It’s my sixth time writing about MICE and I’ve still got things to say. That’s because the annual Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, a free, two-day convention, held in a (once) historic Cadillac showroom on the (now) Boston University campus, is a liquid. It fills the space you put it in. It was snowing early Saturday afternoon, but that was outside. In the big room, MICE had taken the shape of its container. It was hot in there from all the bodies. Sweaty. Glad it was a masked event for a variety of reasons; the closeness in the room was a reason I could feel.
The venue keeps getting bigger, and the crowd keeps pace.
But what does filling the space mean, beyond reaching maximum capacity for the Scott McCloud event? McCloud is a signifier as well as a guest: MICE aims to teach. Not only is the Expo a marketplace for independently created work, a library of the future of comics, a map exploring all corners of comics’ potential as a medium, MICE is panels and workshops that are geared to educate, to share knowledge and experience, connect the community to the medium. MICE is about giving you the tools to understand comics. In the container that is independent comics, MICE is filling the space with you. Comics come from everybody.
This year’s guest exhibitors included McCloud, ND Stevenson, Jesse Lonergan, Keezy Young, Lee Lai, Ben Passmore, B Mure, Huda Fahmy, Desmond Reed, and many others. Cathy G Johnson won this year’s Underground Visionary Award. Johnson is an educator, a cartoonist, and a working printmaker who has made some of your favorite concert posters. Jesse Lonergan has been blowing direct market minds with his instant cult-classic graphic novel Drome. But Lai, Mure, Young, even Stevenson and McCloud are largely known for their work lauded in bookseller and librarian circles. Spider-Man and Wonder Woman aren’t really present at MICE- though I did get a sweet bootleg Garfield sticker, and multiple zines referencing Kate Bush. There’s definitely fan art everywhere, just not the type traditionally associated with comic book convention. MICE shows a blend of influences that more corresponds with the genre-racking of a bookstore or library stack, and less with the cultural and commercial divisions drawn between publishers that stratify comic shops.
Above all, the focus is on art as personal expression.
There are two rooms with exhibitors, the old showroom- floor to ceiling glass walls overlooking the Green Line train and the Charles River, and a second room across the hall with whiteboards on all four walls. By the end of the weekend, the views that the walls develop are equally enchanting and uh thoroughly unique. A hallway connects them, lined with more tables for raffles, the help desk and coat check, and organizations like Boston Comic Arts Foundation (BCAF), who put on MICE, and the Graphic Medicine International Collective table.
There are actual lecture halls and conference rooms on a two floors for panels, workshops, and the other scheduled events. There’s even a whimsically designed, open, massive lounge area. Sweaty as it may be, the university building brings a (metaphoric) atmosphere that convention centers lack. PAX East was beautiful, but MICE is magic.
I spent half the day walking the circuit finding things and the other half helping out at the aforementioned Graphic Medicine table. GMIC is kind of what it sounds like, an organization dedicated to promoting where health and comics overlap. An umbrella, under which a diverse array of approaches to defining health treat it as a lived experience first and a textbook subject second. Everything at the table was a free print resource, from downloadable reading lists to bookmarks promoting individual titles. I sent every person who would listen to Keezy Young. Got to hype a favorite, Food School, up to somebody interested in memoirs that involve dealing with healthcare. Another commingling of education and community that goes around the exclusivity of institutions I was feeling everywhere at MICE.
Speaking of stuff to get hyped about.
Five MICE Things!
1. AT Pratt’s popup comics. This New York adventure is (somehow?) two pages, an unnumbered quantity of cuts and folds, nine staples, three different popup foldouts, four color RISO printing. Climb the popup Empire State Building with King Kong! Little lyrical excursions made more special by their ornate, creative presentation. I have folded-in many a Mad Magazine, but never popped up a comic like this.
2. Erin Roseberry’s UV reactive comic was another well, haven’t seen that before MICE moment. It came with a little UV light key fob so that you could read all the secret parts. Like Pratt, this is someone whose dedication to the process of construction is so deep, it comes back around to influence the art being constructed.
Bonus! Scriptrix Roseberry’s Illuminated RISO guide palette print. Simply smitten with the collision of practicality and style on display here, as well as the connection it draws between tweaking the color settings of your printer and mixing different portions of compounds to create pigment paints.
3. Shiny things. Every year I end up buying a bunch of stickers, but 2025 has upped its game. Boxerbun is printing them on holographic foil, the faceted textured kind. I got a print from the Black Indie Comics Club booth (while picking up their horror anthology Black and Bloody) with the same finish. Even one of the Ansis Puriņš comics I got had some instead of spot gloss. Ahead of his time? Because comics are reaching the next level of shiny and I am here for it. Carina Taylor understands what I’m talking about.
4. William Morris Looky Here text. “Down to the very recent days everything that the hand of man touched was more or less beautiful. So that in those days all people who made anything shared in art, as well as all people who used the things so made: that is ALL people shared in art.” Morris’ 1880 speech The Beauty of Life (Hopes and Fears for Art), set in a type created by the author and couched in prints inspired by his wallpaper designs.
5. Bread. Or, Even What You Know Can Still Surprise You. Pubs like Bulgilhan, Peow2, Fieldmouse Press, and Avery Hill were all there, but I already have a big chunk of their books. When something like “deluxe hardcover body horror vampire yuri” is on offer, one doesn’t hesitate. In most cases, I’m looking for a book at their table that I don’t know anything about. Soften the Blow by Bread Tarleton, a Fieldmouse book, seemed promising. Flipping through I didn’t get a good grip on what it was about, but I did get a sense of deepening strangeness as the story went on, and generally dug the aesthetic and vibe, the look of the book. Looked up Tarleton the next day to realize they did one of my favorite semi-finalist selections in this year’s Cartoonists Coop Minicomics Awards. Horse 2. Incredibly strange, delightfully absurd. I am excited to see how they apply their storytelling to a longer, (literally and figuratively) heavier format. You never know what you can turn up browsing.
The MICE Haul Photo returns!
Traditionally I wrap these with a reminder to every zine maker out there reading that you should charge more. This year I tried to give a little more, to put my money where my mouth was I guess. 2025 has been a hard year and nobody at MICE isn’t feeling it. Some people had their little card readers, but many exhibitors aren’t merching on that level yet, and had QR codes for money transfer apps. Which made discreetly overpaying much easier. The tone with which they said “You want to round… up?” at the Peow2 table was pretty funny though.
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