Gearing up For MoCCA Festival

With Book Expo America in New York this year, the usual Friday crush of arrivals for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Festival has become a moderate trickle with many people sticking it out from one week to the next. Eventually, everyone ends up in the space depicted here (please click):



That's some guest list, even if MoCCA tried to fool me with last year's map!

What seemed at first a lightning-in-a-bottle fun times response to a then-fading, since-resurgent Small Press Expo, the MoCCA Festival has become large enough to encourage many Eastern-located arts comics cartoonists to start skipping the large West Coast conventions more often and not and travel involved. At the same time, it remains young enough to resist, as yet, a concrete identity. MoCCA-Fest feature the crush of younger cartoonists, artist-driven tables and tons of homemade goodies that mark a kind of laid-back ground-up gathering. It is also smack in the middle of New York City. That means desirable walk-in crowds and media people on hand, high costs for travel and lodging, programming features with world class talent, and, starting last year, a pumped-up Harvey Awards with paid attendance and an aggressive sponsorship program acting as the official Saturday night function which some more modest companies and cartoonists are less than interested in attending. It should be very interesting to see how many of these things work out as compared to last year.

A weekend of related social gatherings begins tomorrow night with a release party for Vanessa Davis' Spaniel Rage at Pianos, the kind of place that has its own web site. If you want something smart and in the know to talk about when you're at this party or any others, Davis' publisher just announced an Adrian Tomine portfoilo called New York Sketches to debut at Comic-Con International.
 
posted 10:22 am PST | Permalink
 

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