US comics artist James Tynion IV poses during a photo session in Paris on February 3, 2026. (Photo by Joel Saget / AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
In 2019, after a six-year run, the Comic Arts Brooklyn (CAB) festival was held for the last time at Pratt University in Brooklyn. Not long after, the annual affair devoted to indie and alternative comics found itself placed on “indefinite hiatus,” becoming one of the many in-person casualties Covid-19 pandemic.
Now, half a decade later, Eisner Award-winning comic book creator James Tynion (Something Is Killing the Children, Department of Truth) is part of an initiative to fill that void with a similar convention dubbed Brooklyn Expo of Comics (BEC).
Kicking off in November at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Williamsburg, the gathering represents the first major endeavor organized by the Brooklyn Organization Dedicated to the Endurance of the Graphic Arts (BODEGA), a non-profit Tynion founded alongside fellow industry veterans Bryce Gold (creator of Pyrite Press) and Courtney Menar (formerly of Z2 Comics).
“There was really a utility to create a larger organization that could help stand up the Brooklyn Expo of Comics every year,” Tynion said over Zoom, “but also provide more resources to artists here in the city and create more incredible events that really help bring this community together.”
Gold agreed that the trio felt “the community wanted something, was hungry for something—specifically a show” in the vein of Comic Arts Brooklyn. “BEC is our first product, but we really have so many big plans for the next five years to continue growing and finding new ways of supporting local artists here.”
The creative community began to dwindle significantly throughout the pandemic, with many indie creatives leaving the city due to a lack of resources, a terrible blow to their financial stability, or some combination of the two.
“A lot of the resources for cartoonists here in the city are tied to academic institutions that are expensive to be a part of, or they don’t exist, or they’re dedicated to other art forms,” Tynion said. “And despite New York City being the center of arts philanthropy in the United States, it doesn’t feel like comics have really ever been allowed to be a huge part of that conversation.”
BODEGA seeks rectify that problem with BEC, which Tynion describes as an “indie comics show” exercising a real emphasis on creators not associated with the major publishers (i.e. Marvel, Image, DC). “This is more the people who are doing art-forward, creator-owned projects that are really on the cutting edge of the comics medium that don’t always get the big spotlight at major conventions like New York Comic Con. That was the hole in the local comics event scene we are hoping to fill.”
Echoed Gold: “We really want to showcase every aspect of comics-making—from creators that want to talk about their artistic process, to live reading events, to artist talks about what it’s like to publish locally or beyond. We really want to fill all the gaps of what it takes to make comics and showcase the wide variety—both of taste and type of comic, but also just what it takes to be a creative today in this business.”
As Gold alluded to earlier, BEC is only the first step in an ambitious master plan involving a slew of exhibitions, educational programming, and even monetary incentives to remain in New York City and keep the community alive.
“There really hasn’t been an organization whose core focus has been creating events and programming to further the education and further the development of artists,” Tynion added, “let alone one that can offer grants to creatives.”
What’s more, you can expect future announcements to boast their own truncations. “It developed a taste for the acronym in all of us,” confessed Tynion.
Like CAB, BODEGA, is a loving nod to a new New York staple: reliable corner stores where one is apt to spot the proprietor’s snoozing feline somewhere in the establishment as they browse basic pantry items or taste the best bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich they’ve ever had (hence BEC). To that end, a number of of their planned endeavors such the BODEGA Comic Arts Trophy (to be awarded at BEC) and a magazine titled the Brooklyn Annual of Graphically Elevated Literature fittingly bear the acronyms CAT and BAGEL, respectively.
“You’ll notice,” teased Gold, “a repeating theme for all of these as we come up with more products and share them with the world.”
One could say this non-profit is a way for the Tynion and his contemporaries to give back to aspiring artists in the wake of their own professional success. “It was a really great opportunity to go back to my roots,” Gold said. “Going back to the indie space.”
Tynion’s lucrative endeavors, meanwhile, have been prolific, including the formation of his own company, Tiny Onion. A play on his surname, the enterprise was “born out of the pandemic era and me wanting to take the reins of my own career,” Tynion shared, “rather than sort of wait for permission to do the things I wanted to do creatively and in the industry.”
He continued: “Our company kind of functions as an independent creative studio. It’s a model a more familiar over in the independent film space, where you have independent development companies that cook up an idea and then sell that idea into the system. Essentially, we build, a world in-house and then take that world to the publisher that we feel is going to help us bring it to market in the best way.”
At present, Tiny Onion has deals in place with major publishers like Dark Horse, Image, Penguin Random House’s Inklore, and BOOM! Studios. The latter is home to Exquisite Corpses, a Purge-meets-Squid Game series where a cabal of ultra-wealthy individuals force serial killers to battle to the death once a year.
Since launching last spring, the title created by Tynion and artist Michael Walsh has sold around “700,000 copies in single issues across all the issues over the first year,” estimated Tynion. “It has been the least sales attrition issue-to-issue of any series that I’ve ever worked on.”
In addition to a continuation of the main story (coming in 2027), Exquisite Corpses is also getting three spinoff books; a tabletop card game (which has already exceeded its $50,000 goal on Kickstarter) and two adaptations (one live-action, one animated) from by way of Lyrical Media.
Exquisite Corpses and its forthcoming transmutations are more of a recent development, however. The creator-owned jewel in Tynion’s impressive repertoire has to be Something Is Killing the Children, which introduced readers to monster hunter Erica Slaughter. Nearing its 50th issue, the title co-created with illustrator Werther Dell’Edera is receiving similar multimedia treatment via themed apparel, a prose novel, and two adaptations from iconic horror banner Blumhouse. Moreover, Something Is Killing the Children’s debut on the WEBTOON comics service last month brought in nearly 100,000 views and over 20,000 subscribers in the first week.
“More of them are discovering this incredible world that Werther Dell’Edera and I have built together,” Tynion said. “And honestly, WEBTOON, is really only the beginning … I just want to see the audience grow bigger and bigger—get more people introduced to Erica Slaughter.”
Applications for Brooklyn Expo of Comics close May 17.