MoCCA Festival Bounces Back
MoCCA cools down, and everyone is happier about it.
by Heidi MacDonald
Apr 12, 2010

In response to the threat of heat, MoCCA, held annually by Soho's Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, was moved to the more temperate month of April, with the result of a pleasant weekend that put the focus back on comics.

One drawback of the early start: on Saturday, MoCCA overlapped with the annual Kids Comic Con, a one-day show held annually at the Bronx Community College that focuses on offering comics, workshops and comic-related activities specifically for kids. While KCC founder Alex Simmons said attendance was good—about 500-600 kids and parents—and the workshops were filled, nevertheless there were fewer cartoonists available to exhibit at KCC because of the conflict with MoCCA. Read on for more on KCC.

With the show coming earlier on the schedule there were fewer big books debuting, and no definitive "buzz" book emerged, although there were a few trends. Perhaps echoing McSweeney's recent newspaper edition, there were several comics collective anthologies in newspaper format, including Pood, a new anthology from the producers of the Blurred Vision anthologies, and Caboose, a similar newsprint comics supplement produced by students from the Center for Cartoon Studies. In addition, a Philadelphia cartoonists collective produced Secret Prison #1.

Fantagraphics was one of the few publishers to bring a sizable line-up of new books, including works by Jim Woodring, Megan Kelso and Kim Deitch; by Sunday, the cupboards were nearly bare of all copies.

Guests from faraway were few, a notable exception being Love and Rockets master Jaime Hernandez, who was there to promote the new book The Art of Jaime Hernandez from Abrams ComicArts. However, New York has enough native comics talent to make even a local event a star-studded affair, including a panel featuring magazine cartooning legends Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee and Gahan Wilson.

Saturday's panel on "The Art of the Superhero: When Singular Vision Meets Popular Mythology" drew a huge crowd, with its mega-watt panelists: Hernandez, Kyle Baker, Paul Pope, Dean Haspiel and Frank Miller, who was making an extremely rare public appearance. The line for the panel stretched the length of the Armory, and several attendees had to be turned away. Moderator Jeff Newelt led the panelists though an appreciation of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to a discussion of various elements of making heroes, including costuming. "I study body armor. If you're going to fight crime, you wouldn't really wear a purple leotard," Baker quipped, prompting Miller to start chiding the bad footwear chosen by many superheroes.

Sunday's biggest panel was "Sequential Activism: Saving the World One Panel at a Time," moderated by Brian Heater, featuring Josh Neufeld, Tom Hart, Peter Kuper, Ward Sutton and Weatherman-turned-teacher, Bill Ayers, who discussed the evolution of political activism through comics. In regard to his Hutch Owen character Tom Hart said "Everything is political if you are trying to live a free life in society." Ayers spoke of his love of the comics medium and the importance of comics' tradition of political cartooning.

Also on Sunday the "New Genres, New Readers, New Technologies: The World of Comics To Come" panel addressed, like just about everything else these days, the move of comics to a digital platform. The mood was mostly upbeat, as the differences between paper and online comics was stressed and even self confessed "dead cartoonist" enthusiast Craig Yoe admitted that the kinds of historical books he publishes wouldn't be possible without the internet to promote them and keep an interest in obscure cartoonists alive. Cartoonist Liz Baillie mentioned that putting her new comic, Freewheel, on the web allowed her to promote it enough to get a big enough following to be able to print it.

Despite the conflict with MoCCA, up in the Bronx, Kids Comic Con displayed its usual blend of excited kids looking for comics and a host of professionals offering them an opportunity get hands-on lessons about the making of comics. There were workshops on careers in comics, manga, portfolio reviews, comics as an educational tool and more. Among the exhibitors in the Bronx on Saturday were Papercutz's Jim Salicrup, Archie Comics, East Coast Black Age of Comics Con founder Yumy Odom, Buzz Boy creator John Gallagher, James Barry, artist for Erin Hunters's Warriors graphic novel series and others. Scheduling is always a problem for shows but perhaps in the future KCC and MoCCA can find a way to avoid having their shows on the same weekend.

Despite the general good mood, some lingering issues seemed to hang over MoCCA and its future. Even though no one was sweating to death, some observers noted a general lack of energy around the show, and the addition of a "cocktail table hang out area" in the back of the room seemed to indicate fewer exhibitors this year. New York may be the comics capital of the US, but it is also one of the world's most expensive cities and many cartoonists and publishers complained privately about the price of tables, which is much higher than at similar indie comics shows such as SPX and Stumptown. Even with strong comics sales, the rising costs for all can cut into profits.