Split into one day of exhibition, on Saturday from 11am to 7pm at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church and a day of panels on Sunday from 11am to 6pm at the Wythe Hotel, Comics Arts Brooklyn (or CAB), is widely regarded as one of the best shows on the East Coast, and I'm sorry that I never manged to make it when I lived out there.
The show is free, which is awesome, giving you more money to spend on comics!
While we won't be giving this show as much coverage as, say, the Small Press Expo, the Panel Patter crew will be highlighting a few of the roughly 100 exhibitors, a complete list of which you can find here.
It won't be active immediately, but AJ will be first up in our series, which I have named "Catch a CAB" because sometimes I think I am clever. You can read all our CAB-related posts here.
The Sunday Panels look quite interesting. Here's a few I'd try to make, if I was able to do so:
11:00 Al Jaffee: Unfolded
Al Jaffee began his long and illustrious career in comics in 1941 with the “inferior man” feature for Quality Comics. He later joined his high-school pal Harvey Kurtzman at Mad Magazine in 1955, and went on to create hundreds of features for MAD, including the iconic “Mad Fold-In” and “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” Now, at age 93, he has contributed to 480 issues of the magazine, more than any other mad artist.
Jaffee will be interviewed by Michael Kupperman, a cartoonist of whom Conan O’Brien said “this guy may have one of the best comedy brains on the planet.”
12:00 Charles Burns: Down the Black Hole
We’ll enjoy a retrospective of Burns’ work as an illustrator (Sub Pop, The Believer, The New Yorker) and as a cartoonist (Black Hole, Big Baby, RAW), with a focus on the recently released third book of his graphic novel trilogy, X’ed Out.
Burns will speak about his earliest influences and share some of his earliest work, including some childhood drawings. The discussion will advance through his posters and graphics, talk about the impetus for his massive masterpiece, “Black Hole,” and land with an examination of the “X’ed Out” universe.
Burns will be interviewed by Paul Karasik, cartoonist and instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design.
1:00 Tim Lane, Jim Rugg, and Ben Marra: Neo Noir
These three cartoonists love tough yeggs, mean streets, and femmes fatales. All three have recent work evoking smoky, double-crossing noir. Each creator will present and discuss his own gods of Noir through slides depicting specific works by artists whose work they admire.
Lane describes his work as addressing the “Great American Mythological Drama,” and there is something mythic in the stature of all three of these artists, whose low-life characters carry themselves with the burden of sin on their shoulders. However, though they share a taste for long shadows and deceit, their work could not be more different.
Lane, Marra, and Rugg will be interviewed by Karen Green, Librarian of Ancient & Medieval History and Religion at Columbia’s Butler Library.
5:00 Raymond Pettibon: High and Low
Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art for Black Flag, The Minutemen and other groups in the So Cal Punk movement. Initially his work was mainly circulated via band flyers and limited-edition photocopy books, making him a figurehead of the handmade zine movement. He has since gone on to international acclaim, occupying a role in the art industry that affects every level of culture from film to fashion to interior design. His process and identity remain deeply rooted in the often uncelebrated story of both newspaper comics and the comic book and their unsung craftsmen and women. This talk will focus on the role comics and comics history continue to play in his development.
Pettibon will be interviewed by Josh Bayer, a comics artist, editor and educator.
CAB looks to have a great show put together, and I really like the idea of a day of buying shit and a day of listening to people talk, so you don't have to parcel out your time. Really cool idea, and it means exhibitors can go to the panels, too, without worrying about losing sales.
We hope you'll attend the show if you're able!
