MoCCA Takes Manhattan

NEW YORK — The Museum of Cartoon & Comic Art here holds an annual show called the MoCCA Art Festival, but most people refer to it simply as MoCCA. It’s been going on for a little under a decade but has already established itself as one of the finest small press shows in the country.

I’d heard so many good things about MoCCA through the years that I designed my upcoming vacation to New York around the show.

Traditionally held at the Puck building, this year’s show was the first in its new home: the 69th Regiment Armory. The building has played host to roller derbies, Knicks games, Victoria’s Secret and Marc Jacobs fashion shows, but first gained fame as the site of the historic Armory Show in 1913, when Marcel Duchamp and company introduced America to Modern Art.

When my friends and I arrived for the first of the festival’s two days there was a line that snaked around the block; the gates hadn’t opened yet. Shipping delays were cited as the reason, and though they started letting people in around noon (one hour later), we were treated to half off the admission price.

There were a lot of people at the show, but thankfully the Armory had a lot of space. Aisles were wide enough so that things didn’t get too crowded, though more popular exhibitors would always have several people in front of their tables at any given moment.

As a comics fan I was in heaven. Most of my favorite publishers were at the show, hosting signings with their authors. The panels and programming that proved slightly problematic in the previous iterations of the festival was more manageable here since they all took place one floor below.

Many people commented on the heat (the building isn’t air-conditioned) but I didn’t mind it that much. Then again I am from a tropical country. Sunday was hotter than Saturday but even at its most uncomfortable it was nothing compared to what I’d braved in the previous Komikon at UP Diliman. Still, it was a whirlwind experience, meeting some of my favorite creators. As soon as I went in I found the DC/Vertigo booth, and there was writer Brian Wood (Local, Demo, DMZ, Northlanders). While waiting to meet him, who should drop by but artist Dave Choe! I’d only recently finished an article about his contribution to the Obama campaign alongside the works of Shepard Fairey and Ron English. Here at the show as a fan, he was catching up with friends like Wood.

Later on, I met Yuko Shimizu, an illustrator I’ve been a fan of for several years who’s now doing covers for Vertigo’s The Unwritten. She let me in on the fact that Fables cover artist James Jean and illustrator Tomer Hanuka were at the show incognito but since I had no idea what they looked like I couldn’t find them. At the Fantagraphics area I got to meet Norwegian master cartoonist Jason, whose book Hey, Wait... brought me to tears when I read it years ago and made me a lifelong fan. He was touring in support of his book Low Moon, which was originally serialized in the venerable New York Times, which until recent years (i.e. the graphic novel renaissance/boom) did not traditionally carry comic strips.

Montreal publisher Drawn & Quarterly hosted signings with Adrian Tomine (Sleepwalk, Summer Blonde) and Seth, whose new book George Sprott 1894-1975 is a lovely, handsome hardcover, also featuring a strip originally serialized in the New York Times. They alternated with Gabrielle Bell and Ron Rege, Jr. Bell’s latest Cecile & Jordan in New York contains the short story recently adapted by Michel Gondry in Tokyo! and Rege, Jr. had new mini-comics from his recent Cartoon Utopia series.

Top Shelf were debuting Niklas Asker’s Second Thoughts at the show, with the author in attendance, part of a seeming Danish/Swedish invasion of the show as a number of them had pooled their resources and exhibited material.

This made me think that it would be great if our local cartoonists could themselves team up and maybe with the help of the government (this is wishful thinking, of course) make it to next year’s show. We have a good number of talented cartoonists in this country but the ones that are best known are the ones doing superheroes abroad for Marvel and DC; it would be nice to give some added exposure to those who are doing their own stories and their own characters. While meeting some creators I admire was indeed the main high point of my show, the other delight was in discovering people I’d never heard of. I wasn’t familiar with Secret Acres, a small publishing group that brought a number of books to the show. I got Minty Lewis’s PS Comics, a charming little collection of stories sometimes starring plants, and other times animals.

While fawning over Becky Cloonan (Demo, Pixu) at her table I met Mark Malazarte of Calavera Comics, which is based in Florida. Mark’s Filipino, though I was unfamiliar with their work, and apparently they always attended MoCCA. Their stuff was amazing, including an anthology called Mekano Turbo and some sketchbooks by Alexis Ziritt and Bagger43, who is half-Pinoy. I really wanted to get more stuff from them but by the time I’d discovered their stuff my budget had been blown.

I also met Jeremy Arambulo, who had a table of his own. Jeremy’s a full-blooded Pinoy but raised in New York. I’d seen his work published in a local anthology but hadn’t seen anything from him since. Turns out he’s been putting out his own mini-comic, Let’s Do This, and working with alternative wrestling league Kaiju Big Battel. Another guy I was glad to meet was Alvin Buenaventura, a publisher I was familiar with and suspected was Filipino, but only got my hunch confirmed at the show. He put out the huge anthology Kramers Ergot 7, huge not in the expected thick sense but in the size sense: it was a gorgeous hardcover published to match the size of old newspapers around the turn of the 19th century. He had a few books debuting at the show as well, including UK cartoonist Tom Gauld’s The Gigantic Robot and Jerry Moriarty’s The Complete Jack Survives.

Amazingly, though I was at the festival the full two days I still didn’t get to see every single exhibitor; the show is that big. I completely missed out on meeting Jon Lewis, and passing by European publisher Bries’s table.

The show left me reeling and excited once again to be a comics fan living at a time when so many cartoonists are doing such great work while older underrated works are being discovered by new audiences. If I can manage it I’d love to come back next year, and hopefully with a larger budget.

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Ramon De Veyra blogs at www.thesecuriousdays.com.