Thanks to everybody that’s been sending me story tips and suchlike — still going through the backlog that developed during the MoCCA aftermath. In the meantime, please enjoy the following:

• Ramses Luther Smuckles + KitchenAid® stand mixer = pretty much all the awesome I need in my life, really.
• Happy Birthday! Today marks 8 years of Schlock Mercenary without filler or missed updates, produced by the so-similar-to-me-it’s eerie Howard Tayler. I forget, Howard — which one of us is the evil twin?
• Noted at PvP this morning:
  

  I just got an email from my friend Shena about an interview with Garfield creator Jim Davis. She said that Jim mentioned PvP. I checked out the interview at the Universal Press website.

  Q: What’s the last time you laughed out loud over a comic strip that another cartoonist did?

  A: “It was just a few weeks ago. The strip is PVP (Player vs. Player) by Scott Kurtz. His timing is flawless. PVP isn’t in newspapers, it’s online! Some of the sharpest stuff is being done online by some very talented, young artists. They keep me looking over my shoulder.”

• Mike Russell always points me to good stuff — today it’s new updates at Serenity Tales and a new strip called Bad Mile that looks intriguing in a distinctly non-polite fashion.

I also went to MoCCA this year (though not for day two and so missed the evacuation, fire trucks, and other such things), in part to table with the Trees and Hills folks and to hype our newest anthology, and in part to debut my new minicomic. (Weirdly, despite the 95+ degree heat, I also sold some monster hats.) But it’s also starting to be the only time of year when I see other comics folks; I haven’t been to SPX for quite a while and I have yet to brave anything comics-related on the West Coast. So it’s been tough for me to catch up with ongoing comics projects.

MoCCA is also usually fairly overwhelming for me; there’s a whole lot of stuff in a fairly little space, and I get distracted too easily. I also found myself this year ferrying home a small army of brightly painted wooden ghosts (okay, I work in a cubicle. These will help.), as well as some incredible mini posters by Rosemary Mosco, who’s got to be one of those folks everyone knows and loves and forgot to tell me about. (Of course, when I went to look at her site I thought, “Ah! Right! Birds for bulbs!“). Usually I end up with a fair amount of minis; this year I found that I had an awful lot of accessories.

And though I have a list of items I want to write about in coming weeks, ranging from L. Nichols’ Jumbly Junkery (in their print forms, the most recent issues of Jumbly Junkery have really extraordinary covers) to Colleen Frakes’ new Tragic Relief collection (Xeric powered!), I wanted to mention the Boston Comics Roundtable (which I know about mostly because of Matt Reidsma and Cathy Leamy, both of whom have comics available online and will be in the next issue) new anthology, Inbound. It’s this amazing-looking book, with catchy cover art and some compelling stories inside; many of the folks involved, like Dan Mazur, are webcomics artists in their own right, and it’s interesting to see them working in print. It’s a nice a little book, and a little different from what we usually see (or write about it) over here at Fleen, and I think it’s worth tracking down.

Photos from MoCCA art fest 2008; see the last couple of days for details as to who is doing what.

• Kean Soo draws in a Jellaby sketchbook.
• Danielle Corsetto and Shaenon Garrity enjoy the adulations of the crowd.
• Spike has the awesomest dreads ever, and I’ll fight any man-jack of you that says different.
• First floor, Comics Bakery, enjoy the scones.
• Cat Garza takes a break; for the bargain price of $250 you can own his college artistic memories.
• Who’s the cutest lil’ Borg ever? Is it you? It is!
• The saga of Randall Munroe: delayed, returned home, victim of murder most foul, or ascended? Actually, just late.
• You guys always bring me the very best violence: to be fair, Randall started it, but Malki ! kept it going. I gave ’em each two bucks, which included an awesome Matrix-style simulatenous face-punch. By Sunday, Randall had made about three times as much money as David, but Rosemary Mosco settled it when she paid two bucks for them to hug. Awwwww.
• Meredith Gran did like 28 years of gymnastics when she was younger.
• Fire: the crowd evacuates the Puck Building, meeting various FDNY apparatus outside. Ever wonder how big one of those ladder trucks is? Really damn big.
• Somewhere in that crowd, Matt Murray is trying to figure out how to get everybody back inside before someone drops of heat stroke. Or catches on fire. He managed to do so, at the cost of a shirt that will forevermore be damp.

First of all, congratulations to Tyler Page, a regular exhibitor at MoCCA, who skipped for a very good reason — his wife Cori gave birth the day before the show. We at Fleen wish the family all the best and hope to see the little one at all future MoCCAs.

