On Sunday afternoon, the second day of MICE, I headed to a panel discussion. The Massachusetts Independent Comic Expo is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, and from a (locked) room at the end of Newbury Street, to the Boston on Comb Avenue, a former luxury car showroom along the Charles River. It will even be held in the university’s historic Fuller Building. This is a different comics convention than most comics. Small print run, huge cultural capital.
To reach the panel, you must first go through the Curiosity Portal. A small museum attendant hangs on from friendly volunteers in front of a lottery table and exhibit of original comic art (MICE is sponsored by BCAF, the Boston Comic Art Foundation, and admission is free). I encountered a large swarm of bipedal rats, albeit in the form of sticky notes. On the wall of the portal were written instructions about the MICE experience and a blank notepad shaped like a speech bubble. I noticed a lot of notes from people thanking me for the show’s masking requirements. I went through a few doors and up a few flights of stairs to find one of the last seats, but eventually more chairs were brought in.
Panel “Hue and Saturation: The Use of Color in Comics.” It will be moderated by longtime MICE advocate Zach Clemente of Burgilhan News Agency. Panelists: 1000 Dead Draculas (actually one person, Natasha Tara Petrovich). Ethan M. Aldridge. Matt Emmons. Henry Uhrik talks about his collaboration with Kruttika Susaria. The lively audience, filled with affirmative groans, audible gasps, and eurekas, gave a room-wide positive noise in response to the color and the mention of Samurai Jack as an aesthetic influence, and the panels paused. I laughed, loud enough to put the emotion behind me.
Half about technique, half about inspiration, the resulting conversations were often ostensibly about practice but grounded in unique and often contradictory perspectives. Time management has come in many forms. Both Emmons and Dracula worked in pencil and color, respectively, moving away from using finished “ink” lines to define their art because it was time-consuming. Aldrige is all line, outlined with multi-colored ink using a pen, then washed with watercolor. The colored inks extended to the characters in the paint palette are derived from the practices of classic fairy tale illustrators. It’s also a quick-drying ink, so you don’t have to wait for the line art to harden before you can paint. Time management. All of these artists have created their own strong, original styles by stripping away everything that doesn’t add to their art when creating comics.
They all focus on things that don’t take much time. For some, stopping to plan colors disrupts the urgency of the art-making process. For another, the art can’t move forward without an extensive planning process that creates a color map that guides the reader throughout the comic along the plot. The third person works out what the story needs through trial and error until the right tool or the right look clicks. Everyone reads the page at about the same pace. It’s slow at first, but eventually it gets better. However, the pre-production process where everything is integrated takes an incalculable amount of time. Everyone talked about it, but it was never the case in terms of time.
Panel discussion highlights that the real connection between time management that enables professional success and those who are starting to face hurdles in learning new skills is simplicity being the key to scaling up I did. The demands of mass production require the elimination of extraneous steps. Anyone can create a manga, but creating a manga can be a headache. Another thing that all the artists on the panel had in common was that they let go of the idea of their finished work during the pre-production process. Despite the importance of time management, the work itself creates cues to pursue. Technical limitations lead to dynamic creative decision-making.
After the panel, I asked Mr. Emmons if the digital art was exactly as he imagined it to be, or if it needed more saturation so that it would look the way he wanted it to when outputting from the RISO printer. I asked. A “finished” version of the art. His answer cuts both in the direction of intention and discovery. Part of the printing process required adjusting machine settings so that the colors on the page were exactly as he intended. But the other part is adjusting his perception of what looks “best” according to the realities of the production process, and rather than being prevented from realizing his exact vision, he ends up with a satisfying “finished product.” ” is to reach the works.
This was in the exhibition hall of the Boston Room. First, I hit the lucky pocket press. They come from as close to Connecticut as you can get in New York. Is MICE the show of choice now, not just in New England but in the Northeast? I was too busy talking about them to ask Sarah Hagstrom and Steph Brante. Lucky Pocket is a micro-publisher of Risographs. And RISO is a notable example of the DIY culture in small news organizations these days. More and more art collectives are coming together so they don’t have to wait for someone else to present their work. PrintNinja, an offset printing service, is a MICE sponsor and has a table on the other side of the room. MICE is for people who want to send good manga to the world.
We already knew about LPP’s upcoming comic Basket , whose crowdfunding campaign will start the day after the show (let’s take a break). However, there was a cool double-sided, two-color QR code flyer on the table. Please feel free to pick it up. She is an expressionist who expresses sports girl comics, with a particular emphasis on print details. Their first graphic novel! However, that’s a little more certain than you might think. Crowdfunding for small or micropress publishers primarily involves books that are ready to print, and is more like a pre-order for a finished product than a means of enabling creation. This is not always the case. Emmons, in the next row (across from Silver Sprocket), was setting a stretch goal for one of his recently crowdfunded comics that would allow him to publish a longer book. If they meet, he and co-creator Aaron Rosti will tell more stories than they planned. Emmons’ Second At Best Press is also a RISO publisher.
