Culture

Coming to this year's MoCCA-fest and wondering where to grab a quick lunch to eat in between selling your mini-comics? Look no further! Although considered drab by New York standards, the Rose Hill/Gramercy/Flatiron area surrounding the the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory, setting for MoCCA Fest, still offers a colorful array of authentic, delicious and affordable cuisine from around the world within a radius of only a couple of blocks. (It IS New York City, after all.) Bearing in mind the small budgets of most MoCCA attendees/indie cartoonists, we're going to highlight places where, for $10 or under, you can still get a decent meal -- some of them even prepared by Iron Chef level celebrities. At a few places, if $10 isn't enough for a meal it is still enough for some rare treat that will make your trip one to remember. For dinner you will want to grab some friends and a subway or cab and head to one of the great restaurants of the city, but your lunchtime is definitely covered right here.

As we predicted last week, the Rob Granito team is attempting to get their second act rolling with a round of tell-all interviews. You may recall (it was all so long ago and little noted) that Granito is a person of dubious artistic skill who has been going around to comics shows for 15 years selling copied art that he's passed off as his own. Now, Comics Cube reports a letter is making the rounds:

Dov Torbin and Asher Berman

are two Americans who happened to be in Egypt when the recent revolution broke out. The Revolution Will Be Televised is Torbin's comics account of two American travelers who, through clouds of tear gas, watch a country evolve and find themselves altered by the experience. It's launching today on ACT-I-VATE.

Cartoonist Peter Bagge has long had a thriving side career as a member of various garage bands. Now his outift Can You Imagine? has just released a new video for the song "Drive," directed by Mott Todd. Bonus: Artwork by Peter Bagge!

Why isn't more Moebius in print in the US? That and other questions examined in today's installment.

As mentioned in a previous item, this week's Village Voice is the Cartoon Issue, and the centerpiece is a longish article called If Cartoons Are So Big, Why Don't They Pay?; it's one of several recent prominent articles -- like the recent Marvel profile in the em>NY Times -- that focus on the rather frugal level of profits one can expect from publishing comic books in America.

This week's Village Voice is the Cartoon issue, to tie in to MoCCA Fest, and regular Voice contributor Ward Sutton has done the cover. Sutton is known for his ability to mimic other art styles, but this time, we do believe he's topped himself -- esp. with Marlys Wonder Woman and Rusty Brown Bumstead. BUT...see next item.

More info here.

Art schools and apprenticeships find themselves more popular than ever, let's all tip our hats to inspiration artist Rudolph Töpffer's for his creation of boarding school for boys. While anyone can teach themselves and become successful on their own, a lot of the specialty schools allow access to equipment, connections, mentorship of working professionals and opportunities in a condensed amount of time that are priceless.

After an abscence of several years, Top Shelf is back at WonderCon, with Team BB Wolf -- Rich Koslowski and J.D. "Johnnie" Arnold -- and new releases, NIGHT ANIMALS by Brecht Evens and INCREDIBLE CHANGE-BOTS TWO by Jeffrey Brown.

Damn -- Google loves April Fool's jokes as only a bunch of borderline Asperger's tech nerds can (Moss, see under). For today, they've also replaced the dignified and beloved font Helvetica with the Rob Granito of fonts, Comic Sans, when you make a search for "Helvetica."

We don't have the energy for an April Fool's joke so this doozy from Comics Alliance will have to do.