This weekend’s free Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo is expected to draw thousands of participants to a Friday keynote and two-day expo with panel discussions, workshops and a marketplace of more than 200 independent creators. Guests range from Denis Kitchen, an underground comics legend with work dating back to 1969, to Egyptian artist Deena Mohamed, whose “Shubeik Lubeik” was a breakout sensation among the graphic novels of 2023.
Mice started in Cambridge and ran for years at Lesley’s University Hall in Porter Square, but is now hosted by Boston University across the river.
Its roots – and driving force – remain here: Dan Mazur, 64, cartoonist and co-founder of the nonprofit behind Mice, the Boston Comics Roundtable.
A group of Roundtable artists gather together and laugh over drinks Mondays in the back room of Aeronaut Brewing in Somerville. It’s an informal gathering, as regular meetings are each Thursday, held since the Covid pandemic began on the Discord group chat app. Mazur is the one with glasses sitting above his white N95 mask in a blank white tee, jeans and black Hoka sneakers. He slaps the back of his friend and co-worker, Zach Clemente, before slipping quietly out as the event concludes.
The roundtable has met weekly since 2006 so experienced artists and beginners can talk comics, edit each other’s work and workshop ideas on how to get published. It even inspired a superhero comic series, “Boston Powers,” with characters and scenes set in Massachusetts.
Though the history of Boston cartoonists traces back to Paul Revere, who was prominent in drawing political cartoons during the American Revolutionary War (as depicted in Mazur’s series “Comics From Around Here”) – Mazur remembers there being so few independent artists in the area in the early 2000s he can name only two: Liz Prince and Karl Stevens.
The lack of an independent comic book scene in Boston was the inspiration for Mazur to establish the Roundtable and Mice with Shelli Paroline and try to makes Boston into a comics town.
To Los Angeles and back
Cambridge is Mazur’s hometown, and he grew up there as a big comic book fan but didn’t start drawing comics until his 40s. His early obsession with comics transitioned into film. Mazur moved to Los Angles in his early 20s to pursue a screenwriting career that included a 1998 adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” that starred Peter Gallagher, Leonard Nimoy and Sally Kirkland. When he grew tired of the competition in Hollywood and struggling for more creative control over his work, he realized comics bridged that gap: With less money at stake, they offered more control and the ability to make art that can be produced quickly.
Looking for a new start as he returned to Cambridge, he found fellow artists on the same trajectory. They formed a collective, leading first to the Roundtable in 2006, then to Mice in 2010.
Being an artist is often lonely, and there was a lot of enthusiasm to build a creative community full of support and guidance.
Heide Solbrig, friend, cartoonist and media scholar at Lesley, spoke of the kindness Mazur showed when she first attended a meeting at Roundtable in 2011. “He was just incredibly generous,” she says. “He came to my studio, read my book and gave me a lot of feedback. Particularly, I remember about font and lettering, which is one of the things you transition into cartooning,” she says.
Creative style
Mazur describes his own office and studio as an “ungodly mess.” A variety of black-and-white comic strips and framed photographs of famous artists line the walls, with little space untouched. Stacks of comic books threaten to topple on his couch. Mazur’s cartoons of historical and science fiction cover his office space. They have been published in comic anthologies such as “Colonial Comics,” “I Saw You … Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections,” “Wake Up: Frame.” His one-shot, “Cold Wind,” was featured as most notable in the Best American Comics of 2013.
Majoring in fine arts at a liberal arts college in the Northeast didn’t offer much training, but he learned from his father, an artist. Though many comic artists use digital processes, his process is in a traditional comic style following how cartoonists have long worked: He uses pencil first, then either a pen or brush and ink.
Mazur places his art in front of his drawing table to remember what he’s created. Other framed pictures surrounding his table reflect the visual style and tone he wants to emulate in his new work. Around him are multiple photographs of Will Eisner, a pioneer of American comics who coined the phrase “graphic novel” and is most known for creating “The Spirit” and “A Contract with God” trilogy.
Mazur has recently been looking for inspiration from modernist art from the early 20th century and children’s illustrators Ludwig Bemelmans and Maurice Sendak. Bemelmans created the popular children series “Madeline,” and Sendak wrote and illustrated “Where the Wild Things Are.” Mazur says he often looks for a nonpolished “cartoony” visual style that inhabits originality, expressiveness and beauty.
Strong narrative, a little weirdness
The application process for this year’s Mice has more than 500 submissions, Mazur says, and as the co-director, he reads them all – looking for a strong narrative with something important to say accompanying great visual storytelling, originality and a little weirdness.
A rise in submissions reflects a significant growth the numbers of local comic artists, which Solbrig attributes to Mazur’s community building and an openness and responsibility to fostering less experienced artists.
Clemente, president of the Boston Comics Art Foundation, says Mazur was instrumental in setting a path for his own leadership after working at Mice. “I’ve learned a lot from him over the past nine years about how to maintain a community,” he says. Mazur became a guide for younger comics artists in the Boston area and mentored them to take more leadership roles.
“He in a lot of ways really opened up the gates,” Clemente says. “It’s really a wonderful thing to see how interested and excited he is to let people come in and have an influence.”
A stronger
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