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.

Just wanted to thank a few more websites for mentioning JEFbot in their pages over the past few months. JEFbot has been growing at an exponential rate since I first started writing and drawing it a little over a year ago, and a lot of that is due to people passing the word about this strip around! I always love when someone tells me they found their way here by reading about it on a website, or from seeing a JEFbot t-shirt out in the wild, or just plain ol’ word of mouth. So a big thank-you to everybody who has been championing this site, including:

• BlueBlood.net – for the great write-up and featuring of my Blue Elmo strip!

• ArtPatient.com – for such a great review and flattering article on what he learned reading JEFbot.

• Grinningskull.com - for spewing coffee out of his nose

• Ominous Knife - for asking readers what they would do in this predicament?

• dky bar and grill – for listing me in the comics she’s been reading and featuring my GTA IV strip.

If you’ve seen any other fans out there promoting JEFbot (especially if you’re one of them), please let me know!

I’ve been completely swamped with projects (some fun, some not-so-fun) for the past several weeks, and was under a self-imposed ban on taking any new jobs until I made headway on the ones I’ve already committed to. But, when fellow cartoonist Tony Piro asked me to do a guest strip for his hilarious comic strip, Calamities of Nature, there was no way I could pass it up. Add in the fact that Tony just welcomed a new, baby boy into his family and needed a bit of a break, and I had all the excuses I needed to put some of my other projects on the back burner, and start brainstorming ideas about what to do with Tony’s zany cast of characters.

This is what I came up with: Assembly Required. Fans of Calamities will recognize the events Ferd is talking about from a previous strip: The Big Little Problem Part 3. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it before reading mine. There’s also a bit of an homage to Voltron, if you dig that kind of thing.

So check it out! If you’re not already a fan of Tony’s strip, head over to calamitiesofnature.com and go through the archive. The strip tackles subjects as varied as politics, Mensa, religion and toxic kitchen sink monsters with hilarious results. And while you’re there, congratulate Tony and his wife on their new bundle of joy!