 |
 |
First Annual MoCCA Art Festival Takes NYC by Storm
- by Fred Van Lente
Maybe the key was the words "Art Festival." Maybe that made the difference.
To the vast majority of the non-comics and cartoon-reading public, the word "convention" evokes images of middle-aged businessmen in fezzes working a showroom floor. Had the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art event held at New York City's historic Puck Building on June 23, 2002 been named, say, "MOCCACON I," one also might have expected Klingon Weddings and/or folk songs about beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.
The comic book convention in America began in the mid-1960's as an infrequent gathering-place for devotees of a relatively esoteric hobby, as recounted in Bill Schelly's excellent and comprehensive GOLDEN AGE OF COMIC FANDOM (Hamster Press, 1999). In the twenty-first century, however, the Internet lets fans of comics and, well, fans of pretty much everything else stay interconnected with each other twenty-four hours a day, rendering the con mostly obsolete as a reunion of the like-minded.
Instead the comic book convention has been co-opted by the very pop culture purveyors it once celebrated in absentia. The entertainment industry has rediscovered the con as a convenient way to target the notoriously picky Males 18-34 demographic. The once-unimaginable presence of "mainstream" corporate behemoths like Sony PlayStation and Showtime at major venues like San Diego and Chicago is now commonplace. The modern-day con has become a gigantic focus group in which fans pay $20 to participate.
This mainstreaming of the con isn't fundamentally a bad thing, of course; most fans walk into a main hall wanting nothing less than a sprawling 3-D sales pitch. As a venue for celebrating something as intimate and personal as an artform, though, the American comic con, with its long lines and brightly-lit signs and blaring multimedia presentations, has become about as intimate and personal as a strip mall.
Perhaps it was that sense of personality and intimacy that made the difference at the MoCCA Art Fest-but that's not to say it didn't also sport plenty of traditional con features as well. Well-attended panels featured a variety of pros examining such issues as "The Business of Comics" and "Archetypes and Stereotypes." Many an aspiring cartoonist hawked his or her self-published creations from behind the tables filling the Puck Building's main ballrooms. Fans lined out into the street to have copies of The Dark Knight Strikes Again (A.K.A.: DK2) signed by Frank Miller at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund table.
Still, like Washington, DC's Small Press Expo, back-issue dealers and retailers were not invited to take booths. Perhaps not coincidentally, creators and publishers of the alternative comics scene predominated. In attendance were Drawn & Quarterly, Top Shelf Productions, Alternative Comics, NBM, and Highwater Books (which had celebrated its fifth anniversary at a Williamsburg, Brooklyn party the night before-Happy Birthday, guys!).
Local NYC creators Paul Pope, Jessica Abel, Howard Cruse, Dean Haspiel, Larry Lieber, Frank Miller, Evan Dorkin, and Sarah Dyer rubbed elbows with out-of-towers like James Kolchalka, Matt Taylor, Trina Robbins, and Jeff Smith.
Though the "small press" crowd held a pluarilty, the words "Art Festival" imply a celebration of sorts, and folks from every corner of the cartoon and comic book world were invited to join the party. Spotted among the revellers:
Super hero creators were represented by Joe Staton, Neil Vokes, and Powers co-creator Michel Avon Oeming, among others. DC editor Bob Schreck and Dark Horse VP of Marketing Michael J. Martens rounded out the "mainstream" comics presence.
At the MoCCA booth at the front of the hall, Klaus Janson (a MoCCA Board Member) Guillermo Zubiaga, Guy Gilchrist, Jeff Smith, Patrick McDonnell, and Michael Kaluta generously spent their day sketching for fans who made donations to the museum.
Newspaper cartoonists Patrick McDonnell (Mutts), Guy Gilchrist (Nancy, Night Lights & Pillow Fights, Mudpie, Your Angels Speak, The Muppets) and Ted Rall (a MoCCA board member) did brisk business at their tables, and Lee Salem and Jay Kennedy, editors from two major syndicates (Andrews McMeel Universal and King Features, respectively), worked the floor, checking out the new talent on display.
Also on full display was the very recent embrace of the graphic novel format by mainstream book publishers. Pantheon Books was on hand to promote its own original graphic novels, and artist Jason Little previewed Shutterbug Follies, his contribution to Doubleday's brand-new graphic novel line (featuring the catchy ad slogan "Picture Books Differently").
The Academy has also been warming up to words-and-pictures for the past decade or so, particularly in New York City. The School of Visual Arts showed its support for MoCCA with a booth at the show, and sold comics anthologies produced by its students. The City University of New York's Continuing Education Program handed out fliers for a lecture series entitled "Super heroes in the '60s: Comics & Counterculture"!
