Last month I was in New York seeing a friend on Broadway as the title character in the musical, Cry-Baby (now closed, sadly) and the timing of the trip couldn’t have been better, as it just happened to coincide with the MoCCA Art Festival 2008, where I got the opportunity to meet a bunch of cool comic and webcomic luminaries.

After milling about the show floor(s), I ran into the Squid Works booth where Stan Yan(artist half of the hilarious geektastic webcomic, Subculture, creator of The Wang comic/webcomic, and writer of the webcomic Revvelations) was exhibiting his creations. I’d been wanting to meet both Stan and Kevin Freeman (the writer of Subculture) as they had put up a very flattering write up of JEFBOT on their site and I wanted to thank them in person. Although Kevin wasn’t there (I’ll have to thank him another time) Stan and I got a good amount of talking in and he imparted a lot of great info about what I can look forward to when I start hitting the convention circuit in the future. Really cool.

All of his projects have a different look and feel to them so check them all out; there’s sure to be something you’ll like.

Another webcomic writer/artist I talked to was none other than Danielle Corsetto of  Girls With Slingshots fame. Many of you may remember I did a guest strip for her a couple months back (there’s a good chance you’re here now because of that), and I wanted to introduce myself and let her know how cool her fans have been to me and what a boost in traffic I got from doing that strip.

Of course, she was totally cool. She signed and sketched my GWS book, said some kind words about JEFBOT and gave me some terrific advice about the wild world of webcomics, from promoting my site to what to do at conventions as an exhibitor. I came away from our meet feeling totally ready to start promoting JEFBOT on the road.

Girls With Slingshots is one of my favorite webcomics. It’s sort of a younger, hipper, more realistic Sex and the City. Check it out if you haven’t already.

Only a few minutes after I said goodbye to Danielle, I found myself at Alex Robinson’s booth where he was signing copies of his new book, Too Cool To Be Forgotten. Alex is one of the coolest comic book creators I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. He’s very approachable, sincere and talented. I had met him at the San Diego Comic Con a couple years back, where he did a sketch for me in a hardcover of the graphic novel Tricked, which I absolutely loved. This time I bought the hardcovers for Too Cool and Box Office Poison, both of which he sketched in and signed. While he was doing the signings, we had time to talk about comics, webcomics (he noticed me holding the GWS book, which was a great opportunity for me to tell him about my guest strip and JEFBOT), conventions and the comic business. When I left his area he said he looked forward to seeing me in my own JEFBOT booth at a convention, soon. He might tell all budding comic creators that, but I cannot tell you how awesome and powered up that made me feel the rest of the day.

If you like your characters real and your stories complex, pick up any of his graphic novels (Box Office Poison, Tricked, Too Cool to be Forgotten). They’re all good and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

So those were some of the highlights of MoCCA for me, although I saw a bunch of other neat tables and booths, and met a bunch of other cool people there, including director Michel Gondry, who was there selling his comic, We Lost the War But Not the Battle, which he signed and drew a little caricature of me on! I’ll have to scan it and put it up on the site later.

So, lots learned and new acquaintances (and friends!) made, and another step closer to being on the other side of the table. Rad.