MeCAF Report

The Maine Comics Arts Festival was held Sunday at the Ocean Gateway event building in Portland, Maine. Femme Noir artist Joe Staton and I – along with our wives – attended the show, and publicly debuted the Femme Noir: Dark City Diaries trade paperback.

This was a creator show, and it skewed very heavily toward indy/alt/arty small press/minicomics creators and a small handful of kids' comics creators, so something like Femme Noir – or most of my stuff, for that matter – didn't really fit in. We did sell a half-dozen or so trades, and I sold a few other comics, as well, but didn't do as well as I'd hoped. We covered the cost of the table and the hotel room, though, so it could have been worse.

There were some cool people there. Heidi MacDonald of the Publishers Weekly comics blog, The Beat, stopped by to say hello to Joe, and I got to briefly visit with a few of the local creators I met last Fall at the Bangor BangPop show – Mark Ricketts, Ben Bishop, Alex Irvine and Joel Zain Rivers. I also got to finally meet, face-to-face, several long-time online acquaintances like John Platt, Dan Larson and Howard Hopkins. My old friend Bob Cram, who I hadn't seen in over 15 years, also made it to the show, and we were able to do a little catching up.

Like I said, I wish I'd been able to sell more stuff (and that fewer kids had pawed and mauled my books), but it was a pretty decent experience. Rick Lowell of Casablanca Comics (along with his wife, staff and volunteers), did an admirable job organizing the event, and the pre-show get-together on Peaks Island was fun. And, of course, it's always a treat to spend time with Joe and his wife Hilarie.

Brandi took a few photos. I may update this post with a shot or two later today.