Stuff We Learned, plus Links!

Well, we're back from a beautifullly relaxing family reunion in Connecticut. We visited Denise's Aunt and Uncle at White Gate Farm, an organic CSA in East Lyme. (While we were there, they appeared in a newspaper article about Connecticut's organic certification system.)

As promised, this week I'm going to post some voices and comments from last week's Comics Camps. Our first comments have to do with "Important Things We Learned (About Comics)", contributed by the young artists of the Hopkinton Independent School Comics Camp:

STUFF WE LEARNED ABOUT COMICS

• ANYONE can draw comics.
• Comics are a medium in which we can express ourselves through drawings.
• Always draw your margins!
• Penciling, inking, characters, and margins.
• Write your words big so people can read your comic!
• Comics have words and pictures.
• The flow... always to the right!
• I think the most important thing [about the week] was teamwork. We had to work together to make our books!
• I learned that comics don't have to have humor. Comics can be other things.
  Comics can be anything!
• The harder you work, the better your comics will be.
• Inking! Margins!
• Anything can be made into a comic. There are no bad ideas.
• I learned that if you are going to make mini-comics, make your words READABLE.

In other "Makin' Comics" news, the artist for the daily comic strip Annie, Ted Slampyak, recently posted an interesting peek behind the scenes of his comics-making process. He's pretty darn organized, and he has to be, because he's working with writers and editors to produce seven strips per week.

(I discovered Mr. Slampyak's blog through the website of The Daily Cartoonist, which I discovered through the blog of cartoonist Mike Lynch. The Daily Cartoonist has a lot of really great articles; for example, do you know which major nationally-syndicated daily comic strip is colored by a 15-year-old?!?)

Paper, Ink, Sweat, and Dreams...

Wow! Comics Camp at the Hopkinton Independent School finished up yesterday with a GIGANTIC burst of comics-publishing power. This year, we used all our powers of creative concentration, cooperation, and organization to produce a "boxed set" of over THIRTY MINI-COMICS!

Adam Staffaroni visited us from the Center for Cartoon Studies on Thursday. He showed us his current project, which is penciling 18 pages of a future issue of the "Tales of the TMNT" comic book. He talked about working with a writer, a script, an inker, editors, and the production schedule of a bigtime publishing house.

Colin Tedford (a co-organizer of Trees and Hills Comics Group) used his visit to hold a lunch meeting about submitting comics to T&H's upcoming anthology, and organizing your own local comics groups.

Then we knuckled down and churned out hundreds of mini comics in the heat of the afternoon. (Our room was literally like a sauna with all that folding, stapling, and cutting activity!)

The day ended with a sun-drenched Comics Convention. Thanks to all our friends and family for turning out to read and collect our (sometimes autographed) comics!

In the coming days I'll post some artist comments from the feedback forms, including the most important things we learned from Comics Camp, and our plans for future comics! We also have some online comics Q&A coming up... but for now, it's off to Connecticut for a family reunion.

And oh yes... a feral cat update. Denise caught six surprised cats in the box traps at the vacant house down the road. Apparently the females are too smart for the traps, so you mostly catch males and young kittens. She also caught a surpremely shocked raccoon, who is now home safe in its den, telling the tale to its young ones!

"Let's Make It Readable!"

Today was "Readability Day" at the Comics Camps. We projected Herge's "Tin-Tin: The Black Island" and James Kockalka's "Pinky and Stinky" on the classroom wall as examples of inherently readable work, and we evaluated our own pages for readability.

In comics, readability refers to the legibility of the letters and words, as well as to the ease of connection and closure between different panels and images. Using our observations from our readings, and a brand new Comics Camp mini-comic ("Let's Make It Readable! Starring Your Pals Reed 'n' Bill, the Wacky Cartoonist Brothers"), we talked about size, space, pencilling and proofreading practices, and other important issues of readability.

Today was also our first day without a daily deadline. We're all working on our final projects now, due at the end of camp Thursday afternoon. It's the calm before the storm, because starting Thurday afternoon we'll be frantically photocopying, folding, and stapling to produce the thousands of mini-comics we'll need for our boxed sets and Friday's Comics Conventions!

(Oh yeah -- don't let me forget, we need to fold all the origami paper boxes for the boxed sets, too.)

This is the student-driven source of Comics Camp Power! Each student takes full ownership of and responsibility for the completion of a mini-comic project, determining every aspect of the project, from content to look and feel to size to paper color... By managing each step of the process, we learn to create and produce our own work independently, prolifically, and creatively.

