Word: comix
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...brief moment this past Sunday afternoon, Manhattan became the center of the alternative comix universe when the second annual MOCCA Art Festival opened at SoHo's Puck Building. Publishing planets and the stars that give them life were pulled in from as far as Europe, Australia, Canada and the West Coast. Where once there was a vacuum of interesting comix convergences in New York, this sudden gravitational pull proved irresistible to the medium's satellites. The line was out the door and on to the wet sidewalk. With crowds estimated by organizers at 2500, this year's attendance exceeded last...
While the festival included some presentations - one was on the history of underground comix, another featured Art Spiegelman - the publisher's ballrooms are the reason everyone shows up. Because the festival excludes mainstream and "genre" houses, the publishers who concentrate on singular artistic visions get a targeted demographic to die for. Consequently sales for these oftentimes one-woman operations far exceed those at most other conventions. Filled with interesting and often hard-to-find singularities, it becomes the best comicbook store in America for one day. So now it's getting crowded...
...this year at least, attendees totally scored. Several publishers had advance copies of books that amounted to a summer comix reading list. The biggest draw at the festival must have been Craig Thompson?s ?Blankets? (Top Shelf; $29.95). A giant, 500+ page graphic novel about growing up in Wisconsin, it has generated a tremendous amount of buzz, causing swarms of people to hover around the artist and his mountain of books. A deep and powerful work, it tells the story of a teenager growing up in an austere, fundamentalist Christian family. His struggles with faith and self-identity...
High production values have become de rigueur in comix, especially with small, boutique publishers. Two anthologies of this type really stood out. ?Project: Telstar? (AdHouse; $16.95) printed in black, white and an iridescent silver ink features short stories about robots or space. Using a varied range of styles and sensibilities, it completely defies the genre stereotypes associated with sci-fi. The other standout anthology was the mammoth 350-page ?Kramer?s Ergot? number four (Avodah/Alternative Comics; $25). Printed in full color, it gives some of the medium?s edgiest (and youngest) artists the opportunity to break out of the muddy...
...While changes at the MOCCA fest seem inevitable, I have faith that it will remain true to a fundamental principle of giving small comix press artists a space of their own. While it may suffer through some growing pains, having such a showcase in New York will bolster not just the medium but the city as well...