The civic side of comic and cartoon art had a strong showing, including side-by-side tables for Friends of Lulu and NYC Women in Animation...sistahs doin' it for themselves. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund did a brisk business of donations-for-merchandise, featuring Pope, Miller, and Jeff Smith meeting-and-greeting fans and book-signing at that worthy organization's table.
Guest of Honor Jules Feiffer perhaps best summed-up the diversity of MoCCA and the Art Festival's mission. Though best known for decades as the comic strip "voice" of The Village Voice and winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, Feiffer is also an Academy Award®-winning animator ("Munro") and a pioneer of the graphic novel format. (Though 1979's hardcover original graphic novel "Tantrum" is oft-cited, let us not forget 1964's direct-to-Signet paperback "Passionella," later adapted into a Broadway musical as "The Apple Tree," starring Alan Alda). Feiffer began his career in Will Eisner's studio as a production assistant and sometime-scripter on "The Spirit" in the post-World War II period. His classic 1966 essay/book The Great Comic Book Heroes is a must-read for any fan of the Golden Age. (And I'm leaving out his lengthy novel, screen, and playwriting credits, and his latest career reinvention as a successful author of children's picture books.)
Introduced by fellow iconoclast Peter Kuper (World War III, Speechless, "Spy vs. Spy"), Feiffer was presented by Jeff Smith with a copy of his graphic novel Tantrum covered with the signatures and cartoons of his many admirers among the Art Festival's attendees. His thirty minutes of remarks on "making a living out of the boyhood adventures in my head" were followed by a brief Q-&-A with the packed house.
The Festival was held in the Puck Building, former home of the legendary Gilded Age humor magazine and a proving ground for the burgeoning new artform of cartooning. And the day ended with a packed screening of animated shorts by Festival attendees, hosted by Heidi Leigh, (member of MoCCA’s Board of Advisors) owner of Soho's Animazing Gallery. Featuring work by Bill Plympton, Evan Dorkin, and James Kolchalka, the final screening had Dave (Cryptic Press) Roman premiering a piece of pseudo-animation: comic book panels scanned into a computer with the figures partially animated in Flash.
So the nineteenth century met the twenty-first; the cutting edge and the traditional stood side-by-side. Perhaps nothing better summed up the philosophy of New York City's planned Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. There were few overt references made to the ostensible reason for the Art Festival's existence at the show itself, save for the big MoCCA membership booth that was the first thing guests saw when they walked in the door. Original Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age comic covers were on display here, courtesy of Metropolis Collectibles, along with Krazy Kat and Little Nemo original strips from SoHo's Illustration House, providing a tantalizing glimpse into what the proposed museum's galleries might look like.
It's unlikely that the organization will soon be forgotten by those who attended the show. Around 2,000 members of the public walked through the doors-a great showing for a one-day event, and publishers and creators alike reported excellent business at their tables. Top Shelf, for example, broke its one-day show sales record. Double-threat animator/cartoonist Bill Plympton had to dash home for more books around 1pm because he had sold out! Little wonder, then, that table space is already going fast for 2003's Second Annual Art Fest (June 22, 2003).
"Comics fandom is a group that is often stereotyped," pointed out cartoonist Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby, Wendel, Barefootz), chair of the "Archetypes and Stereotypes" panel. Very little stereotyping went on at this show, however. The medium's full diversity was on full display. For too long lovers of comic and cartoon art have depended on major publishers and studios to be their "institutional memory." But entertainment conglomerates will abandon the comic convention and the comic medium the minute quirks in demographics make their participation unprofitable. The MoCCA Art Festival was one small step toward the medium fostering its own institutions to celebrate its own broad range...toward defining itself in the most positive light possible.
And perhaps that's what made the difference.
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art would like to thank the following for their contributions to the fundraising raffle: Aperture, Austin Ackles, Andrews McMeel Publishing, Animazing Gallery, Broadway Books, Children's Museum of the Arts, Comic Images, CrossGeneration Comics, Inc., Jeff Danziger, Dark Horse Comics, Dynamic Forces, The Funny Times, Bunny Hoest, Innervision Comics, Klaus Janson, Jeffrey Lindenblatt, Richard Maurizio, Patrick McDonnell, NBM Publishing, Bill Plympton, Ted Rall, Henrik Rehr, Second 2 Some Studios, Alex Simmons, True Confections and Watson-Guptill.
< top
|
|
|
|
|
|
