Sunday afternoon, the next day MICE travelI will go to a group. Massachusetts Independent Comic Expo are celebrating their fifteenth anniversary this year and have moved from a (locked) room at the end of Newbury Street to Boston UniversityThe historic Fuller Building on Comm Ave was formerly a luxury car showroom on the Charles River. This is a different convention than most comic conventions. Small print run, huge cultural capital.
To reach the panel, you must first pass through the Curiosity Portal. Before the raffle table and display of original comic art, after you receive a small gift from the museum attendant (sponsored by MICE) BCAFthis Boston Comic Arts Foundationadmission is free) and run by friendly volunteers. I encountered a group of bipedal rats, albeit in sticky note form. The portal wall has writing prompts related to the MICE experience, as well as blank notepads shaped like word balloons. I noticed a lot of people leaving messages thanking the show for the lockdown requirements. Going through some doors and climbing some stairs, I found the last seat, although they ended up bringing in more chairs.
Panel Discussion: “Hue and Saturation: The Use of Color in Comics.” Moderated by Longtime MICE Advocate Zach Clement of burjhan publishing house. Panel members: 1000 Dead Dracula (actually a person, Natasha Tara Petrovich). Ethan M. Aldrich. Matt Emmons. Henry Uricktalking about him and Krutika Susaria. A lively audience, filled with affirmative grunts, audible gasps and eurekas, filled the room with positive noise in response to mentions samurai jack The color and aesthetic had such an impact that the panel had to stop, laugh, and agree with the sentiment.
Part about technology, part about inspiration, the resulting conversations are often ostensibly about practice but driven by unique and often conflicting perspectives. Time management comes in many forms. Both Emmons and Dracula no longer use finished “ink” lines to define their art, as this takes time to create in pencil and color respectively. Aldrich uses full line, multi-colored ink, outlines drawn with a dip pen, and then washed with watercolor. Colored inks extend into the character of the palette, extruded from the practice of classic fairy tale illustrators. And they’re quick-drying inks, so there’s no need to wait for the line art to set when the paint comes together. Time management. All of these artists have stripped away the stuff that goes into making comics that doesn’t contribute to their art, and have also established their own unique and powerfully original styles.
They all focus on things that don’t take time for them. For a person, stopping to plan colors interrupts the urgency of their art-making process. On the other hand, art can’t move forward without an extensive planning process, creating colorful maps to guide readers through the comic along with the plot. The third person works through trial and error to figure out what their story needs until they find the right tools or the right look. Everyone typed out the page at about the same speed, slower at first and steady towards the end. But the time that goes into the pre-production process, where everything comes together, is immeasurable. Everyone talks about it but never the time it takes.
The panel emphasized that the real link between time management for career success and the barriers people face when learning new skills is that simplicity is the key to scaling. The need to eliminate redundant steps comes from the need for mass production. Making comics is something anyone can do, but making comics is the pain in the ass. Another thing all the artists in the group have in common is that they abandon the idea of a final piece that comes out of the pre-production process. While time management is important, the work itself can provide clues to what people are after. Technical constraints inspire dynamic creative decision-making.
After the panel, I asked Emmons if the digital art was the finished product he imagined, or if it had to be more saturated so that when it came out of the RISO printer, it would look the way he wanted it to. Print it out, thus making it a “finished” version of the artwork. His answers are as much about discovery as they are about intention. Part of the printing process meant adjusting the settings on the machine so that the colors on the page were what he wanted. But the other part is letting the realities of the production process adjust his vision of “best” and arrive at a satisfying “finished” piece, rather than getting in the way of achieving the exact vision.
This is in the Boston Hall showroom. first i hit lucky bag press. They came from as close to Connecticut as they could get to New York. Now, is MICE an event for the Northeast and New England? I was too busy gushing about them to ask Sarah Hagstrom and Stephen Brandt. Lucky Pocket is a risograph micropublisher. Today, RISO has become a prominent DIY cultural presence in small media. More and more art groups are coming together so they don’t have to wait for others to put out their work. print ninjais an offset printing services company, a sponsor of MICE, and has a table on the other side of the room. MICE is for people who want to see good comics around the world.
i already know basketLPP’s upcoming comic, whose crowdfunding campaign launched the day after the show (everyone take a break), but they had these cool double-sided, double-color printed QR code flyers on their desk that I couldn’t resist I chose one up. It renders the expressionistic style of cartoons of athletic girls, with a special emphasis on detail in printing. Their first graphic novel! Although this is more certain than it sounds. Crowdfunding for small or micro-presses primarily involves preparing books for printing and is more like a pre-order of a finished product than a means of realizing its creation. That’s not always the case – Emmons, who’s in the bottom row (opposite) silver sprocket), who has a stretch goal for a recently crowdfunded comic, which is to write a longer book. If met, he and his co-creator Aaron Losti More stories will be told than planned. emmons Second place for best media is another RISO publisher.