From the Books Department:

• Ryan North reports he’s working on the next Dinosaur Comics book; instead of the ‘best of’ approach he took in YWFIMOOM, this one will be the full run of strips from 2006. There will be a secret naming convention to Dinosaur Comics books from here on out, which you may try to unravel by purchasing all future volumes. Look for it to be released sometime next year.
• Cat Garza looked very happy behind a dwindling pile of the Secrets and Lies anthology he edited. He had every right to be considering the large number of contributors and tight production schedule (he only solicited for contributions a week after last Fall’s SPX). Cat’s a sterling gentleman, and I was pleased to make his acquaintance.
• David Malki ! saw great success from the debut of Beards of Our Forefathers, and is presently working on volume 2 of Dispatches From Wondermark Manor for release next month in San Diego. Look for Malki ! to shift his merchandise operations to Topatoco in the near term, leading to exciting stuff-bundle opportunities.
• Also debuting at MoCCA was Chris Yates‘s Set it to Awesome, which is an astoundingly heavy book, what with the glossy full-color photos on every page. To this reporter’s eye, it outsold everything on the show floor except for POOP signs.
• Meredith Gran sold out of pretty much everything she brought, and is preparing for San Diego by sending the second Octopus Pie book to press in the next week. After that, we at Fleen hear plans of animations from Ms Gran.
• Also sold out: Spike went home without a single copy of Templar, AZ Book 1 left, and took plenty of pre-orders for the forthcoming Book 2. I pre-ordered mine back when there was snow on the ground — it’s got Reagan on the cover!
• Hope Larson does the coolest book customization ever — buy a copy of her thoroughly charming Chiggers, and she’ll take off the dust cover and paint directly onto the pigment-thirsty hard cover.
• Kean Soo‘s Jellaby sketchbook is incredibly cute, yet Soo himself is a right-hand-rule-throwin’ badass. After the Jellaby story finishes in next year’s graphic novel, look for a third volume of short stories.

Not books:

• Andy Bell‘s latest toy, The Giver, should be on a boat from far shores about now, making availability at San Diego a possibility (I suppose it depends on if Customs wants to be cooperative or not).
• Rosemary Mosco is thoroughly delightful, selling me her very last paleontology-themed alphabet print; we spoke widely over sophisticated adult-type beverages about things that are extinct and the people that study them.

Webcomickers seen at the show, in addition to the above, included Jon Rosenberg, Rich Stevens, Jeff Rowland, Sam Brown, Jeph Jacques, Chris Hastings, Alexander Danner, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier (who reports the with her last Babysitters Club book about to be released, she is looking forward to receiving hate mail from people upset about her treatment of the X-Men instead of her treatment of Kristy, Stacie, et. al.), Randall Munroe, Ryan Sias, Dirk Tiede, Shaenon Garrity, Danielle Corsetto, Bryan Lee O’Malley, and MoCCA curator-extraordinaire Jen Babcock.

Overheard in casual conversation:

Kean Soo, on Ryan North — I have dirt on the Man-Mountain.
Ryan North, in sad confirmation — I have made some bad decisions.

Photos tomorrow.

New Sylvan Migdal strip!

Two years of comics at Planet Saturday!

Technosaurs included in new e-zine featuring comics, short ficion, art, and reviews!

Not [web]comics, but horrifying nonetheless!

There are loads of MoCCA recaps out there (go look at the funny mustache picture on that last post) to read and see. I thought I might take a slightly different tack with this week’s column. It’s less about the hi-jinx and more about what gets people through the door. When I got on the train in New Haven on Saturday morning, I wondered how long it would take before I saw someone else heading to MoCCA. Not very long after, a guy got on the train a wearing a Diesel Sweeties t-shirt, and at the Prince Street subway stop I saw a kid in a Books Rule t-shirt.

I’d never been to MoCCA before, and I actually found it kind of overwhelming; it was hot and crowded and loud, and, of course, great fun. Admittedly, I walked in a little rattled, discovering the person just ahead of me in the entry queue, who I’d not seen in years, was the last boy to break my heart (the beer I was handed somewhat shortly after lessened this weirdness substantially). I managed to navigate my way upstairs to the 7th floor to the Trees and Hills table before finding a map to the place.

Spread out over three rooms of varying sizes, plus another room seven floors above the main floor, MoCCA felt kind of like SPX but larger and more chaotic somehow. Maybe it was because everything seemed kind of on top of everything else (literally and figuratively, I guess, with this year’s addition of the 7th floor tabling space), or because the tables were close together or the lighting low. But the traffic on the main floor didn’t seem to slow at any point when I wandered through. However, it had a similar vibe to SPX; there were still folks walking about who didn’t have tables but wanted to trade minicomic print versions of their webcomics, and there were loads more people in attendance than listed in the program, what with all the folks sharing tables. And, of course, there were just folks looking to trade, including Suzanne Shaver who did this cool comic called The Cat Nap, and Kenan Rubenstein’s TICK, which is this amazing high-production values comic done up to evoke the feel of a calendar.
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So the lads of Wizard’s website were at MoCCA, although I missed spending any time with them which is too bad; the online version of the magazine continues to kick the ass of the dead-tree version. They have some cool panel coverage and pics for you to enjoy. Speaking of people I missed at MoCCA, Randall Munroe is rumored to have made an appearance, and the Comics Curmudgeon, and I’m not even sure who else I may have missed.