And once again, I spent the afternoon visiting our Comics Camp at The Orchard School in East Alstead. We had some great discussions about readability, and we finished the day with a musical comics jam:

In this photo, the whole group is rocking out with that old camp saw, "The Rattlin' Bog", while tag teams of artists draw in each verse as we make it up. The back-to-back easel enabled us to create two different pictures of the same song, and then reveal them to each other at the end. You can see a little corner of the ukelele in the background. (Once I saw Dan Zanes and Friends perform this song in concert, and Donald Saaf turned the song into a cartoon right there on stage... )

If you're into comics industry podcasts, Indie Spinner Rack has just posted another episode of their MoCCA 2007 interviews, including (ta da!) an interview with Stumblin' Marek Bennett about Comics Camp, where I end up sounding maybe a little too breathlessly excited about the educational value of comics... First they interview Alison Bechdel (winner of TIME magazine's Book of the Year award!) and several other creators, and then the comics education stuff starts up around an hour into the show. (You'll find some mildly "mature" language in the earlier interviews, so if you're under 32 years old, check with your parents first!)

In cat news, Denise collected a set of box traps from the local feral cat rescue mission. She and I went down to our friendly neighborhood vacant house at twilight and set eight traps around the yard, hoping to harvest some feral cats, get them neutered, and send them off to their new homes later this week. Keep your paws crossed!

"How do you draw _________?"

Day Two of working with this amazing group of young artists... In our Hopkinton Comics Camp today we had several informal discussions about the business side of comics. Many of our campers are planning careers in the comics industry! (Future posts of this blog might include some of the great questions we answered today.)

One conversation I had with a student during our morning session really opened up a lot of doors in my mind. We were doing "Scene-Action-Result" exercises to develop our sequential narrative skills. Amy brought her blank page up to me and said, "How do I draw a car?" She wanted her "scene" panel to show her main character riding in a car, but she had never drawn a car before! We could've gone out to the parking lot and looked at cars to get ideas, but I knew her main character was an extremely cartoony character. A realistic car would look out of place.

"Well, you need to figure out what a car looks like in the style of your character," I told her. "You know how different artists all draw cars differently? You'll have your own way to draw them. What are the most important details that let us know something is a car?"

"Ummmm..." she thought, "Headlights? Windows?"

"Exactly," I nodded. "And wheels, too. I bet if it has headlights, windows, and wheels, it'll look like a car, no matter what else it has!"

In her result, you can see that Amy discovered another key concept in object recognition -- the context of the object. In this case, the fact that her car is driving along a highway (complete with trees and signs and a dotted line) help us recognize it as a car.

As I thought about the exchange later, I realized how central it is to all the cartooning we do in Comics Camp. What are the most simple, most basic elements of the object? What qualities do we need to communicate? In cartooning, nothing else matters! It isn't so much how well you can draw, but how well you can create a consistent, believable world in which your stories take place.

I wish they made cars like yours, Amy!

I visited the Alstead Comics Camp, too... just to give you an idea of the MADCAP CREATIVITY happening there under the guidance of Colleen Frakes and Nathan Paluzzi, I'll post one of the "Scene-Action-Result" pages from today's work. This one's by Bradley:
I love it -- a character who can transform into THE VERY COMIC BOOK YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS!!!!

On another note, my renewed State of NH teaching license came in the mail today.
It feels really good to see the "Beginning Educator" status changed to "Experienced Educator." Just this week, too, when the Comics Camps are really coming together. Yay!

New Characters, Fresh from Comics Camp!

This is going to be an awesome week. I can tell already. Think about it -- over forty artists in two separate camps, each producing (at least) one mini-comic over the course of the week, and then all those mini-comics going into boxed sets on Friday, and into the waiting hands of the families and friends who come to our Comics Conventions on Friday, too!

I did the math last night... if all goes as planned, we will collectively produce almost three thousand copies of our mini-comics for distribution this week! Like I told the campers this morning, I don't know if any group of school-age kids has done anything quite like this before. It makes one's heart beat faster just thinking about it.

That's a lot of drawing.

Jeepers, that's a lot of folding, stapling, and cutting.

Well, if any Comics Camp group has been up to it, this is the group! We have kids from all over the Northeast at our Hopkinton camp, and a great group of alumni and new students over in Alstead.

We started off today by studying cartoons. Each camper created several totally new characters, and then we gave each other feedback about which ones caught our eye. From this feedback session, we built a list of techniques we're using to make our artwork grab a reader's attention, and then we put those techniques to work in "Splash Pages" for our new characters. Here are a few examples, to show you the variety of characters we generated:

We also practiced making some mini-comics, such as the traditional "WELCOME TO COMICS CAMP" mini, and a brand new mini about readability, entitled, "LET'S MAKE IT READABLE!"

