Pen-Elayne on the Web

MoCCA Art Fest Report

I'm getting too old for this. :) We figured we'd only be at the festival for about an hour or two today, and we were right. After taking care of household stuff in the morning, including having our cable feed into the bedroom fixed (the technician, a comics reader who departed happily with a whole mess of Rob's books under his arm, had to replace a cable that had been chewed through by a squirrel), we hopped public transit into Manhattan and arrived at the Puck Building around 3 PM, the festival in full swing. As is usual for me, having been involved in the New York City comics community for a couple decades now, I ran into friends from the moment we arrived until the time we left, which of course was why I come to these things. Saw and chatted with Rich Watson, Allan Rosenberg (talent coordinator for the Big Apple Con, and we're now officially booked to attend the National in November and sit near Adam and Allison!), Heidi MacDonald, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, Sarah Dyer (who had great things to say about the Freelancers Union!) and Evan Dorkin, Alex Simmons, Jackie Estrada and Batton Lash, Abby Denson, Jenny Gonzalez, Mai from Shoujocon, Randi Mason, Joey Cavalieri, Nick Barrucci, Maureen McTigue, Martha Thomases, Dave Roman and John Green, MoCCA head honcho Lawrence Klein and probably others I'm leaving out. Alas, Hilda Terry won't be at the Friends of Lulu table until tomorrow. I also met, for the first time, the very talented cartoonist and fellow blogger Mikhaela Reid, and as increasingly true in the NYC-based comics/culture blogging community we "recognized" each other right away (although I was surprised to find out she was white; for some reason I've always pictured her as black). Great news; Mikhaela's News Blog will soon be available via RSS feed, so I can remember to keep up with it!

My purchase of the day was four illustrated Oz books from Eric Shanower, who smiled at the mention of fellow Ozophile Laura Gjovaag and said that he couldn't tell whether Troy helped or hurt sales of his Age of Bronze series, although it was his impression that if the movie had really tanked it would probably have hurt the comics. Didn't stick around to chat with either Neal Adams (whom we'll see at MoCCA next Thursday) or Neil Gaiman, who would be arriving later to host the $60/person Harvey Awards banquet; we opted for Monster Sushi instead, then a quick shop at Garden of Eden (mmm, physalis!) before heading home for a much-needed kip as we've been running on fumes since Datsa woke us up at about 6 AM. Overall the hall was about as comfortable and air-conditioned as it could be considering the heavy traffic, and I was very pleased to see more women and non-whites than ever behind the tables selling their creative output. Had there been someplace for us to sit (and had we not been thoroughly exhausted) we might have stayed longer and bought more, but who knows, now that we have a car maybe we'll head down to SPX (if my boss isn't back by then) and make some more purchases there...