Cartoonists Everywhere

New Yorker cartoonists and much more

New Yorker cartoonists who were panelists on the panel I moderated at SPX, L to R: Sofia Warren, Sara Lautman, Lonnie Millsap.

Last weekend, I attended a convention called Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. It’s for cartoonists, comic artists and publishers of graphic content to share and sell their wares. Some of the publishers are rather large, like Fantagraphics. Many of the attendees sell their self-published books, notepads, postcards, original art. They are a very diverse crowd, and tend to be young. And lots of women-identifying creators!

They also have workshops and panels, and several months ago, I offered to moderate a panel, called The New New Yorker Cartoonists. On my panel were Sara Lautman, Lonnie Millsap and Sofia Warren, all of whom have started at The New Yorker in the last 8 years or so. The man who founded SPX, Warren Bernard, is a big fan of New Yorker art, and in fact he had invited me to speak there as a guest a few years ago. I really want to share my book, Very Funny Ladies with young people and celebrate all the new voices being published. So I thought doing a panel about diversity at The New Yorker might be good, and they gave me a table to sell my book. I sold close to 20 books—some to collectors, some to young people. The panel was great, an almost full house and lots of great questions.

I also ran into a friend, cartoonist and comic artist Keith Knight. It was great talking to him. He was kind to let me pick his brain about his tv series called Woke, which ran for two seasons. Unfortunately Hulu didn’t have the wisdom to pick it up for a third season. It’s a really well done, very funny, about a cartoonist— in fact very much about Keith’s life. He shared the process of trying to sell your ideas in Hollywood—I still don’t understand it, but I’m learning. I am trying to adapt a script I wrote for a feature film into a tv pilot.

Keith’s table for selling stuff was right by mine, so I drew him.

I did another sketch while sitting there and selling books. A little girl caught my eye. She was probably the youngest person in the room.

Here is the room that housed hundreds of comic artists, it was huge. It was fun, but rather overwhelming! Great to see a lot of friends and meet new people.