassuming as most of them were. Stay tuned for an exploration of just what $200 in small press books looks like.