One of my favorite books this year was from the Lucky Pocket KS campaign. Printed in pink and blue, the phonebook-sized anthology pays homage to the Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump collections of the 2000s. Knapsack Vol. 1: Cassette (yes, it’s also music themed) was funded in March and shipped in August. Everything is thoughtfully put together, right down to the ink colors on the pages (and the same goes for the baskets). Not just attention to detail, but love for the little things.
I mean, look at their booth. An assortment of comics and zines produced by them. It also includes preview prints that people in knapsack bundles and baskets can flip through. Neat RISO KS QR code memo on the table. pin. sticker. And prints too! The trend in the past was to hang prints behind the artist or lay out portfolios on a table for flipping through. The new approach reminds me a bit of a science fair. The table becomes the storefront of a small gallery, with a counter in the center. Hello! Can I have the Rec Room and printer stickers? Thank you! It is crowned with a small lucky pocket pennant and is very cute, very aesthetically appealing and practical. A wave of illustrators becoming personally involved in the printing process increased the amount of small prints (and little textural detail). It is in RISO Media’s interest to bring viewers closer to viewers. I’m not just saying that as a super myopic person.
MICE is a huge contradiction to comic convention expectations. If MICE is an indie con for weirdos (that’s a compliment) and OCs, then more mainstream conventions feature celebrity guests, Lunchbox characters, and artists who actually make comics and sell their work. A sacred section of the floor called the Yokocho will be featured. Over time, the amount (and demand) of “stuff” skyrocketed, and big-name exhibitors shifted their focus from comics to entertainment, including comic IP. They ask where are the comics? Well, they are definitely at MICE. Somehow shows like Boston have found a way to make comics coexist with prints, stickers, etc. Lucky Pocket is a great example of this.
Glacier Bay is located on one side of the Boston Room, across the row from LPP. An indie manga publisher. Although the creator lives on the other side of the world, aesthetically it fits perfectly here. Curated by Gourmet Micropress is the Criterion Collection of Comics. They’re interested in the very independent stories told in comics, and they’re doing everything they can to make the medium of storytelling equally sophisticated. The book itself is beautiful and unique. Bulgilham Press is coming soon. Their graphic novel, The King’s Warrior by Huahua Zhu, is another one on my book of the year shortlist, along with Lord Dunsany’s Link’s Awakening. At MICE, you can not only find comics, but you can find the best comics.
Across the hall is the Manga Research Center, home to several creators who publish books for young readers through Big 5 publishers. One of them, Megan Brannan, had a few fanzines that I wanted to check out. Also, a friend had a replacement fanzine about birdwatching. As we previously covered in our 2022 MICE coverage, there are important cultural connections between the YA scene and true left-wing indie comics. By the way, did you know that “The Wanderings of Mariko Tamaki and Gillian Tamaki” won both this year’s Harvey Awards for Best Young Adult Book and Book of the Year? It also won this year’s Eisner Awards for Best Young Adult Film and Best New Graphic Album. and Eisner for Best Writer and Best Penciler/Inker. They were the Rockstar headliners at MICE last year.
Against the backdrop of Albert Kahn’s Detroit-style showroom windows, the two meet, forming a line of featured exhibitors. This year’s keynote speakers are Dina Mohammed, alternative comics luminary Dennis Kitchen, and all-around legend Keith Knight. Tilly Walden, Vermont’s current cartoonist laureate, is a CCS graduate. Tony Davis, owner of Million Year Picnic, is in the center handing out books (for me, it was Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp). The 15th edition of MICE is a great way for MYP to end 2024 as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. MYP is New England’s oldest comic shop and one of the few black-owned comic shops in the United States.
The Brookline Room is on the other side of the hallway. Every MICE venue I’ve been to has utilized whatever space they have at hand to add exhibitors. They lined up in the halls of Cambridge. Our second exhibit hall is now open here in Boston. Bumper-to-bumper, like the Boston Room, with a similar mix of creative solutions for comics, books, print, and tabletop display setups. I saw the new book in the series I got in 2022 (Spaghetti Punch, it’s amazing). Maybe it was the graffiti on the wall, which is also a whiteboard, or maybe it was watching someone crawl out from under the table into the aisle without turning around, but here I am a little… The spirit of MICE continues through the ages, which felt similar to the old VFW. forever rich.
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