Fans Look for Books at MoCCA 2006

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on June 13, 2006 Sign up now!

by Douglas Wolk, with reporting by Kate Culkin, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 6/13/2006

The vibe of this year's MoCCA Art Festival, held this past weekend at New York City's Puck Building by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, could be summed up in one word: books. Although traffic on the floor began slowly, crowds showed up by early afternoon. The hordes mobbing the aisles of the show's three rooms were looking for high-end projects. And with some of the biggest alternative graphic novel titles coming from mainstream New York publishers, every art-cartoonist in the Puck building seemed to be carrying around a manuscript and working to line up an agent.

Houghton Mifflin, positioned near the show's entrance, displayed a few of its most talked-about books—Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and the forthcoming Best American Comics 2006 anthology—although they weren't actually for sale. Pantheon was selling some of its backlist titles and previewing Marjane Satrapi's Chicken with Plums. Right next to the Pantheon table, Lauren Weinstein, a longtime show fixture for her small-press and mini-comics projects, was signing copies of her book Girl Stories, just out from Henry Holt. (Next year, Holt will publish Kevin C. Pyle's Blindspot—and, yes, Pyle had proof pages of it on hand.) Abby Denson, another MoCCA mini-comics regular, was promoting her Manic D Press paperback Tough Love: High School Confidential. And Best American Comics' cover artist Lilli Carré was in Top Shelf's booth to sign the biggest debut of the show, Tales of Woodsman Pete—and they sold 125 copies of it over the weekend.

The success of Kazu Kibuishi's Flight (a few of whose contributors shared a table) has spawned other elegantly produced anthologies of short pieces by relatively unknown cartoonists. The where'd-this-come-from? hit of the show was the exquisite hardcover Out of Picture: Art from the Outside Looking In (Paquet), a collection of stories by animators from Blue Sky Studios (see story).

Chris and Lisa Pitzer at the AdHouse Books table.

The new imprint Blurred Books debuted two volumes of Blurred Vision: New Narrative Art, and the Comics Comics booth sold a pile of Dan Nadel's $40 hardcover anthology Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 (Abrams).

The "It Couple" of the show was Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley, who shared a table—and by the end of Saturday, O'Malley had blown through his entire stock of 100 Scott Pilgrim books, and early on Sunday, Larson exhausted her supply of both Salamander Dream and Gray Horses. Larson, now working on a book for Simon & Schuster, also announced that she's going to be publishing Rebecca Kraatz's House of Sugar through her own Tulip Tree imprint.

Longstanding comics imprints seemed to be concentrating more on attractively produced perfectbound books, too. Fantagraphics sold out of the fourth issue of its Mome anthology, many of whose contributors were present for signings and a Saturday-afternoon panel. Fantagraphics also featured premieres and signings by Craig Yoe (the new anthology Arf Museum) and Ellen Forney (who showed off the Led Zep tattoo on one of her back teeth to everyone who came by for a signed copy of her new collection of short strips, I Love Led Zeppelin).

Drawn and Quarterly sold stacks of Dupuy & Berberian's Get a Life and Maybe Later, as well as a new edition of Julie Doucet's My Most Secret Desire. D&Q also hosted Miriam Katin, who was signing her moving Holocaust survivor's memoir, We Are On Our Own. Alternative Comics' Jeff Mason couldn't make it to the show, but as usual the company's table was manned by his artists and had nonstop signings, notably by Sam Henderson, who had a new Magic Whistle volume out. NBM's table also featured signings by the likes of Ted Rall, as well as a preview copy of Lewis Trondheim's forthcoming Mister I.

Gina Gagliano, Danica Novgorodoff,
Mark Siegel from First Second.

First Second, in its first year of selling books at MoCCA, did especially well with Joann Sfar's Vampire Loves, although even more people seemed to be picking up First Second designer Danita Novgorodoff's self-published mini-comic A Late Freeze. MoCCA is a prime market for self-publishers, who often have a hard time getting their work into stores—Fred Van Lente of Evil Twin Comics sold more than 80 copies of a new book collecting his and Ryan Dunlavey's Action Philosophers series.

Panel Mania

A discussion of political cartooning opened the MoCCA panels on Saturday morning. Tom Hart (Hutch Owen: Unmarketable), Jennifer Sorensen (Slowpoke: America Gone Bonkers) and Tim Kreider (Why Do They Kill Me) discussed the challenges of being liberal cartoonists during the Bush administration. All three stressed humor as the ultimate goal of political cartoonists—no matter how angry they get. Besides outright political exhaustion and worries about preaching to the converted, the biggest problem for a cartoonist is an administration that provides way too much good material. As the political situation grows more dramatic, Kreider and Sorenson agreed that it's becoming more difficult to parody.

Karl Stevens, Dash Shaw and Sam
Henderson at the Alternative Comics table.

In a Sunday afternoon conversation between Charles Burns (Black Hole) and comics artist Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve), who replaced Chip Kidd as interviewer, Burns was witty and low-key discussing his early influences and meticulous artistic process. Burns also addressed the evolution of Black Hole and the importance of his personal experience to the book. He warned against forming direct parallels between the sexually transmitted disease in Black Hole (the disease turns teens into monsters) and the AIDS epidemic.

Jessica Abel's presentation and public conversation with PWCW coeditor Calvin Reid was the last event on Sunday afternoon, providing both an insightful overview of her career and a coda for this year's MoCCA Art Fest. Abel steered the audience through the development of her work, from her days of self-publishing Artbabe, the mini-comic that started her comics career, to time spent living in Mexico City, the subsequent publication of La Perdida, her new and critically acclaimed graphic novel, to forthcoming projects that include a textbook on creating comics and a prose novel aimed at young adults.

The Pamphlet's Last Stand?

In general, self-publishers seemed to be bypassing the traditional pamphlet comic book, leaping straight to squarebound books from mini-comics or Web comics, like Dorothy Gambrell, who debuted a paperback of her adorable Web strip "Cat and Girl." Xeric Award-winning self-published books were everywhere, including Karl Stevens's Guilty and, most notably, Jeff Lemire's Lost Dogs—naturally, he also had a galley of his next book, Tales from the Farm, to be published by Top Shelf next year.

And another MoCCA attendee of several years' standing (see accompanying story) debuted a handsome, much-anticipated hardcover book. Eight-year-old Alexa Kitchen, the daughter of comics veteran Denis Kitchen, has just completed an instructional guide called Drawing Comics Is Easy! (Except When It's Hard), available from her father's imprint, Denis Kitchen Publishing.