this is what concerns me:

Blah blah MoCCA was supersweet blah blah.

It’s only been like, six days! And it was great! Lots of Mr. Brendan Burford’s Syncopated Three’s on hand for the buying and viewing pleasure of all. Depicted: the lovely and talented Ms. Caroline Dworin and myself. Caroline did a bang-up job copy-editing the book. You should really go buy one! Except that you can’t yet. But maybe you should write it on a post-it note and put it on the wall above your desk or something so you don’t forget by the time it’s available in stores. Which will be, like, really soon!

The third volume of the excellent reportage comics anthology Syncopated is debuting in a couple weeks. I wrote an article and illustrated an illustration for this volume — it is otherwise crammed full of excellent talents. And we all know that comics + excellent talents = free beer! I’m third down, third across. Hope you can make it! except if you don’t like comics, talents and/or beer, in which case you should just stay home. And maybe stop reading this blog.

Some background: Trina Robbins is the self-appointed expert women cartoonist “herstorian” (and herself a rather crappy woman cartoonist) and founder of the now predominantly male-run women cartoonists organization Friends of Lulu. When I did my journalism master’s thesis on women cartoonists, TR didn’t return any of my e-mails; this was also the case for lessers in the same mold, e.g. Heidi MacDonald, who generally suck up to cartoonists, men and men cartoonists, but who seem to be threatened and/or out of their element when it comes to women infringing in their womanly territory (trad male hegemony tactics, girls: divide and conquer). I wonder how TR and HM get along.

Now: I’m not so much a fan of Aline Kominsky-Crumb either, mostly because I don’t care for her work (though she’s worlds better than TR) plus the odd impression she makes in Crumb. However, my opinion of her has increased at least 47.3% after reading this interview she gave to Daniel Robert Epstein for the Suicide Girls (big gender WTF there as well).

This snippet works on so many delightful levels. Not only does it confirm my opinion of TR, but there’s cat-fighting, misogyny, narcissistic wounds plus the goddamn Suicide Girls? Amazing.

So forget that whole thing about me updating more often and what-not: clearly it was all a horrible lie, and for that I cannot be too sorry, for in my non-blogging time, I have obtained a fantastic, legal apartment in Brooklyn, and I’ve run into all sorts of random celebrities and celebrities-to-me. It’s not quite Gawker Stalker, sure, but those guys suck anyway.

Today I saw Adrian Tomine walking on Atlantic Avenue between 3rd and 4th Avenue. He was carrying a cat in a cream-colored plastic caddy-thing, probably on his way to Hope Vet down the street. Adrian and I had about 15 feet of awkward eye contact, which I’m pretty sure was construed on his end as “Indie-looking girl knows who I am.” Well, you’re damn right, friend.

Incidentally, Adrian will be on a panel at the 92nd Street Y on October 26th at 7 p.m. with Jonathan Bennett, David Heatley, Lauren Weinstein and Ivan Brunetti promoting Ivan’s new book, An Anthology of Graphic Fiction. So attend and be shocked and awed by all the awkward graphic talent - you will not be disappointed.

comics: great and awful, overrated things, shifting cultural paradigms

This past weekend was the annual MoCCA Art Festival at the Puck Building in SoHo. This was the festival’s fifth year and my first, and I had great expectations, having only been to the San Diego and New York Mammoth Manga Comic-Cons before (but dreaming of SPX for the fall, despite Bethesda). I’m not qualified to compare it to past years (though 2006 was clearly lacking a Dan Clowes/Jonathon Lethem conversation, or anything feebly approaching that brilliance), so I should say that while I was not disappointed, and I did indeed procure a great deal of great comics, I was underwhelmed. I did notice that admission this year was the cheapest it’s been since 2002, which could hint at some administrative acknowledgement of a possible lack of particular greatness — or, like, maybe not.

My weekend was spent wandering around the three large Puck rooms filled with tables filled with comics, alternately good and awful, trying not to make awkward, guilt-inducing eye contact with anyone whose work fell in the latter category. The “event programming” was spotty. To celebrate the success of their quarterly anthology MOME (recently reviewed in the New York Times Book Review), Fantagraphics had an early run of the new issue for sale, and a panel featuring Andrice Arp, Gabrielle Bell, Jonathon Bennett, Gary Groth, David Heatley and Paul Hornschemeier. It was boring as all hell. I’m a big Gabrielle Bell fan, but she was not at her best, to say the least. No one seemed to want to be there, except the man who asked several questions of the panel, including “How do you feel about porn in comics?” which sealed the experience off really awkwardly, which is to say, it was perfect.

