MoCCA FEST 2013

Museum of Cartoon and Comics Art Festival 2013

An event at the 69^th Regiment Armory

MoCCA Fest 2013

An event on April 6-7, 2013

·         The event was enjoyable full way as the focus was mostly on independent comics rather than big brand names, unlike Comic Con which was focused mostly on DC and Marvel comics and other corporate entities.

·         Artists that I met included Emma T. Capps http://www.chapelchronicles.com/ and George O’ Connor http://olympiansrule.com/ and David McGuire http://gastrophobia.com/

·         The panels were actually interesting as the topics on hand are about artists making money through alternate distributions and the topics that artists can tackle on their work.

·         The booths had mostly “amateur” artists that are not sponsored by corporations. Rather, the bulk of their staying power comes from their self-published work and comics that they store and bring to the convention and sell directly to the audience.

·         At the Dare 2 Draw booth, they included George O’ Connor and Amy Reeder Hadley (artist who worked on Madame Xanadu for Vertigo, Supergirl and Batwoman). I met them both and even got Ms. Hadley to critique my art that I submitted to the Comic Book League Fall 2012 publication.

·         A good majority of the cartoon artists there have online tumblr or blogs or other means of digitally distributing their content for free. They usually said they did so due to the getting to habit of being on a deadline.

·         On the first day (Saturday), I wore a Captain Marvel (Shazam) shirt when I went by the Jack Kirby Museum booth, which I pointed out that I being there was notable irony as Jack Kirby worked on Captain Marvel in his early career.

·         There was a noted amount of people this year as years before lesser numbers of people show up on Sundays but in this year’s case a steady number of persons showed up for both days.

·         As the tables are manned by those who donated a good sum of money to the Museum of Cartoon and Comics Art and the Society of Illustrators, the quality of the booths’ wares do not necessarily match each other’s standards.

·         Despite the move of the Museum of Cartoon and Comics Art to the Society of Illustrators, MoCCA Fest was still held in the same armory as the years before.

·         There are notably no cosplayers this year as previous years of MoCCA Fest had at least a minority of people dressing up. There were, however, persons who dressed eccentrically.

·         Overall, MoCCA Fest was an excellent experience and I hope to go again next year.