But this is a show that featured paper product. Paper and humidity don’t mix well, and even worse is sweaty fingers all over the paper product. THAT’s the reason you need air conditioning, even a/c that can’t match the heat in intensity, as has happened a couple times at the Chicago show in the past. At least it’s somewhat cooler.

But were any of you at MoCCA 2008? That weekend was one of NYC’s summer finest, with temperatures in the high 90s and humidity not too far behind. Simply walking from the subway to the Puck Building was an exercise in endurance, and then walking into a warren of tiny rooms with no A/C was…well, it was just hell. I think I lost about 15 pounds in water weight on the Saturday, and I refused to go back on Sunday.

So this year, it seemed to me, MoCCA was trying to remedy the nightmare of ‘08 with a new venue. No? And why the heat gets to be such a big story this year is mysterious to me.

FAR worse, to my mind, was the chaos of Saturday, with lines ’round the block, delayed opening, undelivered books, panel scheduling mayhem, etc. That was Mickey Mouse, and MoCCA needs to step up their game.

The costs to exhibitors, and the expected increase, also need to be re-examined. The sort of creators that MoCCA is trying to attract can’t be asked to pay $400 a table. How do you make the festival worth your while if you’re selling a pile of $2 minicomics? Or if you have to raise the price of the minicomics past the point where minicomics ought to be priced? Sure, the festival is for exposure, but it shouldn’t come completely at the creators’ expense.

That being said, despite standing in the sun for an hour and a quarter (hey, time flies when you’re hanging out with Tucker Stone), despite having to miss the Fletcher Hanks panel that I’d been looking forward to for weeks because of scheduling changes, despite the heat, I had a fabulous time and bought lots of great stuff. And met great people.

That counts for something, doesn’t it?

This isn’t a job, where you have to put up with certain inconveniences for the money. Nor is it a personal improvment, like school or exercize, where you trade suffering in the present for future benefits. It is supposed to be fun. Not Art, not Community, but Fun. So if it wasn’t fun, then “the show” failed, even if it wasn’t the comics’ fault.

As has been mentioned before the tables at MoCCA are some of the most expensive of all comic shows. That, along with the travel to-and-from the show, and accommodations (and this is New York City, so we’re not talking cheap here) means that our cost for a “leisure activity” can be pretty high well before the doors to the show open.

But along with just making (some) money, shows like MoCCA are more about meeting your readers or people that are fans of your work. Or, meeting other artists and writers that you may have never known about, were it not for the show.

Put all of that in an environment that is incredibly uncomfortable, off putting and (to some) poor health conditions) then you’re less likely to accomplish any of your goals for this show.

Tom, I love your run-on sentence! What an excellent summation.

But maybe that’s me.

This wasn’t “life happens.” This was “bullshit planning and execution” happened. Most people did go and did have a good time, and you could read about these experience the same places you’re reading about the less fortunate factors, but you can’t blame other people for being hesitant in returning when a company that had its best sales weekend by a multiple of maybe three didn’t choose to re-up.

It’s not 1987 — people have options now. Buy shit, expect to receive more shit in the future. Comics fans should have learned THAT by now at least.

I guess the question is; what is more important…trawling through boxes of comics or being comfortable whilst doing so?

If that makes me appear “holier-than-thou” then so be it.

Things happen. Life happens. In the overall scheme of things, being in a large muggy room isn’t that big a deal. That it would be a deal-breaker for going to a funny book show is kind of odd to me.

FWIW, I believe the show organizers are idiots if they don’t address the concerns of the attendee’s, vendors and creative types. But the fact that there has been SO MUCH focus on being uncomfortable illustrates how much we, as a society, demand being physically comfortable and have an intolerance for being “hot and sweaty” when we’re involved in some activity where this isn’t to be expected.

It has more to do with than mere comfort. Traveling to MoCCA would be a major expense for me (one I so far have not been able to justify even once, despite only being 4 hours from NYC), and would likely involve bringing some or all of my family. I want to know to a reasonable degree of certainty that if I’m making that expense and asking people I love to spend the day on this particular adventure, that they won’t be miserable, the doors won’t open late and the bolts won’t be popping out of the girders left and right, as it appears they were metaphorically doing this time out. The organizers just need to acknowledge that, you know, “mistakes were made,” and let people interested in the show know what, if anything, will be done to address these problems next time out. A little genuine concern for what went wrong and an apparent commitment to making future shows the best experience they can be would go much further than, in Tom’s words, “a soft apology in the thank you letter.”

I’m sympathetic to the idea that a show like MoCCA is supposed to be about something that gets lost when you talk about the nuts and bolts of a show, but the way that gets to happen is to have the nuts and bolts function the way they should when it’s your seventh time doing something. Then the show itself becomes invisible and no one talks about those aspects.

When the nuts and bolts aren’t functioning and artists with 20 years in the game are saying it’s the first time they’ve seen books delivered that late, and artists are leaving mid-show and multiple people including vendors who have been to every show are proclaiming they don’t know if they’ll return, and then prices get raised so that they’re some of the most expensive tables in all of North American conventions, and people are openly saying that these things have happened because of choices made by the show runners, and several people are furious about a soft apology in the thank you letter, I think that’s a story as much a Gary Panter/Frank Santoro doing a kick-ass panel or David Mazzucchelli releasing a kick-ass book or Kevin Cannon selling out of his Far Arden or a kick-ass sketchbook or two and I’m happy to cover all aspects of a show that present themselves as news that way.

If this is how we feel about a funny book show, then what would it say about us over something actually important?

Just something to think about.

Yet that kind of environment would certainly put me off going. Given how much it would cost me to go from where I live, being that uncomfortable would not be appealing.

I’m hoping to hear that they people behind it are working on ways to fix the matter soon though.