So I guess this is where I’m supposed to make some sweeping generalizations and conclusions about the fest en general. Of course it goes without saying that many good things were available, as they always are, at Drawn and Quarterly, Buenaventura and (yes, even) Fantagraphics. On the more indie front, I’ve never agreed more strongly with Sabrina Jones, who told me in January, “It’s like the early part of the 20th century, everyone was writing poetry – now everyone has a graphic novel or a comic.” I was skeptical, but MoCCA seems to have reinforced this concept for me, in sheer numbers of overpriced crap mini-comics. It was alternately unfortunate and inspiring, and I now feel entirely capable, qualified and excited to do comics again.

For posterity or something, this is the stuff I got, which I’d recommend to all four of you who might read this:
- Baby-sitter’s Club #1, Raina Telgemeier; sweet nostalgia
- Communism button and sticker from Diesel Sweeties/Dumbrella; for “being hilarious”
- Girl Stories, Lauren Weinstein
- Good News!, Mikhaela B. Reid
- Peck, James McShane
- Pencil Fight #1 and 2; a Portland zine
- Pink Popgun War T-shirt, Farel Dalrymple
- Salmon Doubts, Adam Sacks; thanks, John
- Syncopated #2, Brendan Burford and friends; a great compilation of reportage, comics and reportage comics
- Three Very Small Comics V.II, Tom Gauld

John Jones plugs in the light under the hand painted sign outside his store so passersby can read: “jigsaw. affordable art, shoestring media, zines and comics, obscure bands.” Then he starts to get ready for his last party. It’s cold this weekend, and the radiator is wheezing and rattling as he straightens the books on the shelves, re-stocks the bar, takes out the trash. He sighs when he starts and finishes each task, as he resigns himself to the idea, then is relieved when it’s finished. Jones, 31, is a little goofy and childlike, with a baby face and dimples, and a mess of wavy brown hair that he yanks straight up in a fist when he’s concentrating. Jones dresses up for work: thick-rimmed glasses, button-up shirts, nice slacks and wingtips – even though work is just upstairs. He sleeps in the shop’s basement: it’s the only way he could afford to have his dream store in New York City. “It was always kind of a weird thing that I wanted to do,” he says. “I had all of these different interests, and I thought, why don’t I just try to combine them all? Hence the name.”
Jigsaw is an expression of his personal vision, the piecing together of different parts of his life. It’s part small-press comics store, indie novel and magazine shop, art gallery, concert venue, open bar and sometimes living room. Or rather, it was. Now the metal gate below the hand painted sign at 526 East 11th Street is down and locked. The lukewarm response to the store and the high cost of living in New York have forced John Jones and Jigsaw to move to Durham, North Carolina at the beginning of April. “I thought, why not just go somewhere and get a cheaper, bigger place in a city that is perhaps in need of a little more blue in their red?” He pauses. “Where I could make it more purple at least.”
His last weekend in New York, February 24 and 25, is a relatively tame ending to Jigsaw’s geek chic history of late nights fueled by liquor, art and indie rock. The store’s closing coincides with the first New York Comic-Con, which means two back to back book releases and industry types filling Jigsaw on its last Friday and Saturday nights. A few fans are still convinced the move is some elaborate April Fool’s joke, that come the first, John Jones will roll up the metal gate on Jigsaw around noon as usual. Others are just sad, annoyed, both. There’s nothing like this in New York, they say: it’s not a pristine Soho gallery, or nerdy comics shop, or dingy indie rock venue, or East Village watering hole in the wall. It’s not really anything they’ve seen before. And he was just gaining momentum. “I don’t see this as ‘the end’ like they do,” he says. “One of the reasons I did the shop in the first place was to show people it could be done.” With only a little research into business structure, a short-term lease, and some start-up capital, Jones thinks, anyone could open their own shop. “It just takes being stupid enough to actually do it.”
But instead he seems to have proven that it can’t be done, that it’s virtually impossible for even the most driven and visionary impresario to pull off a project like this in New York City.

