Comics Arts Los Angeles (CALA), a free local festival dedicated to promoting comics to the greater Los Angeles community, returns to the city on December 14 and 15 for the first time in five years. The event, which is organized by cartoonists Jen Wang, Angie Wang, and Jake Mumm, began in 2014 as a one-day show before expanding into its current form as a two-day affair.

“Over the years, people have been asking ‘When is CALA coming back?’” Jen Wang said. “I think we’re just as excited as everyone else, because it was a big part of our lives.”

Launching an independent comics festival is a hefty task, and one from which many working artists would shrink. But not knowing much about running such an event may have been key for the organizers of CALA as they faced the task of launching the show in 2014.

The idea for the festival sprung from a visit Angie Wang took to New York City for a convention. Her friend Iris Jong, one of the original organizers of the festival, asked her why she had to travel all the way across the country just to go to a comics convention. When Wang responded that there weren’t any good West Coast conventions focused on independent comics, Jong replied, “Well, why can’t we make one?”

At the time, Angie dismissed the thought and shared that sentiment with Jen Wang: “I was like, ‘Isn’t that so silly?’ Then I think Jen told Jake about it.” Thus, a new indie comics festival was born.

“Everybody wanted a show in LA that was more indie comics focused, and there just wasn’t [one],” Jen said. “Nobody wanted to do it. Maybe it was the fact that Angie, Jake, and I had no experience that made it feel somehow easier. Because we were like, ‘I guess we can make it up as we go along.’”

According to Angie, the first CALA festival was “pretty bare bones,” but over the next few years, the festival expanded into its current two-day form, garnering a strong reputation for its exhibitors and programming among local artists and for the local community. Then, like nearly all in-person events, CALA took an unplanned hiatus during the shutdown at the beginning of the Covid pandemic—one that stretched on longer than anticipated.

“We’ve been wanting to do it for a couple years since other events started coming back post-Covid, and it was never quite the right time,” Jen said. “All of us have kids now, so it’s very different from 2019. I think we just wanted to make sure that when we came back it was something we could do right.”

Following the long interregnum, the organizers noticed some rustiness in their operations, most of which, Angie explained, had to do with basic logistics: “Are we sure that this is the number of tables that we need? Did we need more chairs?” In addition to organizational issues, the organizers found another challenge in the big demand for exhibitor spots at the festival. “There were, I think, more applicants than we've ever had,” Mumm said. “The quality of the applicants increased a lot over the years.”

This year’s CALA, to be held at the north campus of Homenetmen Glendale Ararat, will feature exhibitors including Shing Yin Khor, Ben Sears, Sophie Yanow, Silver Sprocket, and Youth in Decline. “We'll be doing regular panel discussions as well as some open forums, which are designed for people in the public to be able to talk to each other,” Mumm said, highlighting the programming visitors can expect at this year’s event. “We're trying some workshops this year which is kind of a new thing for us.”

CALA will also hold a comics drive, to benefit the middle school libraries of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The organization is looking to collect young adult and middle school graphic novels, adult graphic novels, and English-language manga.

As for what the organizers are most looking forward to from the festival’s long-awaited return, Jen said that she’s simply looking forward to “having everybody in that same room again.” Angie echoed the sentiment, noting pride in how many connections have been made at past CALA events: “Occasionally, we hear from people who started projects together at CALA. I hear from people who fell in love at CALA. It's really heartwarming, and makes us feel like just bringing people together is a really wonderful thing.”