#stray lines

Meet our exhibitors! (and DCAF organizers!)

Stray Lines is a collective of comics artists dedicated to incubating and promoting innovative approaches to comics in Ireland.

Really looking forward to holding a The Comics Lab-style workshop event with my partner in comics-related crime Debbie Jenkinson, as part of the Waterford 'Sprog' festival for kids and families.

Thanks to Garter Lane Arts Centre for hosting us!

This is going to be a different kind of festival report as I’m not only an exhibitor but I’m also the organizer! So I’ll talk about both sides of the coin here. This was my first time organizing an event like this, I had a lot of help from Sarah and Debbie and the rest of the Stray Lines group.

This is my 8th post mortem convention write up! You can find the rest on the Events page on my website or the post mortem tag here on my tumblr.

First, some event numbers! I’m leaving out the line item costs because it’s not just my money we’re talking about and I don’t want to force transparency anyone.

Budget for the event: €550-ish

Venue

Website

Poster Art

Poster/Postcard Printing

Decorations/Supplies

Sponsor and exhibitor incoming: €392

Damn Fine Print event sponsor

12 exhibitors

For a total budget shortfall of: €158

Our goal was to have 25 exhibitors, which would have safely covered our budget but we were only able to announce DECAF a month before it happened so even though we had interest from about 25 exhibitors, only 12 could pull a table together on such short notice. In retrospect, we didn’t even have room for 25 exhibitors! So from an event flow standpoint, it’s a good thing we only had 12. I’m not sure if there’s a remedy for this one, I feel like we landed on a reasonable price for exhibitors, so I wouldn’t want to double their prices, and 25 exhibitors would have made the event floor way too crowded. 

Space won’t be an issue at our next venue and hopefully having 3 months lead time instead of 1 will give more exhibitors a chance to book a table.

There were also some set-up costs that won’t factor into the next event, like purchasing the website domain and hosting. If you subtract that I maybe only lost €100. 

Now for my exhibitor numbers!

My total outgoing costs for the convention in order of leaving my house to the start of the show: €15

Fuel driving into Dublin - €10

Lunch - €5

What I brought with me:

Loads of We Can’t Afford This

My last 4 copies of Hats that aren’t trapped in storage

Plenty of Odd Reels and Strong

What I sold: 

1 Copy of Hats for €7

2 Copies of Strong €5

2 Copies of Odd Reels €3

11 Copies of We Can’t Afford This €4

For a total incoming of: €67

€52 is a good profit for a group table as opposed to a solo table. Brings down my total loss for the event to only €100. My hopes for the July show is that we’ll have enough space at the Dublin Food Co-op to all have individual tables. 

Obviously even these Dublin shows continue to cost more than they should until we actually move to Dublin. I can’t wait to eliminate the commute from these costs! It was also too much of a mad rush getting to Dublin with everything for the event and two kids so I didn’t pack a lunch of myself. 

We Still Can’t Afford This

It occurred to me while I was getting ready for the show that this was kind of like an Irish debut for We Can’t Afford This. A few copies were at the Temple Bar Gallery Art Book Fair last Christmas but most people never would have seen it! 

Kinda wild that it took me 6 months to show off my book about the Dublin housing crisis to a Dublin audience. But what a difference it made! I sold more than 2x as many as I did at LICAF. 

This kind of reignited my whole desire for organizing DECAF, to have more opportunities throughout the year to reach a local audience. 

Our Table and Us

Due to the Fumbally Stables requirement for a door-person, we had to put the Stray Lines table in the lobby away from the main exhibitor hall. It worked out though, as we became the DECAF greeters and toilet-direction-givers. I imagined it helped with sales a bit as well since it was a prominent placement. It didn’t allow us to hear any of the panels which was a bit of a bummer since it sounded like people were giving great talks from the snippets I heard. I could also barely hear the DECAF playlist I’d spent so long making.

What I brought for the group:

24 books by 6 different artists!

What the group sold:

52 books!

Not as many as LICAF but more than ELCAF and impressive because some of us were worried that the audience for DECAF would be the same Irish comics audience who’ve already read all our books. But instead we saw lots of new faces!

Winner

Is it cheating that I was the winner? It’s absolutely cheating. But I put We Can’t Afford This front and center on my music sheet stand and the music sheet stand is magic, whatever book we put up there (Sarah’s Primark at ELCAF, the Stray Lines Anthology at LICAF) always wins the day.

Dublin Eight Comic Arts Festival

It took about three months for DECAF to morph from hypothetical “a Comic Arts Fest in Dublin would be cool” to “maybe I could organize it” to “DECAF is happening!” I was inspired by Sarah running Pulse: Irish Comics Now last year and Monica Gallagher’s BMore Into Comics in Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve never even been to a BMore event yet since my family visits never sync up but the idea of a smaller, quarterly comic show really appealed to me. Monica hosts her events in bars, but since I’m a teetotaler I chose cafes which I thought would play well with the DECAF name.

