Photos: MoCCA 2009 Star-Studded Explosion!

The calm before the storm...the first day of MoCCA 2009 got off to a late start, so I got to snap a picture of the floor mostly free of attendees. Since MoCCA's usual space caught on fire last year, this year's Art Festival took place at the Regiment Armory in Murray Hill, a gigantic high ceiling auditorium space that made the show feel less like a small press fair, and more like a major convention.

That's not to say there weren't plenty of indie creators and publishers at the show, but I was particularly struck by how many big name creators were there as well. It seems MoCCA has continued to gain traction as a place where indie creators come to be discovered as well as a way for more major presses to promote their new, more artsy releases.

Comic stars, fresh talent, awesome sketches, and neat tablecloths, after the jump...


PART 1: Big Names

Adrian Tomine signing at the The Drawn & Quarterly booth. Growing up in Berkeley, I was a fan of local sensation Tomine since I was a teenager, and Shortcomings was my favorite book of 2007. He was taking meticulous care in his autograph dedications, it was awesome just to watch him do the lettering!


Seth, creator of Palookaville, was looking very dapper during his Drawn and Quarterly signing.

Writer Joe Kelly and artist Rodney Ramos were giving away and signing copies of Bang! Tango at the Vertigo booth. I mentioned that I loved the Free Comic Book Day edition of Four Eyes, another of Kelly's books, and he pulled out the second issue and gave me an autographed copy of that as well. Sweetness.

Brian Wood with DMZ aplenty at the Vertigo Booth.

David Mack had Kabuki titles and original art for sale, as well as his recent kids book, The Shy Creatures.

I am of course a huge fan of the Act-i-Vate gang, represented at their booth by Molly Crabapple and Dean Haspiel.

Becky Cloonan was selling advance copies of Pixu (review coming soon!) and promoting her webcomic KGB with co-author/artist Hwan Cho.

Evan Dorkin was promoting Beast of Burden, his upcoming book with Jill Thompson.

Tara McPherson was signing her illustration work as well as her awesome line of Kid Robot toys.

Action Philosphers artist Ryan Dunlavey was just about dwarfed by his booth's immense signage!

Part 2: Webcomics

The boys of Dumbrella.

Oh. Man. Randall Munroe of xkcd had the most consistently big crowd I saw all day. This dude must be like, a millionaire!

Ryan North! I had no idea he'd done these amazing instructions for time travel that have been making the internet rounds. He was selling poster versions that you can put you and post inside your time machine in case of emergencies.

Ben Rosen of White Cat, with his neon killer sign.

These buttons feature "Admiral Snackbar", a fastfood mascot featured in The Rack by Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie. I'm a big fan of puns, particularly Star Wars puns, and apparently so is Benjamin Birdie. Suffice to say, I bought one of these.


Part 3: Art and Stuff!

Cute overload....Mice doing martial arts by Stephanie Yue.

Some pretty brilliant t-shirt designs by Joanna Mulder (talk about an awesome geek name).

Okay; this is the best thing I saw all day. I'm sorry. I love creator-owned work, I love innovative, experimental comics that push boundaries, but I will always have Star Wars deeply implanted in my heart and soul, and these mini-anthologies of Star Wars comics are freakin' OUT OF CONTROL. I bought the first one, Harvest Is When I Need You Most. Just think about that title. That is beautiful. Each story is a wonderfully thoughtful and funny take on the Star Wars universe, and I may have to go buy the other two tomorrow. These are edited by Shelli Paroline, who autographed my copy along with a little picture of an Ewok.

This is a mural by Michael DiMotta, the colorist of my new favorite DC title, Ink. Turns out DiMotta is an extraordinarily talented penciller as well, and this double tryptic of animals was actually painted as mural for a school. Lucky kids!

More Michael DiMotta. Man, this is good stuff. Be sure to check out his homepage for high-res images of this print and much more.


Artist Jerry Ma was sketching at the booth for Secret Identities, the first ever Asian Superhero Anthology (which I recently covered for Midtown comics). This was just his "warm-up" sketch, so I think we can safely assume his sketches throughout the day were pretty badass.

This print by Lucy Knisley caught my eye, for obvious reasons. I asked when she did it, wondering if she drew it before or after the zombie explosion of the last few years, and it turns out she did it specifically for the convention, and turned it out just two days before the show! I should probably go back and buy this.

Nathan Stapley and Scott C at the Doublefine booth. I have to say I had no idea Doublefine, a studio I know best for creating the brilliant Psychonauts videogame and the upcoming Brutal Legend, did comics as well. But they do! Like I didn't have enough stuff to check out...JEEZ. Also they gave out free stickers.

Here's JoeGP, creator of the Talking Guinea Pigs webcomic. I'd never read it before, but I liked the art and writing so much on my initial flip-through, I had to buy one of the hard copies. He also drew me a sketch which I will post tomorrow at a more reasonable hour.

These two creators win best tablecloths of the day...

Martina Fugazzotto, recipient of last year's Friends of Lulu Kim Yale award, was displaying her awesome sex-positive sex-ed comics on an equally awesome psychadelic tablecloth.

Box Brown, author of Love Is A Peculiar Type of Thing which came out last week and looks great, had this exquisite 1970s Disco Peanuts tablecloth. Every Charlie Brown is happy when he's dancing to disco music! I asked Brown if he had a particular affinity for Peanuts, and he responded with an enthusiastic yes, adding that any comic featuring a character with a perfectly round head is a big draw.

That's just Day 1, folks! And there's even more on Geekanerd's Flickr.