But I did run into The Twin Towers of Webcomics, ninjas with varying degrees of stealthiness, the official webcomics sweetheart, the tiredest man in webcomics and a vendress of fine cephalopods, the most exclamatory man in webcomics, a supremely talented man with a jigsaw, and the results of beer + Sharpie + bird tattoo [NSFW?]. Items were purchased, fun was had, beer was consumed. And that, in case you were wondering, is what MoCCA is all about. Or Christmas, I forget which.

Editor’s note: In case you were wondering, the photos are of: Ryan North, Jeph Jacques, a somewhat hidden Kent Archer & glaringly obvious Chris Hastings, Liz Greenfield, Jon Rosenberg & Meredith Gran, David Malki !, Chris Yates, his woodwork, and Jeff Rowland‘s addition to Jeph Jacques’s arm.

Photos of webcomickers from the big show coming tomorrow. In the meantime, two items relating to creators who have webcomics on hold for the moment.

Up first, Space Coyote, creator of the on-hiatus Saturnalia, drew a picture a while back, tranforming the familiar into a new idiom. Job offers resulted, culminating in a story in Simpsons Comics #131, a small epic entitled Too Crazy, Juvenile Prankster: BARTOMU!. I am not ashamed to admit that I LOLed. (story first seen on ¡Journalista!, although I saw that TV scene on DeviantArt a while back).

And straight outta Magical Brooklyn: Ian Jones-Quartey popped by MoCCA on Saturday to let us all know about a new project: nockFORCE. Check out the funny at nockFORCE.com, or at IJ-Q’s LJ, and somebody please remind this guy of the First Law of RPG World (now scheduled to return in October 2057 … good going, Kayoden Usoden “The Chaos Seeker”!)

As for nockForce itself, the writing has the same loopy quality as the much–beloved Bandwidth Theater shorts, and the animation feels loose & spontaneous without falling into the trap of aping Ren & Stimpy house style (I like John K. as much as the next guy, but too many young animtors can’t remember a time before him, and much of what gets produced these days comes across as Kricfalusi Lite™).

It’s been mentioned already, of course, but my short list of what to see at MoCCA is a little different from some of the ones Gary listed out earlier. The whole thing feels a little like The Small Press Expo, which I haven’t been to in (many) years but enjoyed greatly when I was there. Of course again, part of the fun with that was cramming four minicomics artists into one small shared table to cut way, way down on costs; I’m certain some of that will happen this weekend as well; I hear Matthew Reidsma‘s going to be there. Anyway, there’s a really interesting article about last year’s MoCCA, which got me thinking….

I’m excited to see Liz Baillie’s work, which I started reading primarily through a review I’d written for Xerography Debt . I’ve never seen the Dumbrella fellas in full convention swing, so I’m looking forward to that for certain. I like Pat Lewis‘s work, and Cathy Leamy’s.

But I want to hear what other people are interested in seeing! What are your recommendations for a first-time attendee?

I’m actually really excited about MoCCA, now that I’ve actually gotten my head around going (I kind of forgot that I’d agreed to go…). Part of what turned the tide from freaking out to looking forward to it was actually taking some time to sit down and look through the list of attendees, which ranges from a number of folks I already know, including the amazing Cathy Leamy , to folks whose work I know but have never met (like Pat Lewis). It’s a little bit of ‘zines, a little bit of minicomics, larger publishers, smaller publishers, and a bunch in between. It’s also exciting because every year I say I’m going to go and I never quite make it there.

Not this year!

One of the folks I’m most looking forward to catching up with, since it’s been too long since I’ve seen any of his recent work, is Mark Burrier. He publishes a number of print-only works, like Noose, and some sketchbook collections, and has a really interesting gallery of his different comic and illustration works (including a fabulous skateboard design. I was first introduced to his work at SPX and was kind of captivated by his website, which I find uses color in evocative ways. There’s something about the combination of the delicate linework and the way he uses color that I find very compelling.

While he’s perhaps not technically a webcomics artist, you can see little bits of his comics through his website. He’s certainly one of those artists who I wish did publish online more frequently, but it’s also one of those cases where I’m totally smitten with the print-only works as well; they have amazing covers and are absolutely worth checking out in person.

Watch for some more of my MoCCA picks for next week’s column…