Originally, it was supposed to be DCAF, I even okayed the name with The Dartmouth Comics Art Fest in Nova Scotia, but when I went to book the .ie website I found it was already taken by the Dublin Christian Arts Festival! 

Since I was already talking to a few venues in Dublin 8, and I really liked the silly coffee name I narrowed my venue hunt to a place that would keep Eight in the name. What happen if we do a show outside of Dublin 8? I have no idea! Scour the dictionary for E words. It factored into my choosing DublinComicArts for the website instead of DECAF, in case the letter E ever runs dry.

Rookie Mistakes

Besides losing money (definitely didn’t plan on that) some things came up along the way that completely slipped my mind. I didn’t say Free Admission anywhere on the poster or Facebook event. And it didn’t even occur to me until people started asking as they walked in the door! I don’t think it affected turnout but clarity is a good thing!

It wasn’t until a few days before DECAF that I put the first flyer on a college campus. Get with the times old man! If Julie hadn’t asked about dropping some posters and flyers at NCAD it never would have occurred to me! Not a single DECAF flyer made it to Trinity or UCD, DCU, DIT, Griffith, Pulse. Not that I really had posters and flyers to spare, or the budget to print more but really, what a dope to forget college kids, some of which are taking illustration and sequential art classes! 

At most comic events I feel bad for not socializing enough or making the rounds but it feels extra egregious when I’m the organizer! I said hi to people as they were coming in to set up, but once the show started and I got behind the Stray Lines table, that was kind of it for me! Debbie and Sarah made me go up at the end of The Comics Lab talks to say thank you and I’m glad I did. 

Highlights

Over a week later and I’m still pretty shocked by the turn-out we got. Never really a dull moment in the day and it repeatedly got crowded! People who showed up at 11am asked when the talks and panels were and when we told them 2:30pm, they actually came back! That’s wild to me! The Activity table and the Comic Swap table were hopping all day! Adults were drawing up at the table and kids were drawing down on the floor! The Swap table ebbed and flowed with used books and at the end of the day the donation box had €106 to give to the Abortion Rights Campaign! All the exhibitors I’ve talked to say they want to exhibit again at the next DECAF! Really lucky.

The venue was the perfect fit for our first event. The tables and arches were beautiful and it looked nothing like a traditional comic convention. It looked like an art gallery and a friend even asked me if they do gallery events there (they don’t usually but you should contact them anyway and hire their spaces!)

The poster art by Charlot Kristensen blew me away. It was the public face for the event and we needed one since I’m a complete unknown in the Irish comics community, “some dude named Matt is putting on a show” wouldn’t have filled the room. 

Sarah and Debbie agreeing to combine their quarterly Comics Lab with DECAF was a godsend. There’s no way the show would have been as successful as it was without The Comics Lab, DECAF stood on their reputation and the crowds in the afternoon came for The Comics Lab.

Damn Fine Print saved the day by sponsoring us! Our budget shortfall would have been much much worse without them, maybe even jeopardizing the prospect for future DECAFs.

Conclusion

When you consider that I often lose 100+ quid to travel to the UK to table an event, it’s looney tunes that I was able to organize an entire event here in Dublin and only lose 100 quid. Like, why not run an event! This might seriously change my comic show traveling habits. 

My next goals are to make it sustainable, losing only €100 isn’t bad, but I can’t afford to make a habit of it.

Once the show is out of the red, my next goal is to make the show free for individual exhibitors. Just knowing from experience how much table costs eat into the potential profits of a show and what a relief it was last year at Pulse and Small Press Day to have no table costs. The two ways there that I can see are, sponsorships, grants or crowdfunding. Sponsorship saved the first DECAF so I’ll keep pursuing that wherever I can. I haven’t been able to successfully navigate Ireland’s extensive grant system yet but I really need to figure it out. Crowdfunding is a total question mark. Are there 200 people who think having a small press event in Dublin is worth €1 a month? I hope so!

Epilogue

I didn’t officially announce that DECAF would be quarterly until the day of the event because I didn’t want anyone skipping April in favor of July. But I put a deposit down on the July show venue the same week I booked the April venue because why build one when you can build two twice the price?

Tara O Brien did our wonderful July poster. I’ve been so lucky with the people who’ve agreed to work with me on DECAF! There were supposed to be July postcards to give away at the April event but I really didn’t need to spend more money on the April event than I already did so it was fine to release the art digitally and save our printing budget for the final July poster. 

The July event is a bigger venue, with more exhibitors, it’s wheelchair accessible and will have a full spread of cafe tables and chairs. It’s also accidentally booked on my daughter’s birthday (you eeegit!) I can’t wait.