Until the End of the World
There was a bizarre build up to our MoCCA debut of I Will Bite You! with both the Comics Reporter and the Beat pointing to this guy as the likely book of the show. This was a lot of pressure for us, though we have no idea if Joe was sweating it or not. In any case, I Will Bite You! is off to the fastest start we have ever seen. The past week has put a major dent in the print run. No one here is disappointed in the least.
As for the title of Book of Show, we wonder if such a thing is even possible these days. There are too many debuts from publishers major and boutique, at shows huge and indie, to pick a runaway winner. Publishing houses dominate MoCCA now. What was once the premier spot for self-published comics has become something else.
The Beatress herself asked us if we discovered anyone at MoCCA and the answer was that we found ourselves into exactly one new artist, whose work we’d never really seen much of before, namely John Martz. Yes, we’d seen his Trexels print and some web posts of individual pages, but the sequential stuff only got to us at MoCCA. He’s very good in a D&Q way (more on them in a minute). Anyhow, there ya go. It may be that we are too plugged in for folks to up and surprise us, but point taken, Heidi.
The flipside is that we spent a ton of money picking stuff up, including Leslie Anne Mackenzie Stein’s Eye of the Majestic Creature collection, some Pascal Girard stuff, Rubber Necker 5 (which we never, ever thought we’d live to see), the Heavy Hand and the Sundays and Kids anthologies, to name a few. Given our sales, which were good enough to be our best MoCCA ever, we were not the only ones coming to MoCCA to get books. We mean books, specifically, as mini sales were barely there. We suspect that, like us, most people at the show knew exactly where they were headed before they set foot in the Armory.
Organizationally, there was nothing wrong with the show, either, that we heard, anyway. MoCCA is very good at being MoCCA, but it’s not the MoCCA it was. Maybe it’s the location, or the rising costs of admission and table fees, but this is a show for fans. Sean Ford, who sat next to us selling Only Skin 7, had the thought that MoCCA has competition these days. It is no longer the one and only New York show and that may be changing things as well. In any case, it’s the best MoCCA it can be and it’s time for folks to evaluate the show in its current shape. MoCCA is dead. Long live MoCCA.
The big shocker for us is that cartoonists can get down. Yeah, there are always drunken antics at every show, and lots to be found at the Mad Hatter and TCJ party this MoCCA. After our extra fancy dinner (some place not on the usual lists of MoCCAcentric eats – but that’s all the specifics you get), our gang and a double digits deep contingent of CCS kids split for Williamsburg and took over Royal Oak. We had no idea that these guys had moves. Dope moves. Player moves. Joe, in particular, was nonstop bodyrockin’. Many ladies even asked if he was straight (which he is, but he’s married, folks). Of course, the evening ended with our man, Ken Dahl aka Gabby, having a run-in with the law, the outcome of which is TBD in court. Fight the power, Gabby!
Once again, we have to thank the folks that came by to tell us that they think Secret Acres is awesome. We mean it, guys. It’s moving to hear that. Peggy Burns, D&Q publisher, said something that stuck with us. She said that the talent at D&Q is more famous than the company, that more people are familiar with Dan Clowes than Drawn & Quarterly, but the opposite was true for us. Maybe more folks are familiar with Secret Acres than Joe Lambert at this point, which makes sense, as everything we’ve published has been a debut. This will change when Troop 142 hits the streets this fall. Now, that will be interesting.
In the meantime, we are hauling ass to have Samuel C. Gaskin’s 2012 ready to go for TCAF. We swear will do everything possible to make that happen, and it looks pretty good at the moment. We can say that 2012 does indeed rock, so, if it’s a little late, it really won’t be the end of the world. On that note, we need to rest these dogs. They’re friggin’ blue, for real.
Your Pals,
Leon and Barry
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