Monday, July 05, 2004

MoCCA mentality: Also at Ninth Art, Frank Smith files a report from the MoCCA Art Festival:

"The spirit of MoCCA is similar to that which inspired the thirteenth edition of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. Like McSweeney's guest editor Chris Ware, MoCCA embraces the sum of comics history and gives it all a context.

"The ball started rolling with serious speed for MoCCA when Michael Chabon's THE ADVENTURES OF CAVALIER AND KLAY was released. The book succinctly brought the struggle and toil of comic book writers-for-hire into the minds of the mainstream literary community. Telling the story, albeit a fictional one, of what it was like for artists and writers to exist during the birth of the comics industry tore down the walls inside the minds of anyone who had marginalized comics in the past. The Comic Book Guy from THE SIMPSONS still exists as a stereotype for many, but with Chris Ware's publication of JIMMY CORRIGAN, it was impossible not to see that a revolution was in the making."