Thursday April 8th was my FIRST EVER SIGNING at Jim Hanley's Universe in Manhattan. It was a pre-MoCCA Fest Women in Comics get-together featuring some really awesome independent female comic creators all chosen by Jim Hanley employee and awesome cartoonist in her own right Rachel 'Ronnie' Freire. I was so excited to take part in it I was the first girl to show up with merch in tow, giant shit-eating grin on my face. Lots of friends came by to show their support and it was awesome to sit alongside such amazing ladies. Hopefully next signing I'm a part of I'll actually have a comic! ;D
Friday the 9th I headed over to 192 Books on the West side with my pal game designer Christy Sawyer for Drink & Draw Like a Lady, a meet and greet for female cartoonists and creators. It was soooo crowded! Christy and I mostly just hung out in the corner, since it was shoulder to shoulder people and partook of the free wine being offered. Needless to say, we got a little tipsy.
Photo by The Jenya, see the rest of her shots here! And some more shots from the evening here!
As Christy and I were walking home we came across someone throwing away A GIANT CASIO KEYBOARD. @__@ So OBVIOUSLY we had to take pictures pretending to play it!!
Saturday and Sunday were the ACTUAL con! (I did all that before the actual con? Jeezums!)
I had a small sliver of a table (only half of a normal table- at $250 a pop that was all I could afford!) but that didn't stop me from rocking the spot. Fortunately it was on the end of an aisle, so I could set up everything on my table then sit/stand to the side. Saturday of the convention was INSANE! As a friend described, I was 'holding court' for 7 straight hours! It was so great to see so many friends and fans, it was like every time I turned around someone else was there for me to talk to. It was also exhausting! At one point when I was particularly exhausted, my friend Kyle Baker introduced me to one of my artistic idols, Jamie Hernandez, of Love & Rockets fame and what resulted was a hilariously awkward five minutes of us standing and looking at each other and nodding and smiling. I being intimidated because he's an amazing artist and creator of one of my fave comics, he being intimidated by me because I'm a foot taller than him with rather big knockers. (LOL!) By the time it was nearing the end of Saturday I was so fatigued from being so excited to talk to everyone I skipped out on the afterparty (which sounded to be a bust anyways) and just grabbed sushi and beers with Ballsy and some of my pals from DC Comics.
On Sunday the con calmed down a little bit, as is typical for the last day, and I had a chance to do some sketches for fans.
All in all I'd definitely chalk up this convention to a success, I'm still on the fence over whether or not I'll do it again next year, mostly because the tables are so expensive.
PS: If anything though this con has started to ignite some fires of initiative with me getting off my bum and getting on doing a comic. Had some great conversations with people about what I want to do and where I want to take my work that was very motivational. I ordered the book 'Story' by Robert McKee at the urging of my old friend Maximo Lorenzo, so hopefully that'll help me out.
PPS: I also discovered a really awesome comic being put out by a chick who came to MoCCA all the way from Portland! Her name's Catherine Peach, and she does the adorable comic 'Pussy Fuzz', which I am in LOVE with! Soooo cute! You can check out her work here! My favorite find of the convention- even though I never actually walked around. She actually had the brilliant idea of walking around selling her comics as a cigarette girl, and even had mini-comics in cigarette boxes. If I get the table at NYCC I actually want my best friend/PR agent Fenny to kind of do the same sort of thing with my promo stuff, since that con will be insanely huge.
PPPS: Forgot to post this video of MoCCA taken by The Action Room. You can see me at 1:41 for a half second.
GO PAIGE! I have faith in yooouu!!
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