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"Matt Groening? Eh."

On Saturday, December 4, 2010, the 2nd Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival was held in Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Williamsburg. The organizers were the retailer Desert Island, the publisher PictureBox, and the writer Bill Kartalopoulos. In that the proprietor of PictureBox, Dan Nadel, is also an editor of this site, I’ll refrain from a minute-by-minute show report, although rest assured everything was absolutely perfect and most of the sick and lame were healed, save for myself – I am still extremely lame. However, I also found a bunch of comics at and around the show. Here’s a few of them. (more…)

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Don’t worry yourself too much with the text up top – it’s just one item of many from the recent Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, albeit featuring the artist of my personal favorite comic of 2009, Viz’s English edition of GoGo Monster by the great Taiy? Matsumoto. No no, don’t worry, Matsumoto wasn’t hidden away at some obscure table on the show floor — although you could be forgiven for thinking that, given the huge crowd and the crazy amount of stuff out for perusing — I just subscribe to the longview in comics convention terms. That is: the classic rule of comics show prudence dictates that you spend most of your time with comics you won’t easily be able to find outside the show, and I tend to extend that rule to spending time with comics outside the purview of the show itself that I otherwise won’t be able to access due to the geographical limitations of living in a bed of corn husks.

So Saturday had me at the Brooklyn Con itself — and I plan to write more about that later this week — but then Sunday also had me pursuing an unexpected hook up with old Warren magazines in Manhattan, which I believe is called ‘painting the town red.’ More pertinently to the image above, I also stopped by the Bryant Park location of Kinokuniya to mess around with their new releases rack. I think in the rhetoric surrounding manga and graphic novels and the decline of print format serialization in North American comics, there’s a real tendency to forget that Japanese comics typically don’t just drop on the market as books – there’s still a relatively large system of print serialization at work, not as mighty as it was years ago, no, but I think something like the weekly Big Comic Spirits still enjoys a circulation of a couple hundred thousand, and ‘shelf copies’ of recent issues can be a really fun thing to explore, especially when they’re inviting various luminaries from publishing history to contribute self-contained 30th Anniversary stories that aren’t likely to show up in book form any time soon. Hence: Matsumoto, my purchase of the October 25 issue (#45 for 2010), and the true purpose of the text up top.

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I thought he was joking. But Norman assured me he wasn’t. A few weeks back, from the stage of The Society of Illustrators, Sam Gross announced that his iconic (and still REALLY funny) gag cartoon was going on the block for 20K. And lo, it has come to pass. I should initiate a Kickstarter campaign to buy this. By the way: Sam Gross: Still really fucking funny. And underrated!

Herewith the goods.

You get to the buy the front…

… And the back of this piece of original art!

Do it!

Oh, and by the way, don’t forget about the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival! Saturday, 12-9. PictureBox will be on the mainstage with Chippendale, Dorkin, French, Harkham, and Thurber! A gang if there ever was one.

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Photo by Chris Rice

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Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday. It was an exceptional day despite the weather. I wanted to give a special thanks to Bill Kartalopoulos for running such a great slate of programming.

Anyhow, the day was great fun and even thought provoking. A couple bits of business: We will be posting the Saul/Panter talk here in a couple days, and by the end of the week PictureBox will have a bunch of new products online, including the new Jimbo mini, CF’s new zine, and Leif Goldberg’s 2010 calendar.

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PictureBox & Desert Island Present:

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival

Saturday December 5th 2009: 11 AM – 7 PM
Our Lady of Consolation Church
184 Metropolitan Ave.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Free admission

Download the festival program here for a map and schedule.

UPDATE 12/1/09: I’m pleased to announce that Mat Brinkman will be at the PictureBox booth signing books on Saturday.

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival consists of 3 components in 3 nearby locations in Williamsburg, Brooklyn:

–Over 50 exhibitors selling their zines, comics, books, prints and posters in a bustling market-style environment at Our Lady of Consolation Church, 184 Metropolitan Ave.
–Panel discussions and lectures by prominent artists, as well as an exhibition of vintage comic book artwork at Secret Project Robot, 128 River St.
–An evening of musical performances at DBA, 49 S. 2nd St.

In the cozy basement of Our Lady of Consolation Church (184 Metropolitan), exhibitors will display and sell their unique wares. Exhibitors include leading graphic book publisher Drawn & Quarterly of Montreal; famed French screenprint publisher Le Dernier Cri; artist’s book publisher Nieves of Zurich, Switzerland; Italian art book publisher Corraini; master printer David Sandlin; and tons of individual artists and publishers from Brooklyn.

Featured guests include the renowned artists Gabrielle Bell, R. O. Blechman, Pakito Bolino, Charles Burns, Anya Davidson, Kim Deitch, C.F., Carlos Gonzales, Ben Katchor, Michael Kupperman, Mark Newgarden, Gary Panter, Ron Rege Jr., Peter Saul, Dash Shaw, R. Sikoryak, Jillian Tamaki, Adrian Tomine, and Lauren Weinstein, among others.

PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE:
Secret Project Robot
128 River St. and Metropolitan

1:00 GARY PANTER & PETER SAUL
Two generations of painters, Gary Panter and Peter Saul, will discuss their shared history, image-making, narrative, and the joys and dilemmas of making difficult work. Moderated by Dan Nadel.

2:00 PANELS AND FRAMES: COMICS AND ANIMATION
Comics and animation operate very differently, yet retain deep historical and stylistic connections. R. O. Blechman, Kim Deitch, and Dash Shaw will discuss the relationship between the two forms with moderator Bill Kartalopoulos.

3:00 BEN KATCHOR
Ben Katchor has chronicled the pleasures of urban decay and other metropolitan phenomena in comics including Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and The Jew of New York. Katchor will read performatively from his comics and discuss his work in this rare spotlight presentation.

4:00 FLATLANDS: COMICS ON THE PICTURE PLANE
Do comics need a third dimension? Lisa Hanawalt, Mark Newgarden, Ron Regé, Jr., and David Sandlin will consider the tension between comics’ illusionistic worlds and their status as images on a picture plane. Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.

5:00 LIVE COMICS DRAWING
In a one-of-a-kind comics drawing session, Frank Santoro will present Gabrielle Bell and R. Sikoryak with a rough page layout based on his principles of composition and design. These two artists will translate Santoro’s layout into two unique pages of comics, live, before your very eyes.

Also: An exhibition of 1950s original comic book art curated by Dan Nadel

PERFORMANCES
Death by Audio
49 S. 2nd Street

Finally, at the end of the day visitors can troop over to Death by Audio at 49 S. 2nd Street, for an evening of musical performances by cartoonists, organized by Paper Route, and including performances by Kites, Ambergris, Sam Gas Can, Boogie Boarder, Nick Gazin, Graffiti Monsters, Dubbknowdubb.