John Jones refers to the Durham move as “the move back south”: he grew up in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia, where his mother still lives. He’s more comfortable in the South than in New York City, where he moved on a whim in 2003, after a rough divorce. He didn’t quite know what his next step would be. He’d worked at Barnes and Noble, made his own mini comics and paintings, wrote three novels for National Novel Writing Month. There was too much he wanted to do. He finally decided to bring all of his passions together, and in the process, bridge the gap between creators and fans by hosting events where the two could mingle. In June ’04, Jigsaw was born.
The space is tiny – only about 50 people can cram in at a time without suffocating – but Jones somehow makes it aptly comfortable and homey. There’s a black leather couch by the shelves, and the register counter in the back doubles as a bar for parties. He chooses the stock for the store based on his own personal preferences. There’s nothing on the shelves that he hasn’t read at least once – most, several times. “It’s kind of a weird trust exercise to ask someone to spend 12, 15, 20 dollars on something they might not like just because it’s what I’ve handpicked,” he says. For that reason, he avoids the hard sell. At most, if he notices a customer is lingering a while and seems interested in the products, he’ll try to play matchmaker, asking what their favorite books and comics are and trying to find something he thinks they’ll like. “I’ve only had one person bring something back and say they really didn’t care for it.”
But the daytime sales are only one piece of Jigsaw. Jones has hosted pumpkin carvings and film debuts, along with the requisite book release parties and art openings – one complete with a go-go dancer. When the shop first opened, he hosted open mic ‘Jigsawlons.’ There were even small concerts, with the couch tipped on end to make room. Some of the parties drew up to 300 people, filling Jigsaw for five solid hours as the crowd rotated in and out of the shop. Throughout the past two years, he’s brought nearly every kind of art into the space at one point or another. And the events in turn brought in the bulk of the store’s customers: they were drunk and their inhibitions were down, and Jones didn’t need the hard sell to get them to buy some comics or artwork.
In its first month, Jigsaw turned a profit. But ever since then, sales have been steadily slipping. Businesses across the East Village have taken a hit, and many of the independent stores that sprung up optimistically after 9/11 are cutting back their hours or closing altogether. “The neighborhood got too big for its britches. It tried to become Greenwich Village,” he says. “Now it’s economically impossible to succeed unless you’re a bar.” It’s gotten even worse in the last six months: most days go by without any customers.
The last two walk-ins come Friday evening, the second to last day of Jigsaw New York. When Jones sees them, he calls out hello and nonchalantly makes his way to the back of the store behind the register/bar counter. The customers, two hipster guys in head to toe black, flip through the comics for nearly fifteen minutes. One of them reads an entire book. “This is great,” he comments to no one in particular. “I should get it for my sister.” But instead he checks his watch and reminds his friend that they have to meet someone at a nearby bar. As they leave, he calls out “Thank you.” Jones responds, “We’re having some events here later tonight if you’re interested.”
“Events?” The hipster looks confused.
“From 8 to 11, a book release, open bar.”
“Oh, okay,” the hipster says, still puzzled. “Thanks.” They don’t come back.

Jigsaw begins to fill up a few hours later with editors, publishers, creators, and others involved in the comics business. A little over 100 people show up over the course of the evening, even though it’s 7 degrees outside and the L train isn’t working, leaving Jigsaw a 15 minute walk from the closest subway station. People’s thick-rimmed glasses steam up when they come inside from the cold.
“Wait, what is this?” one 20-something in a long trench coat asks his friend.
“It’s just kind of … what it is,” the friend offers.
The store is buzzing with compliments for “Crazy Papers,” Jim Dougan and Danielle Corsetto’s debut graphic novel, but people seem to be more interested in Jigsaw and the news that tomorrow is its closing day. Even some of Jones’ good friends are hearing this for the first time. The long trench coat laments that he didn’t discover the shop sooner.
A little after midnight, Jones turns off all the lights. Someone asks him why. “I like disappearing into the shadows like a ninja,” he says. The last people leave around 1. John Jones gets three hours of sleep.
The next evening is a little rougher than expected. The New York Times runs an article on the Comic-Con and mentions John Jones and Jigsaw – and the public party with open bar, beginning at 7 p.m. Even with the L train out of commission and a wind-chill of 9 degrees, there’s a palpable dread about how many people will show up.
In the end, it’s only a few dozen more than the previous evening, but this crowd feels rash and desperate. Brendan Deneen and Szyman Kudranski, creators of the new comic “Scatterbrain,” decide to give their books away for free: it’s too much trouble to sell, and who wants to cart all the extras home? No one really talks about the end of Jigsaw – they accept the inevitability, the pointlessness of complaining. Everyone seems more interested in the liquor than the comics. By 2 a.m., patrons who started the evening drinking Stella have moved on to tall cans of Pabst bought at the deli next door. In the end, Jones has to kick everyone out around 4. He stays in bed for the next two days, dreaming of a real kitchen, a living room, “and a bedroom with a door.”