Calling all comic creators, writers and comic book freaks!
Calling all comic creators, writers and comic book freaks!
The Second Annual Richmond Comic Expo, kicks off this Saturday at Gallery5 and will giving two dozen local comic artists and writers a chance to showcase their work and provide an opportunity to bring “like minded” people together.
“Really, my biggest expectation is that the creators and people who come have fun…. My goal is getting a bunch of like minded people together and give them the opportunity to talk about and check out each others work,” said James Moffitt, co-creator of the event.
Moffitt said he’s hoping the expo will “give newer artists and artists that don’t have as much reach a place to show their work to a crowd that will have interest and, hopefully, appreciate it.”
The expo began a year ago as a collaboration between Moffitt and Bizhan Khodabandeh. The two also collaborate on the ongoing creation of the allegorical Little Red Fish comic series. They came up with the idea for the comic expo while considering ways to connect an audience with their book.
“We wanted to do something at Gallery5, because we had a show hung there around the images from that book at the time,” Moffitt said. “We started talking about it and thought, lets not just do our book. Let’s celebrate indie comics in Richmond in general. We started to toss around ideas and the idea of a comic expo geared toward local indie creators evolved from that.”
Since then, the expo has garnered a great deal of interest, both from the public and local comic writers.
Last year’s expo was pieced together pretty quickly, but Moffitt said it went over very well.
“A lot of the creators, we know personally from working in comics…and we reached out to them directly…[but] we had a few people reach out to us about tabling [and we just followed up with them about that.”
Besides releasing the third edition of the critically acclaimed “Little Red Fish” at the expo, Moffitt’s indie publishing company Sink/Swim Press will also be releasing Dashiell Kirk’s first graphic novel “Consumption,” a wordless story about the grotesque nature of ingestion. Read more on that here.
Moffitt’s company has been going strong for six years. When asked, Moffitt reflected on the experience of running a small press.
“I started dry, didn’t know what I was doing, jumped in because I wanted to do it. It’s been a pretty continual learning experience,” he said.
His work with Sink/Swim Press seems to have a few things in common with co-authoring and co-coordinating a comic book expo.
“I try to create a transparent environment as we’re working so [authors] can give me positive or negative feedback or constructive criticism…so that I can improve as a producer and director and publisher,” he said. “It works vice versa, if I notice something about their writing or whatever, I give that feedback too…it’s a constant back and forth…a collaborative process.”
Ultimately, all the hard work Moffitt puts into his various projects he does as a labor of love, as he works a full time job as a copywriter at Capital One, while also teaching English at Reynolds Community College.
“I just like doing it, I love comic books, I love Richmond’s comic community and seeing what people are producing, there really are a lot of talented artists here that make a lot of great stuff…just creating this network of like minded people, being a part of that community is really fun for me,” he said.
Considering the turn out last year, and the amount of press that this year’s event has already garnered, Moffitt hopes to keep it going into the future.
He said, “Next year is going to be the first year we’ll have panelists and workshops and other things like that going on…this year is another come out, check out comic books, drink a beer type of thing, but it should be fun.”
The Second Annual Richmond Comic Expo kicks off this Saturday, Oct. 17 at Gallery5 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be music, awesome art, and beer! Free.
