My trip to MOCCA yesterday was cut short because my kennel went out of business without telling anyone, so I ended up having to leave the dog on his own, which meant adding 5 hours drive time each direction to the total time he would have to maintain.
It didn't leave nearly as much time in the middle for visiting and sightseeing as I had hoped.
Which was okay, because MOCCA is geared more towards comic books and graphic novels than strips and panels, and, like a lot of those events, is so crowded that it's hard to stop, relax and see new material, so you end up spending time with people whose work you already know.
Despite the difference in emphasis, there were a few familiar faces in the crowd, the first of whom was Maria Scrivan, known here for her panel, Half Full, and who was selling cards and prints.
Or at least she would have been, if the Mad Magazine Alumni Club hadn't been holding a meeting right in front of her table, that being Ed Steckley and, in the now-collectible jacket, Sam Viviano.
(For those who missed it, Mad Magazine has decamped from New York City and, with a whole new staff, is about to release its first issue from California, perhaps but hopefully not shifting from Yiddish to Val Speak in the process.)
Ed had just concluded a stint at the booth next door, signing the book he illustrated and designed, "Rube Goldberg's Simple Normal Humdrum School Day," and I would add that anyone who buys the Kindle edition of that book should be beaten over the head with a more weighty tome.
I feel that way about almost all picture books and cartoons, but this is certainly one to be seen full-sized.
Though, of course, you're only getting it as a gift for your child. To help teach STEM concepts.
Not for yourself because it's fun.
And I didn't get to finally meet Roz Chast because her signing stint conflicted with the editorial cartoonists' panel I was mostly there to see.
However, I did spot the familiar face of Charles Kochman, familiar to readers of Brian Fies's blog as "Editor Charlie," and chatted him up in the aisles near Abrams Books, where he is in charge of comic-oriented stuff.
We talked a little about "Mom's Cancer," Brian's first and breakthrough book, but also about his forthcoming (March, 2019) book on the fires that destroyed his home and those of many others in Northern California.
Charlie said, based on what he's got in hand so far, it's the best thing Brian's ever done and his enthusiasm seemed not just the hype of an editor with a book to sell.
And it's particularly convincing since Charlie helped squire "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?" through all its wonderfully inventive production oddities.
Speaking of books one ought not to buy on Kindle.
The panel discussion more than justified the drive down, which was a triumph mostly of gathering the right people and then getting out of their way.
Kent Worcester was more of a moderator than a discussion leader, giving each cartoonist a few minutes to show three examples of their work, then asking the group some very open-ended questions to discover their opinions, not simply to confirm his own, and throwing it open to the audience for the full second half of the conversation, which is what it was.
What impressed me -- and when I say "impressed me," I mean both blew me away and depressed me -- was that all four cartoonists, some of whom were meeting each other for the first time as they took their seats, echoed a theme they had all been considering, which is that Trump is only a symptom of a deeper -- potentially fatal -- disease within the body politic.
Steve Brodner led off with a piece he'd done well before Charlestown, which he said drew complaints because the swastika is a third-rail icon and Trump had not yet expressed his opinion that there were some fine people among the white supremacists at that rally.
But he said his use of the symbol was based on his feeling that Trump was simply picking up on a popular sense that America needed a strong man in the White House, and that the combover hid the underlying reality.
He followed with a "family portrait" he had done at the time of the inauguration, based on Goya's "Family of Charles IV," in which, he pointed out, he was portraying Trump as, in his words, a nebbish, because "Trump is simply a vessel," and not the actual issue: "It's all about the fascism, Stupid," he said.
Mr. Fish had also begun his critique of Trump early in the game, with an illustration for an article.
In this, he explained, he chose an All-American, unassailable icon to demonstrate the level of corruption, echoing Brodner's point that the problem is not the particular man but the system that enables him.
And this artistic tip: To portray what has happened to everything good and true in America, he confessed, he had looked at festering sores on dogs.
Well, we find our models where we can.
Ann Telnaes followed, explaining that, while her on-line page at the Washington Post allows her more latitude than when she works with the print edition, even there she was surprised to be able to use the word "pussy" in a cartoon.
The editor, however, reasoned that Trump had introduced the word into public parlance and so it was now out there.
And, of the three cartoons she showed in her introduction, the one that got the most audience reaction was this animation, which illustrates the sycophancy that surrounds Dear Leader.
Eli Valley wrapped up the introductions with a panel from a comic that based the entire Trump administration on his fear of penile inadequacy, followed with this commentary in which he put blame on an entire system of enablers, and not simply a cynical GOP Congress that allows any assaults on decency and good government so long as their program moves forward.
In the piece (which you may be able to read if you click on it), he depicts Trump as Gargantua, suddenly bursting and releasing 10 million radioactive tarantulas, only to have the Republicans, Democrats, Media and Hillary Clinton explain and bloviate upon the crisis rather than dealing with it.
I'm well over-length already, but one more thing that came up in the discussion: Asked about memes and the amateur competition to professional artists, there was, once again, a general agreement that it's a well-established pattern of media. It becomes more accessible to more people.
Brodner compared the people who make and post memes to garage bands, saying that some of them will sharpen their skills to the point of becoming professionals, though that was countered in the conversation by consideration of the issue of whether any of them, however skilled, would find a way to make a living at it.
Telnaes, who just wrapped up a year as president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, said that the group is trying hard to encourage young artists, but is finding that many of them don't have a sense of political cartooning.
I wish I could disagree.
In any case, we then had the next panel standing outside the door and had to wrap things up. Ann went down to take a shift signing her book at the Fantagraphics booth, where Steckley and Viviano were poised to make sure nobody bought one.
Just kidding. Just kidding.
Oh, and the dog was happy to see me but mostly because I was there to let him out after 16 hours.
Never mind Lassie or Rin Tin Tin.
I have my own definition of a canine hero.
Comments