This year is already kind of blurry. It was certainly dominated by Small Press Expo for me but I’m OK with that. It was an incredible amount of fun and I’m already looking forward to next year (we’re already working on it!).

I also read a tremendous amount of comics. There were plenty I loved — many I didn’t expect to — and I still get a thrill picking up new comics. Yes, there was certainly some silliness with regard to the DC reboot, but Wonder Woman has me hooked (in a lazy way — I read it when I remember). It was also an amazing year for indie comics — I am awed by all the talent that’s out there.

I didn’t get to travel to shows as much as I would’ve liked to — most of that was a money issue, but I was feeling pretty burned out on the usual ones. I didn’t attempt to go to the MoCCA Festival or New York Comic Con; KingCon III was postponed and as much as I would’ve loved to have gone to Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, the timing just didn’t work out. SPACE was fun but I don’t know if I’d go back. I always love the Baltimore Comic-Con, but that was more of just a hanging out opportunity for me this year.

(I will totally take sponsorships if people want to send me to Stumptown or Alternative Press Expo next year. Kids Read Comics Celebration is taking place in Ann Arbor on my birthday weekend and that’s a definite possibility. It may end up being mandatory.)

For some reason, in 2011, I expanded my “media” “empire.” I started up a Tumblr account (or started using it?) and a Facebook page. I also appeared on local show Fantastic Forum and Rusty and Joe interviewed me during SPX (I need to learn to speak into the microphone better. Also? No real idea what I said).

I was also greatly honored to be a part of Big Planet Comics Podcast #17 and I do hope they invite me back at some point because it was a great deal of fun (you should always listen to the podcast — even when I’m not on it).

And the photo on this post? Well, that’s me sorting through Dean Haspiel’s minicomics. Now, everything is going to the Library of Congress (I believe all are in the LoC’s possession now), but Warren Bernard just wanted to do an initial sort/inventory before we sent them off to see what was there. And certainly, it’s fresh in my mind, but when I think about all the things I’ve been privileged to be able to do this year, this felt like one of the bright spots. It was thrilling seeing all these incredible comics, even if I didn’t get to keep any of them.

I am lucky to know such amazing people who let me do so many cool things. I hope that continues in 2012.

Still, money is an issue, so that quickly began ruling things out (one of these years, I’ll make it to Stumptown Comics Fest, I swear). But Ohio didn’t seem to far off and the list of exhibitors had some old favorites and some creators who don’t seem to go out to the East Coast too often, so it seemed like a good idea.

So I enlisted my friend Timothy Lantz to come along and suggested he get a table (it’s not necessarily his scene or crowd, but he knows a few people who do exhibit there every year). It will be great to see him for an extended length of time.

Yes, I know everyone else is going to C2E2 and while it wasn’t an option for me, really, I’m still happy to be going to SPACE.

If you’ll be there, I’ll likely be hanging around Tim’s table quite a bit. Otherwise, I’ll be buying and reading comics and the sorts of things people do at shows like this.

I will probably be updating throughout on Twitter and Facebook, but I’ll have something up here no later than Monday evening.

It will be a fun vacation. And will continue my tradition of visiting places and really only seeing the inside of a hotel/conference center.

Still, no one seemed particularly excited about it this year. I was, more or less, but it wasn’t the all-consuming “I can’t wait!” excitement I’ve had in the two previous years. Basically, MoCCA (when I finally got it into my head what days it actually was) became a good excuse to get out of town for a couple of days.

I remember spending brunch last year on the Saturday of the show studying a print out of the long list of debuts that Robot6 had posted. That blog had three posts this year, as far as I can tell, on MoCCA, and none of them were that extensive. The Beat had a little bit more, but still, it didn’t seem like there was really that much new stuff. (A lot of the coverage of MoCCA seemed to be more about events surrounding it — pre-parties and signings and after-parties and such — than the show itself.)

And my experience with the show kind of made that clear. I mean, certainly, when you go to a bunch of these things that are all centered along the Mid-Atlantic, you’re going to see the same creators again and again, quite often with the same comics. But I saw very few mini-comics that I hadn’t seen before. When I compare it to last year, where I felt like everything I saw was new and exciting, this just felt like more of the same.

The bigger publishers — First Second, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, etc. — were doing good business and my web searches seem to indicate that’s why a lot of people were there. Don’t get me wrong — I was delighted to have Mike Cavallaro sign my copy of Foiled!, but I’m not someone who really cares about getting books signed all that much. If I want books from these publishers, well, that’s kind of what Amazon is for. (I know that sounds terrible, and I’m only partially serious, but you get my point.) The bigger-name guests like Frank Miller also kind of seemed out of character for the show.

So what do I think happened this year?

I think the change to April — even though people knew it since last year — threw some people off. Comics take time and when you’re used to knowing you need to have something done by June, you may be hard-pressed to get it done by April instead, even if you have a good amount of warning.

I also know exhibitors weren’t too happy about various issues last year — floor layout, the heat, and even the building itself. I don’t know their reasons, but there are a handful of people that I’ve seen in the previous two years that weren’t there this year. (A friend overheard on the train home that exhibitor space didn’t sell out — which would explain the random round tables occupying some of the space in the back.)

