R U Still in 2 It

Blog-Header-04_06_16FIRST THINGS FIRST, we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit over our first weekend of Comics Season. It all began, of course, with the VIP opening ceremony for the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival, aka MoCCA. Held at the Society of Illustrators itself, Friday night was a celebration of ten years of the Center for Cartoon Studies, aka CCS. We share a lot of history with CCS, including three CCS grads and a CCS fellow that we’ve published. So for us, the MoCCA Fest started with a reunion. The CCS exhibit is running for a bit, so if you skipped the opening night and complementary bubbly, make your way to the Society and check out the CCS fellows’ original art. At the very least, it provides ample evidence that Alec Longstreth suffers from some kind of graphomania because no reasonable person drew those Basewood pages.

Rob Sergel enjoys much better mental health despite all the rampant social anxiety contained in his SPACE. Our MoCCA debut for 2016, SPACE launched without too much of a hitch. Thank you, beautiful people for coming all the way upstairs and getting yours. A rainy Saturday morning left us yawning into the afternoon, however. Imagine our surprise to find a crowd downstairs when we snuck out for lunch. Our shitty real estate failed to keep us from a strong half day, but we got a lot folks telling us they didn’t know the second floor was open. Everyone appeared to like the Metropolitan West nonetheless. MoCCA’s moved three years in a row, which alone might make it the most New York of shows. We skipped every panel and every Saturday night party to grab some secret Mexican food because we were wiped out and selfish for Rob time.

 

Rob

 

We loved spending these intimate Mexican moments with Rob, selfish or not, but man, we felt cheated by the absence of Koyama Press, AdHouse, Hic n’ Hoc, etc. Minus the usual suspects, MoCCA seemed like a dress rehearsal. A comics vet, whom we refuse to name, said she thought there was a little fatigue in the air, which, maybe? You’d never know it from the volunteers, who have been consistently awesome for the near decade of MoCCA shows we’ve done. Ditto the lines around the block for the panels that we skipped. We talked to one of the MoCCA Prize judges, who judged the floor to be more of an artist’s alley than indie comics show. We latched on to that one, but that’s probably because we’re more on the IDGAF end of the spectrum when it comes to cartoons on TV.

As someone once pointedly paraphrased: if the scene sucks, it’s because you suck. The MoCCA scene did not suck, to be sure. Plenty of superstars roamed the floor, we found some new comics crushes at the MICA table and in Natalie Andrewson and Kate LaCour in particular, and the majority of folks bringing us their comics were not lunatics. We even got a shot of James Sturm reading Gabby Schulz‘s Sick. It was James who said (paraphrasing again) that MoCCA might not be the Big Gun show we want it to be, but it’s not a disappointment. We agree on both counts, more or less. Good enough is good enough. Plus we hung out with Rob all weekend and dropped a bunch of SPACE. What suck there was rests on us for sure; we need to be more active steerers if we’re still on the Society’s steering committee for 2017. We hope we are, if only to hang with the Society folks some more. They feed us even.

 

Sturm

 

Don’t whine if you missed Rob at MoCCA, because he and SPACE are heading up north with us for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, aka TCAF. Rob joins none other than the aforementioned Gabby Schulz, aka Ken Dahl, who at long last will have Sick with him. See the pic above? The book exists for real; we swear to you. Yes, we promised you Gabby and Sick back in 2013. We believe it’s better late than never, and Sick is better for the wait. Gabby’s got his new, special edition of Monsters coming as well. MK Reed, alas, decided to abandon her post as the Secret Acres border crossing comics mule this year, but she will be at the show with her (and Farel Dalrymple’s) Palefire and Rob and Gabby and Sick and Monsters and SPACE. Not bad, huh?

Until then, and before we forget, there’s a fun profile of Edie Fake and his Marlborough Chelsea show over on Vice. The show itself is hanging at Marlborough until the 23rd. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss us too much, either. TCAF’s right around the corner and we’ll be back here before you know it with all the dirt on Sick.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

 

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