by Jon Gorga

Additional reporting by Ellen Stedfeld – scroll down for all the Awards of Excellence winners.

This past weekend it was time again for MoCCA Fest! Held annually since 2002, the festival has been among the premiere events for independent and underground comics in all of North America and nobody in the world of comics, cartooning, animation, or illustration can bear to miss it! This is where the luminaries of comix can mingle with current students from various art schools up and down the Eastern Seaboard while flipping through the latest books from publishers like Fantagraphics, Uncivilized Books, and Abrams ComicArts.

The festival continues to be a wonderful small-scale haven for independent artists of comics and other visual arts. The energy continues to skew refreshingly young, alternative, and female without making anyone across the spectrum of humanity feel unwelcome. It is really New York City’s oldest-surviving comics convention that doesn’t feel like what’s in the popular imagination when someone hears “comic-con.”

This year, the School of Visual Arts was celebrating a full decade of the SVA Risograph Lab corner area at MoCCA Fest. The Japanese-designed high-speed technique from the 1980s for achieving all the effects of offset printing much more reliably and cost-effectively took off in popularity in the early 2010s. So SVA proudly added a risograph machine and classes to their course catalog in 2015. Many of the self-published mini-comics for sale Saturday and Sunday were certainly made with it and the Riso Lab is the only facility specifically dedicated to this particular printing process in the world.

For the guests who felt overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle, there was a quiet offering available this time: CalmerCon! Only in very early days of operation, CalmerCon is a program that provides a quiet and safe space with soothing activities off to the side but not entirely off-site of big comics and geeky events. They’re aiming to be available for con-going folks who are tired, disabled, and/or neurodivergent at more and more New York City conventions in the coming months.

Bill Roundy, one of the winners of last year’s Award of Excellence for The Bee’s Knees Cocktail, debuted his latest comic continuing the series at the show this year! The Mary Pickford Cocktail is the latest in his “cartoon cocktail history series” explaining both the recipe and story behind all the weirdly named drinks someone orders at your local bar. Just the kind of fun, clever, and utterly unique mini-comic you’d expect to find at MoCCA.

The Si MoCCA Arts Award of Excellence has been given to a select 15 works discovered on the sales floor each year during MoCCA Fest since 2013 when the Society of Illustrators took over the festival. This year’s illustration and comics winners learned they were among the chosen few for 2026 at the official Society of Illustrators after-party on Saturday night.

Rebecca Mock won for their full-size Widow’s Wing print, Olivia Fields for LTHRWRK, and Sophia DeFelice for her untitled poster-size horse print.

Out of all the mini-comics at the show, Rachel “Rae” Avallone’s Open Eye, Tintin He’s Lullaby of the Pigs, Isamu Gakiya’s CHILLDIE VIII, and Kruttika Susarla’s Albo! were selected. Nick Bunch also won for The Resurrection of Low Down Coyote and Andrew Alexander for Caught lookin’ (both of which are both published through CRAM Books). Vincent Lau for Pacific Dream, Yoko OK for her Uncoiling: A Japanese-American Family’s History, and Michel Fiffe for the Master Collection volume 2 of his series COPRA.

Two of the winners were category-busting projects: Kevin Jay Stanton won for his new Botanica: Full Bloom tarot deck and A.T. Pratt for Uncle Andy’s Action Baby Comics: Animal Alphabet, a folding illustrated codex that can be read as a comic but in the form of an alphabet primer.

Plus, one publisher was recognized: Paradise Systems for the anthology SYSTEM 01: Hot Net Hotel rounding out the full 15 winners!

Since 2015, each of the Excellence winners receives a blue ribbon but they also all get The M. Prize, a small financial bonus to complement the lifelong artistic prestige!

From left to right: Bill Kartalopoulos (moderating), Claudia Bedrick (Enchanted Lion Books), David Saylor (Graphix at Scholastic), and Janna Morishima of (Kids’ Comics Unite!) at the “Kids’ Comics Today” panel.

Of course, the beating heart of any publishing event is the one thing that cannot possibly be replicated anywhere else and that’s the conversation on the main floor. Like every single previous MoCCA Fest, it did not disappoint. Late on Sunday, after his time on the kids’ comics panel, David Saylor (Creative Director and Senior Vice-President of the Graphix imprint at Scholastic) embodied the spirit of the show when he remarked that it’s “just the right size” so attendees meet “interesting people… Always.”

Official 2026 MoCCA Arts Festival Awards of Excellence:

These awards recognize the most outstanding work on view and are open to all artists tabling at the 2026 MoCCA Arts Festival.

This year’s judges included comic author Amy Chu, Philadelphia-based art gallery and indie comic shop Partners and Son founders Gina Dawson and Tom Marquet, and cartoonist Alex Krokus.

On Saturday, March 28th, judges received a stipend and spent the day viewing, purchasing, and evaluating artists’ works at the festival. Each judge selected their five favorite pieces—whether short-form comics, long-form comics, zines, or single images—with the goal of recognizing up to 15 Best in Show works.

Selected winners received The M. Prize, a $100 financial award given in memory of cartoonist Timothy Patrick Moynihan. Now in its 11th year, this prize is made possible through the generosity of Moynihan’s family and friends from his alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. In addition to The M. Prize, winners received an official MoCCA ribbon, a pen tablet courtesy of our sponsor Xencelabs, and inclusion in an Online Gallery, which will be posted in the coming weeks.

The Society of Illustrators is proud to recognize the following artists:

 

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