Everybody loves comics. Everybody can make comics, to whatever degree they feel they can either produce words + pictures themselves, or to find somebody that can help them.

• Case in point, right near the first floor entrance of MoCCA Fest, acclaimed actor, playwright, monologuist, and Eisner nominee John Leguizamo had a table, talkin’ comics and taking pictures with people. In another context, he would have been an object of intense scrutiny and mobbing, but here he was just another vendor, albeit one with somewhat higher name recognition. I am confident in my judgment that there were far bigger throngs a little ways down the room a little while :01 Books was giving out galleys of volume 1 of Check, Please! (due for release in September). Anybody can find a topic that people will want to read in comics.
• Case in point, also right near the first entrance, George O’Connor had his table, and I spent some time in my annual ritual of nerding out over greek myths, particularly in the context of his latest Olympians book, Hermes (a review copy of which I recently received from Gina Gagliano & company over at :01). I loved this book, I told O’Connor. Hermes is a dick, and we laughed, but also spent time talking about how this book got to do the near-impossible — give Hera (long-suffering wife of Zeus, and famed persecutor of his various lovers) a sense of humor¹.

  He was also glad to learn I’d laughed at the the dick jokes he got past his editors (the first of which is on page one). Somewhere, a young kid is reading the legends of Hermes and those are flying right over their head; someday they’re going to realize what was happening in those panels and laugh their head off. There’s always something extra in comics.

• Case in point: not far from O’Connor, not far from Leguizamo, Nate Powell and Andrew Aydin were tabling with various comics but especially the three books (or box set, if you prefer) of March. A goodly chunk of Powell’s original pages were on display in the second floor art gallery as well, from March and from The Silence Of Our Friends (an earlier story of the civil rights era). It was an honor to tell Powell how important March is, and how much I’m looking forward to the next series, Run. In comics, there’s always the opportunity to convey a message.
• Case in point: on Sunday morning, I found Josh Neufeld with his various collections of docu-comics; I complimented him on his collaboration with Brooke Gladstone, The Influencing Machine. I noticed that an older work of his, Terms Of Service (about privacy in the age of digital behemoths), a co-publication with Al-Jazeera America, was on the table.

  It’s unusually relevant just now, and I was happy to pick up a copy. While he was sketching in it, I mentioned that I had a Gladstone-crocheted hat², and he was happy to see it, as he’d never seen one before. In comics, there’s always a connection between people you hadn’t anticipated.

• Case in point, on Sunday morning, the National Cartoonists Society booth was manned by Ed Steckley, and I introduced myself as one of the contributors to the nominating process for the webcomics awards. He was charming and very thankful for the effort (he oversees a lot of the process for all of the division awards each year, so he knows how much work goes into it).

  As it turns out, the awards nominations were announced later that day³; it’s a lot of work that Steckley went to (plus the webcomics constributing committee, plus various chapters working to help with logistics), but it’s worth it, because everybody loves comics.

Spam of the day:

OWN_HER_P*$$Y

This came from Erika and on first glance I thought Huh, Erika Moen is slacking on the consent a bit, but then I realized that was stupid and saw it was from Erika S, where the S stands for sucks, or spammer.

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¹ Hermes himself is yet another of Zeus’s bastards, but this one she likes. He kills off Argus, the hundred-eyed guardsman of Io (one of Zeus’s previous conquests and currently on Hera’s shit list) and she muses Zeus was smart to send Hermes to do this. I just can’t stay mad at that guy.

² Which she offers up as premiums during pubic radio pledge weeks. It’s great hat, and Neufeld needs to get Gladstone to make him one.

³ In Online Comics — Short Form, you have Gemma Correll, Lonnie Milsap, and Mike Norton. In Online Comics — Long Form, you have John Allison, Vince Dorse, and Ru Xu. Also, Tillie Walden is nominated in Graphic Novels for Spinning.

My preference (NB: I’m not a voter) for Short Form would be Correll, and Dorse has won in Long Form previously, so I’d prefer Xu or Allison there. But honestly, it’s a good set of nominations. The awards will be given out Memorial Day weekend at the NCS annual confab, this year in Philadelphia.