BOSTON – The Boston Comic Arts Foundation hosted its 16th Massachusetts Independent Comic Expo on Dec. 6 and 7 at Boston University featuring over 200 artists and writers, as well as several special guests.
Jules Zuckerberg, an illustrator, cartoonist and zinemaker, tabled at MICE for the first time after spending years going to small press shows. Their work consists of small zines with sketchbook drawings of “critters, creatures and fungus” alongside larger narrative comics with autobiographical situations based around Zuckerberg and their friends as anthropomorphic creatures. Apart from selling their own artwork, they were able to enjoy exploring the convention floor.
“I’m a person with a huge visual appetite, so just walking around and being hit with so much texture and shape and character design, it really satisfies the senses on that front,” said Zuckerberg.
In their youth, indie comics left them feeling “enchanted”, giving Zuckerberg the space to figure out who they were and think about their trans identity. Though most of their own early work was diary comics that mainly got shared online through apps such as Tumblr, Zuckerberg said they felt a “swell of support,” from the “warm and curious crowd,” that visited their table at MICE.
“There’s just such an array of approaches to this medium that we all love and share and just so many different stories,” said Zuckerberg.
Some of those stories are being told by Jacqueline Barnes, who was tabling for the Black Indie Comix Club, a collective of Black artists throughout the United States. Activities of the club include a Discord server with a weekly working session, as well as certain members tabling at conventions throughout the country to sell the work produced by the club.
While Barnes’ table was full of work from multiple different creators, several of the comics featured were her own, such as “That Lady,” which is about stan culture and the distraction economy, “New Growth,” on climate revenge and “Default,” a story about Barnes’ feeling of despair toward Palestine. She said she enjoys being in the club because it’s “important to be around your own people” and to not have to deal with self censorship.
“Especially when you’re looking through a Black lens, I think it’s important to have those voices be heard and highlighted,” said Barnes.
Helping individuals turn their voices into comics was Carly Shooster, assistant director of Sequential Artists Workshop, which she was tabling for. While SAW operates mainly online, it’s based in Florida, with Shooster managing all in person and online classes, alongside 3 other admins.
SAW Programming consists of a year-long program, a six-month program focused on graphic novels, a three-month program focused on graphic memoirs/graphic medicine, four-week long courses and short one-week courses. They also run several podcasts, host in-person accountability groups and draw jams. Student work is also published and printed in anthologies, which were being sold at MICE.
Shooster herself is currently working on her own graphic novel with watercolor artwork by herself, outside of her SAW-related work.
“It’s more work than fun, but very fun to meet new people,” said Shooster.
Though MICE is over, the BCAF continues to hold regular events platforming independent comic book artists.
This article was produced for BINJ.News, the independent weekly magazine published by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
