It’s late, and I’m tired from driving back from my niece’s graduation party, so we’re going to try to make this one short. I’ll post a round-up of the more notable books I bought, as well as any other thoughts of sustainable that occur to me after I click “publish,” tomorrow. Please take note that the pictures are presented in a completely random order and have nothing to do with the text. I’m kooky like that.

As previously noted, yesterday involved catching the New York City train along with my erstwhile convention companion Jog in the hopes of taking in this year’s MoCCA Festival and blowing several hundred dollars away in pursuit of good comics. All this was accomplished and so much more.

Despite only getting two hours of sleep and not really eating anything until suppertime, I had a really good time at this year’s show. We ended up arriving at the Puck Building much later than intended, mainly because our train, out of what I assume was sheer politeness, decided to allow six other trains to go ahead of it before it entered the city. As a result, we didn’t get to see everything, though it kind felt like we did anyway.

The building itself was nice and cool as long as you were on the main floor and not stuck up on the 7th, where folks like Meathaus, Comics Foundry and DC (in their Vertigo/Zuda mode) were situated.

Tim Leong had this really awesome Gogol 13 shirt and I hated him for that.

The place was filled with bloggers, including but not limited to Sean Collins (who was selling his very good mini, Murder), Kevin Church, Neilalien, and Tucker and Nina Stone, who proved to be as utterly delightful and charming as I had imagined in my fevered dreams.

It got crowded very quickly, especially if you happened to be situated anywhere near the Fantagraphics or Drawn and Quarterly tables, where folks like Jason, Adrian Tomine and Lynda Barry had lines snaking around the aisles of eager fans aching for their John Hancock. That had to be encouraging.

The Scandinavian contingent was thankfully back once again. This time they had a mock-up of a beautiful book — Soft City by one “Pushwagner” that apparently had quite a convoluted route to publishing. It seems the artist did the work in the 1970s, but lost it in his luggage. 30 years later the luggage and the art work is found, intact. It looked quite stunning and I hope it makes its way to the states soon.

I’m not quite sure what the “Book of the Show” was but I was quite grateful to see that Lauren Weinstein’s Goddess of War had finally arrived, courtesy of PictureBox. Hope Larson’s Chiggers also seemed to be a hit, as did Barry’s What It Is. There were lots of others.

I only caught one panel, Frank Santoro’s, but it’s hard to imagine any other panel containing half of much. Santoro is a fascinating lecturer and it was a treat to listen to him spin off from tangent to tangent discussing, in no particular order, the Golden Mean, how to properly structure a comic book page, astronomy, manga and how Art Spiegelman really ticked him off the other night. My favorite quote: “I’ve got a compass and graph paper and I’m happy. That’s retarted.”

Doug Wolk looked really tired. I hope he got some rest.

Anyway, I could have easily spent more time and money there, but the 7:15 train, plus the fact they were closing up, had us heading back to the station and then home. It was a successful conglomeration of comics and camaraderie that reminds me that the time and money spent on an excursion such as this are well worth the effort. I’m already looking forward to next year.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Comic Books, Conventions, Creators, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.