LOOKING FOR JEFF

The MoCCA Art Festival is different from a comic book convention, as it embraces the creator and the connoisseur to a degree that is celebratory.

Unlike your standard comic convention, there are no boxes full of back issues for sale, no model kits, no bootleg copies of THE JUSTICE LEAGUE television pilot, and no one - male or female - is walking around dressed as Vampirella.

Which isn't to say that all of that stuff is bad. No, the thing is, your standard comic book convention, which has been in existence for roughly thirty years now, is a beast unto itself, and separate from the goals of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art.

I remember going to a convention around the time that BONE first came out, and I searched and searched for Jeff Smith and finally found him stuck in the back hanging out at a table by himself. It's like that at almost every convention, where the creators who aren't doing the major superhero work can be marginalized. It's not because superhero books are better than small press books, and it's not because people don't understand the small press; it's because each form needs its own space in which to exist. MoCCA provides space for everyone in the halls of the Puck Building, be they from the world of mini-comics, animation, small press or the mainstream.

'MoCCA embraces the creator and connoisseur to a degree that is celebratory.' At first MoCCA was merely a gathering of artists in support of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, and the second year it expanded to fill another room, and it was announced that the Harvey Awards would be held at MoCCA. By the third year there was a snack room, and the awards themselves.

The museum itself, which was a bit of a free-floating thing, has found a more-or-less permanent gallery in lower Manhattan, where you can see Harvey Kurtzman's art as well as works by those nominated for Harvey Awards, such as GB Trudeau (DOONESBURY), Patrick McDonnell (MUTTS), Chris Ware (ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY) and others.

The festival itself boasts creators from across the entire medium, bringing in the likes of Mike Mignola, Tom Hart, Roz Chast, Klaus Janson, Joe Sacco, Jimmy Palmiotti, Frank Miller, and on and on. With so many top-name talents gathered together, it almost feels as if the festival should be an exclusive meeting of comic book minds, but then without the fans there, trying out new books and talking to their favourite creators, it wouldn't be the same.

THE MoCCA PHILOSOPHY

The spirit of MoCCA is similar to that which inspired the thirteenth edition of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. Like McSweeney's guest editor Chris Ware, MoCCA embraces the sum of comics history and gives it all a context.

The ball started rolling with serious speed for MoCCA when Michael Chabon's THE ADVENTURES OF CAVALIER AND KLAY was released. The book succinctly brought the struggle and toil of comic book writers-for-hire into the minds of the mainstream literary community. Telling the story, albeit a fictional one, of what it was like for artists and writers to exist during the birth of the comics industry tore down the walls inside the minds of anyone who had marginalized comics in the past. The Comic Book Guy from THE SIMPSONS still exists as a stereotype for many, but with Chris Ware's publication of JIMMY CORRIGAN, it was impossible not to see that a revolution was in the making.

For those of us who have been reading comics forever, the realisation that comics are smarter than their Hollywood adaptations is a no-brainer, but for others who never took the time to give comics a chance beyond chuckling at ZIGGY, looking at comics as art or literature was a revelation. And, of course, comics can be incredibly fun and addictive. So the more, the merrier. But it's not as if MoCCA is yearning for comics to be taken seriously as an art form, man; they already are. That's why there's a museum.

RECOGNISING A NEW YORKER

To add further credence to this idea, consider Roz Chast, the 2004 MoCCA Award Recipient. Chast joins Jules Feiffer and Art Spiegelman as MoCCA honourees.

Feiffer and Spiegelman are rather obvious choices, as they've been out there dutifully expanding their respective niches of the comic medium for a while, but Roz Chast represents something a bit different. For those unfamiliar with Chast's work, she's a regular contributor to The New Yorker, where her twitchy menagerie of ordinary people wrest empathetic gags out of mundane scenarios, often making light of those worries we all have but don't want to admit to, like believing that a party will be better after you've left, when Jesus and Buddha will show up and someone will offers a "very safe, short-acting, non-addictive, extremely fantastic new drug".

While The New Yorker of today publishes fiction and non-fiction by a tightly insular group of contributors putting forth a learned perspective, its founder Harold Ross (like Playboy founder Hugh Heffner) was a cartoonist who refined the one-line comic to an art form and created a platform for which writers could communicate through drawing, and vice versa. And Roz Chast is quite simply at the top of her field. The New Yorker, the very bastion of the literati, has always held its arms open to one-panel gag comics, but it took Spiegelman's essays on Jack Cole and Bernie Kriegstein to open up the gates for Chris Ware's strips to be published there alongside its fiction.

So what MoCCA does is place the sum of comics history into context, and everything is fair game. In one side of the hall you'll find Ted Rall, and in another you'll see Klaus Janson or Mike Mignola, and in another, Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer, and up-and-comers like Jim Rugg and Jasen Lex, and its almost dizzying.

The feeling is akin to SPX or San Diego, but New York City itself - where so many comics professionals live and work - has never had anything like this. It's simplicity itself. Instead of searching for Jeff Smith in some hidden corner, he's there as a featured guest, which is where he should have been in the first place.

FOR ALL YOUR HERO NEEDS

It's worth noting that the difference between MoCCA and your typical comic book convention is that MoCCA is aimed more at adult readers of comics, as most small press books take a more mature look at the storytelling opportunities available in comics.

So where the new McSweeney's provides a package that pulls together the history of comics and offers up a sampling of some of the best new work in the comics scene for discerning readers, McSweeney's has now started work bringing comics to children with their Superhero Supply Store in Brooklyn, NY.

The Superhero Supply Store is an extension of the 826NYC organization, which was an extension of 826 Valencia. The 826 organizations are nonprofit writing labs designed to help children between the ages of 6 and 18 develop their writing skills.

To that end, 826 and McSweeney's decided to open up a storefront to draw kids into the writing lab, and that store is the Superhero Supply Store, where one can purchase such esoteric items as grappling guns, capes and X-ray goggles.

Between Superhero Supply Stores and MoCCA, it's an exciting time to be a fan of the funny books. While Marvel and DC flail about trying to understand their audience and fail to either bring in more children or retain their adult readers, it's comforting to know that all one really needs to do to keep kids interested in comics is to open a store where they can buy a cape. It's simplicity itself.

Frank Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

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