MoCCA this weekend

Comics festival this weekend!

I will be with the Boston Comics Roundtable table, at location "F2, 3 & 4."

MoCCA Festival
Saturday April 9th and Sunday April 10th 11am-6pm

At the Lexington Avenue Armory
68 Lexington Ave (Between 25th &26th Streets)
New York City

http://www.moccany.org/content/mocca-festival


Also, I will be going to MeCAF on Sunday May 22.
http://www.mainecomicsfestival.com/

MICE photos

Photos from the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo. (No photos of actual mice, I'm sorry.)




The durian story I mentioned a while ago has been published in Inbound 5, put together by the BCR. As the BCR also co-hosted MICE, a table with stacks of Inbound 5 was arranged near the entrance.



I tabled with Jesse Lonergan.



I visited a table with a furry hat thing. One of the people behind the table, Betsey Swardlick, said I should put it on.




(In the background on the left, you can see Cathy laughing.)




Another tangent of silliness ---

Above: there was an extra spot at my table, so I decided to display a copy on Inbound 5 there, with a sign saying I had a story in the book (as did my neighbor).

As the festival continued, I also thought it would be fun to have people sign the book (as many of the contributors were wandering around). I didn't have other copies of the book on me, so I grabbed my display copy and gave it to people.

However, the labels (which I'd left on) did not go un-noticed.






I suppose I will just have to keep the labels on this copy of Inbound 5, or it won't make much sense. And I suppose I will be forever reminded of my hapless attempt at self-promotion.

Anyway, it was a fun day!

MAA Comics exhibition and Boston Zine Fair/Blastfest III

Some photos from the opening of the Marblehead Arts Association comics exhibit on March 7th.
* The show runs from March 6-28 at the MAA’s location at 8 Hooper Street, Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Below: cover illustration and pages from my new comic.




An animation I made, "Ghosts by the Road", was also screened as part of a looping reel of animations during the reception. (See it at YouTube or Newgrounds)








Later we ate at Gulu Gulu's in Salem. And posed with signs.


Also, some photos from Saturday's Blastfest III or the Boston Zine Fair or whatever the event wants to call itself.




This was an interesting event. Lots of music, which was nice, but depending on the style of music or decibel level (and the show does live up to it's name) it was hard to talk or hear people. Still, I liked the peanut butter jelly sandwiches.

SPX 2008: House of Potato Gormandizer

Small Press Expo 2008!

Below: set-up time early Saturday morning, and a later shot.


On the first day, I saw no less than three people wearing Tintin t-shirts!



I was pretty excited. Then someone pointed out to me that a Tintin movie was in the works, which would account for the shirts. That made it less coincidental, but it was still cool.

Dirk and I carpool'ed to SPX. Here, Dirk risks all to unveil the "Pope? Yes!" conspiracy.



Below -- Alex and Jaime staffing the BCR table!


Anyway, SPX was a lot of fun. I traded for a bunch of mini's, including "10 Things To Do With a Fake Moustache".



On other news, last night my housemates played presidential-candidate bingo during the debate. Sam won within the first 9 minutes.

Boston Zine Fair 2008!

Photos from Boston Zine Fair 2008! (not Halloween)

Here's Julia, who came to say hello! Below that, a photo of Jay.

Jay was my neighbor on Saturday. I think I can now repeat his spiel myself, if I had to.

Having food on the second level helped draw people upstairs, but we still weren't getting as much traffic as the first floor. So later that day, Dan decided that the skeleton in the corner of the room (this was the Art Institute of Boston building) was a major selling point which we should tap into. So we posted signs downstairs, encouraging people to come view the skeleton.

(Cathy and I were still laughing and repeating "I'm gonna eat you! And kill you! --- Be my friend!", even after the Zinefair ended.)

Saturday night, we all regrouped at the Papercut Zine Library and then headed over to a local pub restaurant place.

This just in! The Boston Comics Roundtable meets at an actual round table, for the first time!

(Also, the people's gestures in this picture make me laugh, for some reason.)

Sunday -- below, a giant jam comic, courtesy of Che (in the picture).

Che brought the giant foamcore board and encouraged passerbyers to draw on it. Lindsay, also in the above photo, is taking a picture of it. And to the right of Che (or Che's left) . . . Oh, look, a familiar orange-with-green-and-purple image. Yep, I was sharing the table. You can see that I found a tablecloth by the second day. (The pretty blue cloth is a gift from the family I stayed with in Mangaia. I lent Dan a pink cloth that was also part of the gift.)

Che, who needs to have a dash over the "e" in his name (if I knew how), says he'll have a high resolution image of the two giant comics on his website or blog soon. (http://diy-jet.blogspot.com/) In the meanwhile, here's a photo of Sunday's comic.




I drew the thing in the center, the burning buildings and attacking monsters. And another panel below that. And a few things in other people's panels.

Hang on, here's a close-up.



Lindsay is the one who drew the woman saying, "Oh no! My baby's in the burning building! I left him alone because I'm irresponsible!" Incidentally, she was (quite sucessfully) selling her wares, these cigar boxes decorated with iconic segments of old comics carefully xacto'd out and glued on. Also Mary came by and drew the eHarmony and fetch panel, which I followed up. And James and Hyun came by too. How many other links can I stuff into this post.

Anwyay, as you can probably premise from the photos, I had a lot of fun at the Zine Fair! I sold a good number of books, traded a bunch, donated copies to the Papercut Zine Library, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwitches for two days, and met a bunch of people.

Million Year Picnic and Jam Comics

Million Year Picnic now carries my mini-comics! They are located in Harvard square:

Million Year Picnic

99 Mt. Auburn Street (Downstairs)

Cambridge, MA 02138

They are a store, by the way. And... possibly a suggestion. I've been there many times before, and their comics range from thoroughly mainstream to completely local -- from Wonderwoman to Jeff Smith to Asterix to Manga to a shelf full of locally made comics and zines. It's like whoever stocked the Boston Public Library's indie/adult graphic novel section did so by grabbing armfuls of books from Million Year Picnic's indie shelves. (The same person also dragged all the authors to MoCCA.)

Since I finally got around to printing some of my comics for MoCCA, I was able to stop by Million Year Picnic with mini-comics. Million Year was really nice and very cool -- they bought a handful of my mini's on the spot, and paid me!

Hub Comics in Union square also sounds very indie friendly and supportive of local mini's, so I plan to stop by there too, eventually. (New England Comics hosts local comics too, but by consignment. )

Also, here is a 'Jam Comic' from New York MoCCA festival.

For reference: that weekend in NYC was wrechedly humid and hot. Also, the top floor of MoCCA, where we were, had no air conditioning. So on Saturday, me and a bunch of comics creators were all eating at a Chinese restaurant. Ron drew the title and the first panel on a sketchbook, passed it around, and voila.

Jaime wrote "The ink on my comics evaporated!" caption and I illustrated it. I can pinpoint Dan M's, Spike's, and Cathy's panels, but I'm not as sure about the others.

(Click on image for larger view)

For good measure, here's another jam comic.
(Can you spot which panel, that I drew a picture for and Lindsey added words?)