One of my favorite books this year came from the Lucky Pocket KS event. A phone book-sized selection, printed in pink and blue, pays homage to the circa 2000s girly beats and Shonen Jump collect. Backpack roll. 1: Cassette tape (Yes, it’s also musically themed) Funding was raised in March and shipped in August. Thoughtfully put together, right down to the color of the ink on the page (for basket). Not just attention to detail, but a love for the little things.
I mean, look at their booth. Various comics and magazines they produced – including a bunch of Backpack and preview printing basket You can read it. The RISO KS QR code is neatly posted on the table. pins. sticker. And prints too! The trend in the past was to hang prints behind the artist, or to leave a portfolio on a table to leaf through. The new approach reminds me a little of a science fair, with the tables transformed into a small gallery storefront with a teller window in the middle. Hello! i can have one recreation room And printer stickers? Thanks! There’s a little lucky pocket pennant on top, and it’s so sweet, so beautiful, and so functional: The wave of illustrators who are personally involved in the printing process has increased the number of smaller prints (and small textural details). Getting them closer to those viewers is a benefit of RISO media, and I’m not just saying that as a super myopic person.
There is a compelling contradiction between MICE and comic convention expectations. If MICE is an indie con for weirdos (free) and OC, then the more mainstream con will feature celebrity guests and lunchbox characters, and a hallowed area on the floor called Artist Alley, where the people who actually make the comics Sell their stuff there. Over time, the volume (and demand) of “stuff” has skyrocketed, and high-profile exhibitors have shifted their focus from comics to entertainment involving comic IP. Where are the comics, they ask? Well, there is no doubt that they are on MICE. Somehow, shows like Boston find a way to let comics, prints, stickers, etc. coexist, and Lucky Pocket is a great example of that.
glacier bay Located on the side of the Boston Room, across from LPP. Independent comics publisher. Aesthetically, they fit in perfectly, even though their creator lives on the other side of the world. The curator of Gourmet Micro Press is standard collection Comics: They care about the fiercely independent stories told within them, and they go to great lengths to make the medium of storytelling equally complex. The books themselves are beautiful and unique. burjhan publishing house Coming soon. their graphic novels, Huahua Zhuof king’s warriors– like lord dunsanyof Link’s Awakening—This is another one on my Book of the Year shortlist. Not only can you find comics on MICE, but they are some of the best comics one can find.
On the other side of the hall is Cartoon Research Centeras well as several creators who have published a book aimed at young readers from a Big Five publisher. one of them, Megan Brannana couple of fanzines I wanted to read, and a friend’s trade magazine about birding. I’ve mentioned this before in my 2022 MICE coverage, but there are important cultural connections between the teen scene and the true left of dial-in indie comics. By the way, did you know virtual tokyo and Gillian Tamakiof roaming Both won this year Harvey Award Best Young Adult Book Award and Best book of the year? Also won this year’s Eisner Award Best Young Adult Work and Best New Graphic Album. There are also Eisner Awards for Best Writer and Best Penciler/Inker. They were the rock stars at last year’s MICE.
be opposed to albert kahnThe Detroit-style showroom window intersects on both sides to form a row of featured exhibitors. This year’s keynote speaker Dina Muhammadalt-comix luminaries Dennis Kitchenalmighty legend Keith Knight. Vermont Current Cartoonist Award Winner Tilly VardenCCS graduate. Tony Davis,owner Million Years Picnicat the center, puts books in people’s hands (for me, this is Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp). The 15th MICE is a great way to end MYP 2024, their fiftieth They are the oldest comic shop in New England and one of the few black-owned comic shops in the United States.
The Brooklyn Room is on the other side of the corridor. Every MICE location I’ve attended has used whatever space they had on hand to add more exhibitors. They line the halls of Cambridge; they opened a second showroom in Boston. Just like the Boston Room, there’s the same mix of comics, books, prints and creative solutions for tabletop display settings. I saw a bunch of new issues that I picked for 2022 (Pasta Punch,marvelous)! Maybe it’s the fact that all the graffiti on the walls is also a whiteboard, or maybe it’s watching someone crawl under a table into the aisle instead of walking all the way, but it feels a bit old school to me here, and the spirit of VFW MICE style hasn’t aged well. affected by the passage of time. Always rich.
