Comic Arts Brooklyn | |
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Status | Indefinite hiatus |
Genre | Alternative comics convention |
Frequency | Annual |
Venue | Pratt Institute |
Location(s) | Brooklyn, New York |
Country | United States |
Inaugurated | November 9, 2013 |
Founder | Gabriel Fowler |
Most recent | November 2, 2019 |
Organized by | Desert Island |
Website | comicartsbrooklyn |
Comic Arts Brooklyn (CAB) was a comic book festival and art book fair organized by the comic book store Desert Island, held annually in Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 2013 as a successor to the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival (BCGF), CAB focused on self-published, independent, and alternative comics.
CAB was founded and organized by Gabriel Fowler, the owner of the comic book store Desert Island in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. [1] The festival centered around a single-day, artist alley-style exhibition space that featured roughly 200 artists and comics publishers. [2] The days leading up to and following CAB often included affiliated events, such as gallery exhibitions, art installations, and screenings. [3]
Exhibition space at CAB was invitation-only; artists and vendors must either have applied and been accepted, or be invited to attend by the festival's organizers. [4] Admission to the festival was free for members of the public. [5]
The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival (BCGF), the predecessor to CAB, was inaugurated in 2009 by Fowler, comics critic and scholar Bill Kartalopoulos, and Dan Nadel, founder of the now-defunct publishing company PictureBox. The festival ran for four years, until Kartalopoulos and Nadel announced in May 2013 that they would no longer organize BCGF. [6] In July 2013, Fowler announced the founding of Comic Arts Brooklyn, to be held in November of that year. [7] CAB was inaugurated on November 9, 2013 at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Brooklyn, New York – the same venue where BCGF was formerly held, and with many of the same exhibitors – with programming directed by Paul Karasik. [8] CAB does not officially record attendance for the festival, [9] though organizers have estimated the number of attendees per year as being "in the thousands." [10]
In 2014, CAB expanded from one to two days of programming, with the additional day designated for panel discussions. [11] Organizers considered placing CAB on hiatus in 2016, [4] but instead opted to include fewer exhibitors and reduce the length of the festival to its original single day of programming. [12] In 2017, CAB relocated from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church to the Pratt Institute, [13] nearly doubling the size of its exhibition space. [9]
The last CAB was held in 2019, after the planned 2020 show was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event has since been on "indefinite hiatus" due to multiple organizers having relocated from Brooklyn, and the Pratt Institute no longer permitting events held by outside organizations. [14]