* Now is the time where everyone links to everyone else’s MoCCA wrap-up reports.
* Tom Spurgeon compiles the most pertinent info and opinion, good bad and ugly, coupling it with a reminder that despite the good, the bad was probably actually bad and don’t let’s deny it. He notes something I’d meant to mention myself: there were actually empty tables this year, which seemed weird.
* On that point, he links to a comment from professional parade-rainer Evan Dorkin, who provides a useful rejoinder to the people who were saying “it wasn’t that hot in there” (I promise you, it was that hot in there) and makes mention of some perpetual problems I’d just taken for granted: how badly the festival is promoted on MoCCA’s website and how inaccurate and out-of-date the exhibitor list ended up being. (For example, if I had a nickel for everyone who came up to me desperately searching for Kate Beaton, I’d have two bits easy.) On the other hand I think it’s pretty churlish to compare the Armory to some personality-free high-school gymnasium.
* While we’re mining for comment-thread gold, here at ADDTF Cheese Hasselberger of House of Twelve notes that the early-bird price for a table at next year’s MoCCA will be a whopping $400; he can only speculate how much more exorbitant the full price will be. I can’t imagine how that doesn’t price most of the minicomics makers and self-publishers right out of the show, no? Couple that with all the administrative snafus and the potentially kiln-like venue and folks could stay away in droves, seriously. And that would be really sad because MoCCA done right instills confidence in comics as an art form like no other show.
* I enjoyed Heidi Mac’s Saturday-night report, which contained the interesting factoid that the more flush shows and events at the Armory rent ACs. I really can’t get over how MoCCA could book a venue with no air conditioning after several brutally hot years at the old location, including the immediately preceding year.
* I also liked Brian Heater’s extremely comprehensive report, maybe the most professional picture of the show this year.
* My report’s here, if you missed it. I want to state again for the record how much I prefer the “everything in one big room” model to the “everything in a labyrinthine combination of rooms” model.
* Of course, if you prefer your MoCCA reports to contain drawings of the Golden Age Nite Owl from Watchmen by Seth, look no further than Rickey Purdin’s!
* Speaking of, Tom Spurgeon interviews Seth. Douglas Wolk flagged a passage of great interest to me:
I’m a guy who has a fake name. I used to have long silver peroxide hair. I used to walk around in a judge’s robe and welders goggles. I now walk around in a gabardine overcoat and a fedora. I named my house. Clearly I am interested in persona and self-mythologizing.
I’ve never quite figured out how to square that aspect of Seth’s gestalt with his old-timey aesthetic, which seems to be as much about authenticity as anything else. Watching him draw live and in person was sort of revelatory–his line “makes sense” to me now in ways it didn’t before–so I’m going to try to delve into his work a bit more and see what I can come up with.
* Torture Links of the Day: American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been “convicted” of “spying” in a North Korean “court,” meaning they could be subjected to the very torture techniques American interrogators cribbed from NoKo and ChiCom torturers via our military’s SERE training. Elsewhere, ABC News interviews Lakhdar Boumediene, the Red Crescent worker captured, tortured, and held without charge by America for nearly eight years for the crime of…absolutely nothing. (Via Glenn Greenwald, who provides context in terms of how the fact that Guantanamo is full of innocent men like Boumediene is nearly always elided by both sides of the debate over detainee policy.)
* A Heavy Metal remake with segments directed by James Cameron, David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, Zack Snyder, and Jack Black & the guy who did Kung Fu Panda? As announced by Kevin Eastman to FilmSchoolRejects.com? Yeah, color me skeptical. (Via Topless Robot.)
* Finally, the new, needlessly-well-animated-by-Alex-Kropinak episode of Marvel Superheroes: What The–?! is up! I LOL’d, and not even at one of the gags I wrote.
I watched HEAVY METAL 9 years ago, and it hadn’t aged well then. Either it’s borderline unwatchable to me now, or I’d hail it as forgotten genius. Exercise best left to the reader.
What did you LOL at?
My favorite bit was Bucky wiping the windows. When I gave the thumbs-up to that gag during the writing process I’d totally forgotten that he’d be wiping the windows of the SHIELD Helicarrier in midflight.
Churlish!!!
Oh yeah, that was pure 100% concentrate Kropinak genius. A Marvel exec who shall go unnamed thought it would have been funnier to have USAgent doing the windows and Bucky as the star, but he clearly didn’t get it.
Personal to Evan Dorkin
Okay, fine, “churlish” is a funny word. But if you take another look at my post both before and I dropped the c-bomb, you’ll see that your beef with the Armory’s appearance was the only place where I disagreed with…