MoCCA reveals its Awards of Excellence winners for 2024

Rebecca Mock, Sofia Warren, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Mark Doox and more took home prizes from the annual festival.

This past weekend the Society of Illustrators held the annual MoCCA Fest in New York, one of the largest independent comic festivals in the United States. As part of the festival, SI gave out its annual Awards of Excellence, a “best in show” award given to a selection of books available at the festival.

Winners received a ribbon, a $100 financial prize and a pen tablet provided by the event’s sponsor, Xencelabs.

This year they gave out 15 awards to attending publishers and creators, as revealed on their Instagram. Winners included:

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Comics Lowdown | Cartoonist Chronicles Attack

A photo shoot to promote Karl Krumpholz’s new book was punctuated by a surprise attack.

A planned photo shoot went sideways fast for Denver cartoonist Karl Krumpholz.

Krumpholz’s graphic novel Queen City, a chronicle of changing streets and neighborhoods of Denver, is out this month from Tinto Press. The Denver Post did a feature article on Krumpholz, and the photo shoot for the piece was set for mid-afternoon on East Colfax Avenue, one of the venues he depicts for the book. Before he and photographer AAron Ontiveroz could start the shoot, though, a passerby attacked them both with a homemade weapon.

Krumpholz and the photographer escaped unscathed, but since everything is material to a creator, he made a comic about it:

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Comics Lowdown: MoCCA postponed due to coronavirus

Plus: News about WonderCon, Jim Lee, Webtoon, Dark Horse and more!

Events: New York’s MoCCA Arts Festival, originally scheduled for April 4-5, is the latest event to be postponed due to the novel coronavirus, which has now been declared a pandemic.

“While New York is not officially calling for events of large gatherings to be canceled, many have been and we do not know what the next few weeks will entail. We recognize the amount of work and finances our exhibitors put into their tables and are trying to minimize the burden on them,” The Society of Illustrators, who puts on MoCCA every year, said in a statement.

They added, “In the meantime, we have made the decision to move forward and continue to judge the Awards of Excellence. In addition to the cash prize and Wacom tablets for Gold and Silver medalists, the Society will feature the award winners in an exhibition at the onsite Gallery we build at MoCCA Fest.”

A new date for the two-day festival has not been announced. It joins the Emerald City Comic Con, South by Southwest, E3, the London Book Fair and countless other events that have been impacted by COVID-19.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Jaime Hernandez on ‘The Dragon Slayer’ and more

The legendary cartoonist discusses his latest work for Toon Books, ‘Love & Rockets’ and more.

Jaime Hernandez has long been one of the great cartoonists. Love and Rockets has been acclaimed for decades and remains beloved by generations of readers. The series continues to come out regularly, and late last year Fantagraphics published the collection Angels and Magpies in addition to a Studio Edition, which reproduces nearly 200 pages of Hernandez’s original artwork.

Toon Books is debuting a new book by Hernandez, The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. The book is his first for younger readers and adapts stories from F. Isabel Campoy and Alma Flor Ada, and features an introduction by Campoy about imagination and tradition.

Hernandez will be appearing at the MoCCA Arts Festival this weekend in New York City, where he’ll be in conversation with Marc Sobel on Sunday. He will also appear at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival in May as part of Toon Books’ 1oth anniversary celebration.

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Make Mine Mini: Kraftwerk saves the world

The indy comics festival MoCCA took place last weekend, and as usual, it was a glorious event, with lots of great people and great comics. Here are three minicomics that I picked up that I particularly enjoyed. You can view or purchase each one at the link in the title.

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