MoCCA 2011 (Drinks on Gary Groth)

Huh? What? This has nothing to do with MoCCA!!!! Au contraire, mon frere. (How's my french?!) that is just Gigi sleeping with her YEAH comics and underneath Krazy (Rebecca doing her best Gilbert) in crazy anticipation of her collected YEAH when I told her I was bringing it back signed by Mr Bagge himself for her this weekend.

Oh but who is this little cutie you ask? Just Miss Nora Tomine. Cutest little girl in all of Park Slope. Cute enough to make me want another. Now that's cute. JUST JOKING TOM. (not)

From the slope, I head over to Carroll Gardens to talk "digital strategy" with Dan Nadel. He "allowed" me to enter PBHQ and I met his fabulous intern Molly. Really, I had to beg.

Oh, and I met Mr. Fatty. I mean he's cute, Dan, but he doesn't make me want to get a dog.

The real work started on Friday when all of my artists arrived at the Strand for a taste of NYC. This is Joe, Pascal, the always gracious and delightful Francoise Mouly and Jillian Tamaki.

Brecht Evens, Joe Ollmann, Pascal Girard and Ben Katchor. Apparently, Brecht and Ben are old friends. Who knew!

This is what I like to do, people, as soon as my authors get off the plane, I IMMEDIATELY put them to work. MAKE THOSE COMICS!

Francoise and Leigh Stein of Toon Books.

Pascal meeting Kim Deitch, who showed up to his Comics Journal panel three hours early, much to our delight and benefit. Kim told me he is working on a new book.

It's never hard to tell Bob to get to work, he's always working it!

Fan moment for all of us at D+Q: Ben walks over to Kim with a vintage book and they proceed to discuss it in detail. Swoon.

The window display at the Strand, one of the reasons it is the best bookstore in the world!

On our way to dinner, we meet Brian "Crosshatch" Heater and Sarah Morean. Brian did a great job on the programming this year and was as nice and friendly as ever.

On Friday night, we head out for dinner with Publisher's Weekly Calvin Reid and his wife Jody. Calvin and I bored everyone with our "remember when" stories. Sorry peeps, that's just how it is.

Afterwards, we went to Desert Island to say hi to Peter Bagge. Pete's the best.

as well as Gabrielle Bell! Gab was kind enough to carry on the evening with Joe, Pascal and Brecht as I had to go home to "rest my voice." But the night did not end for our D+Q cartoonists. Maybe next time I won't ask Gab to "babysit".

First run-in with a cop by a D+Q artist EVER. Europeans! You are NOT allowed to drink on the street in North America! Scheisse! Merde! Kakken! Hey, we don't make the laws.

And the next day, OK listen here D+Q cartoonists, Joe and Pascal know how to treat their poor poor publishers who are on their feet for 12 hours slinging comics. They brought us coffee, baked goods, and on Sunday cleaned the booth for us before we got there! A++++++.

Leon Avelino of Secret Acres strikes a pose.

Now this little girl was the cutest, sweetest person at the show with the best rehearsed pitch EVER. She came up, introduced herself as Emma T. Capps, explained to me that she is a 14 year old cartoonist who had the Gold Medal at the 2011 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She then asked if she could give me a submission of comics, buttons and postcards. As if the poise and moxie aren't enough, she is a damn fine cartoonist in her own right. We will be hearing much more from Emma.

11:15 AM on Saturday, three copies of PAYING FOR IT left.

Two more soon-to-be-convention-sell-outs, SCENES and WRONG PLACE.

Now this was a treat, Adrian's British editor from Faber & Faber was in town, Angus Cargill, and we were able to meet and chat. He's a very big fan of Adrian, and it was very sweet to see.

WFMU'sToo Much Information's Ben Walker and his friend Mathilde. Ben's show is being picked up by a few public radio stations, and will soon be big, I say...

How about Jessica's fancy new banner she designed? Gorgeous.

I'm pretty sure Ben is extolling the virtues of the wacom tablet to Adrian.

Adrian had a line his entire two hours. But he had one book left at the end!

Gabrielle, Joe and Pascal catching up from the night before.

It was a treat to meet Danish cartoonist Rikke Bakman of the comic GLIMT.

Ladies and gentlemen, the man of the weekend, Brecht Evens.

Meeting of the minds: Bill K, Chris Mautner and Jog.

Who is this? Only my favorite lady in all of comics, Janice Headley!!!!

Gahan Wilson and Gary Groth.

Gary Lieb, Michael Kupperman and Charles Burns.

"Kudos to my fellow libertarian Chester Brown."

Former D+Q staffer Alison Naturale. Alison come back!

Pascal and his soon to be convention sell out REUNION.

Joe extolling the virtues of drinking whiskey while inking to Adrian.

Mr. Mazzuchelli, perhaps my favorite person to see at MoCCA! He's just so darn happy and friendly! Always a treat.

Oh my gosh MORE CUTENESS! Say hi to Ramona and her mama Lauren Weinstein. Cutest little girl in New Jersey. Cute enough to make want another. BABY ON THE BRAIN!

Watching Brecht Evens watercolor during his signing is amazing.

Adrian working overtime, signing that last copy.

More Brecht. DAMN!

See how charming Brecht is? He has Jessica under his complete control. To his right is the fabulous Nicole Rudick and Adrian at our Saturday night dinner.

See, Joe and Pascal...UNDER BRECHT'S CONTROL.

Is Charles? Hells no, you have to be pretty darn magnetic to get the author of BLACK HOLE under your thumb. Next to Charles is Gary Lieb.

Damn you Brecht Evens, damn you!

And off to the Comics Journal soiree at the White Slab Palace on the LES, affectionately recoined for the evening by Gary Lieb as "White Slob Palace" for obvious reasons. Here's Gary talking to Marc Newgarden who swears he is working on that NANCY book. He swears!

Finally, I get to meet the elusive Rachel Uffner, proprietress of the esteemed contemporary art gallery of the same name. Oh, and I guess I should mention the BETTER half of Dan. Ha ha! Below them is Naomi Fry, whose contributions to TCJ I can't wait to read!

TCJ review Tucker Stone, and co-editor Tim Hodler. Tucker Stone has an outsized personality to match his soap opera name! I kid *sort of* I was very happy to meet him.

Had a nice chat with hopefully paid Voice contributor Richard Gehr.

How awesome is Janice? Her happiness is darn well contagious. My #1 convention goal this year is to be able to hang out with Janice at a show for longer than 5 minutes.

Yup, who is that there with Gary Groth, none other than Gahan Wilson. How much does that rule that Gahan came to the party? It rules, and everyone was pretty happy he was there, but maybe everyone was just a smidge more happy that Gary bought everyone drinks that night. I'M NOT LYING!!!! DRINKS ON GARY GROTH!

That's a lot of people to buy drinks for. As Gary Lieb said something to the effect of: "Dinner on D+Q? Drinks on Fanta? How things change in 20 years!"

Not too many photos on Sunday, apologies. My retailers came out to say hi. My dearest retailer in all of comics, Jeff Ayers of Forbidden Planet, who shared with me his plans to take over lower Manhattan, and I feel better now. And Tucker Stone and Amy Adams of the fine South Brooklyn establishment Bergen Street Comics.

This is me taking a photo of our booth around 5:00 PM with an hour to go, and yup, we are pretty proud of this empty table affair. Because there is nothing worst that schlepping boxes of unsold books after a con. Proud to say we had nothing left over! How did this happen? It's not luck, nor magic, Jessica and I have been honing our convention science for a good four years, and we are rocking it lately. Until TCAF....Now where's Tom...

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