MoCCA this year faced some competition — both from Boston Comic Con and Stumptown Comics Fest in two weeks. The economy being what it is, I think some West Coast creators that may have done MoCCA otherwise had to pick between the two and stuck with the one that was closer to home. (That happened to me — last year, I had every intention on making it to Stumptown this year.)

And about that: I’m not necessarily blaming this all on the economy, but I have noticed that so far this year, some other events have seemed a little scaled-back. I think last year, we were all hurting but we had plans in place and were able to go through with them. This year, we’re still hurting which meant we had to make some choices. Maybe solo creators couldn’t afford the table fees; maybe they didn’t have the funds to get their comics printed. And so that left the “bigger” indie publishers — who are in the one part of the publishing industry that’s not entirely sucking — to pick up the slack.

I don’t really know, though. I think MoCCA’s in transition and I think that’s OK. It’s still a good show and I think it will continue to be a good show, even if it changes into something else (on Geek Girl on the Street, I mentioned I think there’s absolutely room for a “literary” comic con, and if that’s the direction MoCCA moves in, that’s cool).

Still, I think for me, if next year is a choice between going to Stumptown and going to MoCCA, I’m going to Stumptown (mostly because I’ve never been).

But Drink & Draw Like a Lady was blast and I’m glad I came here just for that.

This weekend is the kickoff (yes, I realize that’s not quite April) — and the Family Day is always entertaining and cute.

The next weekend is the Freer’s annual anime marathon. They only have three movies this year, one of which I’ve seen, but I’ll still get up early, head into the city and get in line to see Chocolate Underground. Also that day is Silver Spring’s Big Cherry Block Party, which will be my substitute for the next weekend’s Sakura Matsuri, which I’m missing because …

That’s also the weekend of MoCCA Festival, with Drink & Draw Like a Lady that Friday. I’m still finalizing my travel plans, but I will try to be there Friday night for that. (And there’s also the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA and Japan Society’s j-CATION – A Taste of Japan event with a show by Asobi Sesku if I thoroughly want to exhaust myself that weekend).

The next weekend I’m going to go see my mom for some downtime and to go to Richmond Craft Mafia’s Spring Bada-Bing.

Then, wrapping up the month is the final weekend of Festival Imagé at MICA. This is tentative because it depends on how dead I feel once the month is over.

Also occurring in April are two events I won’t (or can’t) be going to: Wondercon and Stumptown. One of these years, I swear, I’m going to make it to Stumptown. MoCCA shifting to April prevented me from going this year.

Thus far, May is wide open. And I’m thinking that’s good because I’m likely going to want to sleep through the entire thing.

Apparently, Portland is second only to NYC as far as the number of comic publishers and creators that live here. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but it’s not a big surprise either. I take it for granted that people are creative around here. Everyone’s either painting, in a band, writing something, animating something, or all of the above. And, as I learned at the Stumptown Comics Fest, the rest are making comic books.

For me, as a casual comic book reader, the only reason to go to a convention is to check out the independent publishers, and this one certainly delivered on that (although I also love the terrible costumes, which this one was disappointingly devoid of). The local heavy hitters were on hand of course, with tables by Top Shelf, Oni, & Dark Horse, but I was pleased to see that they weren’t anchoring the floor. They had the same set-ups of the single title self-publishers or the public library.

Going over the 134 tables, of which I’d estimate half were self-publishers, reminded me of rifling through the zine bins at punk shows as a kid. And just like those punk shows, there was a decidedly local & DIY feel to the con.

I was a little daunted by the sheer mass of autobiographical & relationship books. Without some kind of connection or insight to the work, these are generally an auto-pass for me.  My tastes are stereotypical geek-boy: I’m a sucker for anything post-apocalyptic (Freak Angels, Walking Dead, Daybreak), and will also buy pretty much anything with a robot. The robots were represented in force, but I didn’t find many zombies.

The only panel I attended was on the business side of the industry, which was full of people busily taking notes on the bad copyright advice being given. Meh.

If there was a star of the show, judging by the size of his line I’d say it was Jeff Smith of Bone fame. An honorable mention goes out to I Saw You… (the illustrated craigslist missed connections anthology), which was a guerrilla entry, making it’s way to the top because I noticed it on about a dozen different tables.

My personal prize of the show was a $8 tin of mustache wax, which came with a free copy of last year’s Mustaches: For Fun and Profit (although there were no silly costumes on the convention floor, the mustaches were out in full effect).

There were a few other items that caught my eye, amongst them:

• Sid Love. A “choose your own comic” about a plot to take over the world with genetically engineered squirrels or some such, with each potential ending leading to an MP3 online (a little gimmicky, but he made at least one sale with it).
• Dar. A bio / relationship book that I can accept because it’s in strip form (in addition to being well written & drawn)
• I finally picked up Blankets by Craig Thompson (that motherfucker is heavy)

If you’re in town next year, I highly recommend stopping by. Or for a taste of something similar coming up, check out the Portland Zine Symposium in July.

So a big thank you to Chris for allowing me to experience this vicariously. Check out Chris’ blog Slacker DIY and go hang out at his bar.