Nice to See You

My year end report from the convention floor.

The author and his tablemates Maddy Peters and Andy Warner at Comic Arts Los Angeles 2025

I spent last weekend at the Comic Arts Los Angeles festival, which was notable for several reasons. First, it was a great excuse to visit L.A., a town bursting with symbolism (particularly for a movie-mad fanboy), beauty (it's quintessential California, after all), and many friends. So I was happy to have a reason to visit, even if I could barely scratch the surface of all those delights (cue Randy Newman)…

I’d never attended CALA before, but it came highly recommended. Most of you have probably seen pictures of the San Diego Comic Con, with 150,000 attendees lined up around the block to see movie stars and buy corporate collectibles with hundreds of cosplayers in elaborate costumes sashaying about. This ain’t that, not by a long shot. CALA is typical of the indie, self-published comix cons, more akin to a local arts festival, with tables of humble, often homemade works sold to the public directly by the creators. Like yours truly.

It wasn’t promising at first—I had to search a little to find the venue on a crowded side street, between a fitness center and an auto body shop. Inside, the festival looked a lot like a community rummage sale, with the usual folding tables and chairs scattered on a dreary basketball court. But instead of boxes casually heaped with old clothes and knick-knacks, the tables were adorned with a riot of riso-printed posters and banners, stacks and stands of brightly-hued come books, zines and tchotchkes. One of a squad of chipper volunteers in turquoise T-shirts helpfully ushered me to table 52b. Then things started to get interesting.

CALA organizer Angie Wang, views inside and outside the festival, artist John Konrad of Tucson AZ.

My randomly-assigned seat mates were better picks than I could have imagined. The young creator to my right, Maddy Peters, turned out to be a clerk from the legendary Golden Apple Comics store, to whom I’d sold one of my first batches of When We Were Trekkies—and she remembered me! (“Did we ever pay you for those?” she asked. “Not yet!” I smiled weakly…) And on my left was the relentlessly cheerful Andy Warner, a successful graphic novelist who thought my name was familiar. He happened to be one of my brother’s former students at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont ten years ago. It’s like old home week!

At this point I should mention that my youngest brother, R. Sikoryak, has been a noted cartoonist, illustrator and teacher for 35+ years. He apprenticed with the king of memoir comics, Art Spiegelman (Maus) and has run a live, touring comics-reading show called Carousel for three decades. I like to joke that I taught him everything he knows—and he’s still managed to become a success. So there’s been some confusion when people meet me, because either my name or family resemblance leads folks to think we’ve met before. It’s also why I branded my work “Joe Sik Comix”—to avoid even more perplexity.

As I set up my table, laying out my books (and indirectly, my vulnerabilities) for all to see, I couldn’t help but compare my display to the ones around me. Andy has a half dozen slick, educational trade paperbacks for kids that he’s authored since 2017. Maddy has a completely different aesthetic, charming hand drawn floppies and her first graphic novel, all rendered in eye-popping fluorescent inks and with equally provocative tiles like Hell Fish and Exposure Therapy. I wonder where my graphic memoirs will land with the crowd? We’re all a little sensitive about our work to begin with, but my work is all about me. Ulp.

A test was yet to come. I had volunteered to run a panel discussion entitled “Finding Your Graphic Memoir”, and the show organizers suggested three artists to join me: Matt MacFarland, a familiar face from SF Zine Fest; Sanika Phawde, an Ignatz award-winning artist (and coincidentally another of my brother's many students) who I’d met at SPX in Washington DC last year; and Julie Cardenas, a new acquaintance who also happened to be visiting from the Bay Area. It was a great opportunity to talk about my chosen medium with three other devoted practitioners. Because really, there aren’t too many other folks who have even read a comic strip autobiography, much less thought about how to write and draw one.

We spent two weeks before the show preparing, sharing pages and ideas which I dutifully collected into 40 slides and a list of questions like “Real life doesn’t always work out nice and neat like fiction. How do you feel about fictionalizing parts, or rearranging events for a better story?” Everyone had a different approach and a different answer—perfect!

The "Finding Your Graphic Memoir" panel and our two-dimensional counterparts.

The panel was well-promoted and we attracted an SRO crowd of over 100 attendees in the small presentation room. Moderating the panel was easy because everyone had good stories and strong opinions about telling their personal story with words and pictures. Sanika described the mad whirl of a traditional Indian Wedding. Matt told a heartwarming story of an elderly neighbor. Julie weaves recipes into her immigrant story. We could have easily gone on for another hour, and we got the desired results: more traffic to our tables, and more conversation with new readers.

A huge part of selling your stuff is pitching product to strangers. Many folks walk down the center of the aisle, scanned the wares and avoiding eye contact. Others are braver, walking close enough to receive a come on (“Nice hat!” or “True Stories!”) but never quite slowing down enough to engage with. If you don’t make eye contact and engage in conversation before they hit the halfway mark of the table, you’re lost.

Ah, but some folks will engage the seller first “I really like your artwork!” or “Tell me about your books!” It’s a welcome scrap tossed to a starving man. I have several variations on my pitch depending on the customer’s demographic (Trekkie? Memoir fan? Simply curious?) that all boil down to “I’ve seen some crazy/funny/amazing stuff and you will enjoy reading about it.” It works about 50% of the time, and if I go on more than two minutes, it probably won’t result in a sale. But I keep on talking anyway. It’s more fun than sitting behind my table staring off into space. I “made my table” (earned back my rental costs) three times over—quite good, if not record-breaking.

There were probably 3000 attendees over the weekend, and I talked myself hoarse each day (that’s kind of unavoidable in a room with the acoustics and decibel level of a bus terminal at rush hour). So it was a relief to end each evening one-on-one with a friend/colleague over dinner. We caught up on personal stuff, I rhapsodized about the breathtaking Jack Kirby art exhibit at the Skirball Center, they unloaded their latest professional challenges, and I listened. A lot. Because I was a little talked out.

Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity covers the creator’s entire body of work from a 50 year career—and beyond.

I can’t overstate the value of all this: we cartoonists are a solitary lot, spending many hours and days in complete isolation. I might listen to a podcast during the final stages of drawing and coloring, but most of my work is conducted in silence, or at best, with quiet instrumental music. It’s like meditation, with a deadline. So conventions are as much social as commercial—maybe more so. I talked more in 48 hours than I typically would in a week—or even a month. The idiom may be “so good to see you” but it seems odd that we don’t say “so good to talk with you.”  By that standard, the show was very good indeed.

Finally, this trip marks the end of an era. A little over three years ago, I released my first issue of Trekkies. I spent the next eighteen months finishing the series and another year and a half promoting it. Two dozen comic shops have carried it, five or six reviewers have praised it and thousands of issues have been sold. I still have a few boxes remaining in my basement and they continue to trickle out through my online shop. Mission accomplished, I’m an established comix artist.

Now it’s time for my next project.

I’m hunkering down over the winter months to start my new graphic novel. That means no more side jobs, no more distractions—including comic shows—until I have something to share. I’ve got a 15-page outline written, but that needs to get turned into page layouts and pictures. I’ll keep you posted of course, and share some of the work in progress.

So as the Winter Solstice descends, I wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and congratulations for making it through an unbelievable year. Thanks for reading and sharing this space, and I hope to see you in 2026. Talk to you then!

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