In assembling our minis, we stressed cooperation and organization. With a division of labor and some trial and error, we assembled 50 copies of these minis, and familiarized ourselves with the various stages of mini-comic production.

This afternoon we took some time to get started on tomorrow's projects and read the comics in our camp library. Hey, even our relaxation time is learning time! I'm using the camp drawing time to develop a story for the next issue of my zine...

I just got off the phone with Colleen Frakes, who's leading the Alstead camp this week. Apparently the kids there were SO into their comics, they voted to give up their swim time so they could work on their comics! Colleen said there were a lot of returning campers and characters, and some great collaborations in the works. I'll be heading over to check out the Alstead Comics Camp tomorrow afternoon; I can't wait!

Kittens in the Garden, &c.

Several exciting new things happened this weekend. Here are my three:

1) The kittens came out into the garden for the first time!

It takes about ten photos to get one good classic "cute kitten" pose. That's Goopy in the pea patch.

Mr. Stripes is about to honk Goopy's nose in the asparagus row.

2) We all enjoyed the Trees and Hills Anthology Release Party at the eerily odd Main Street Museum in White River Junction, featuring many tasty snacks and musical jammin' with Cat Garza. (Dan Barlow posted a scrap of video from the party.)

3) Setting up the Hopkinton Comics Camp, then zipping out to Alstead to set up the Comics Camp there with Colleen Frakes and Nathan Paluzzi. Colleen's come down from White River Junction, and Nathan's come up from Baltimore to do this camp. It's SO fun to see them getting ready to run the week, and I'll be popping in to do some lessons and activities in the afternoons. On Friday, we'll run simultaneous DOUBLE-HEADER Comics Conventions; watch this space for updates!

Sidewalk Comics in Keene

This evening Denise and I went down to Creative Encounters and did a sidewalk comics demo to promote my Fall comics workshops at ArtWorks of Keene. When we arrived, the clouds looked like they wanted to clear, but the rain just kept coming down harder and harder. Then, suddenly, the rain stopped and the sun came out. It was time to get to work!

Creative Encounters brought us every kind of luxurious art supply we could wish for, from foam board to colorful handmade paper to instant papier-mache mix. We wanted to do something more than simple ink drawings on paper, so we started ripping the paper into shreds and sticking it to the foam boards in big jagged shapes. As we worked, we shaped our ideas into a plan. Each piece of foam board became a panel in our comic, and the wording of the comic would suggest their proper order.

The sun shone down, our balloons wagged in the breeze, and we invited any and all passersby to donate suggestions or even pick up paper and get messy with us. Some people suggested plot ideas or different orders for our panels. One guy named Jimmy came by on his way home from art class, and he just grabbed some paper and started slapping down shapes, staying through to the very end. Way to go, Jimmy!

Colin Tedford showed up to help cut shapes. He worked mostly on the all-black "outer space" panel. It was his birthday, too. Happy birthday, Colin! So there we all were, having fun and hard at work...

Working out on the sidewalk like this, we got to talk to everyone who came by. Since we were using papier mache, we ended up explaining the distinctions between cartoons (a style of drawing) and comics (sequential images and text that tell a story). NO, what we were doing was NOT cartooning, but YES, it WAS comics! Kathy (from ArtWorks) handed out Fall Class Schedules and collected contact information, so if anyone was interested they could come and register for the Fall Comics Workshops (Wednesdays, 4:00-5:30 at ArtWorks of Keene!).


Below are the three panels we completed by 7:30, at which point the rainclouds let loose again and brought all our labors to a damp halt. The papier mache goop wasn't dry yet when we took these pictures, so the panels still look kind of slimy...

Who is that masked guy?

Where is he going?

We were going to write "...THE INFINITE UNIVERSE OF SEQUENTIAL GRAPHICAL NARRATIVES" but we didn't have time to cut out all the letters.

"All right, who's cutting out the flying guy to go right THERE?"

The panels will be on display at The Moving Company in Keene, attracting young minds to the Fall Comics Workshop series. What a beautiful evening, and what a great way to meet people and carry the comics flag into new territory!

Thanks to the Keene Sentinel for contributing Sunday Sentinels (including Mimi's Doughnuts, of course) free for all passersby!

Will we see you tomorrow at the Trees and Hills fiesta in White River Junction?

Tribal Groove Punk Rock... OF the kids, BY the kids, FOR the kids!

Last week, I said I'd post some pieces of my Band Camp. Here, then, is a rare photograph of us in our final concert, rockin' a packed Keene State College Science Building Lecture Hall:

One guitar, two drummers, one flute, one saxophone, two trumpets, and three (yes, three!) bass guitars. Can you imagine the sound? Well, you needn't! We recorded some of it. Here are two fragments:

• "Scribble!"
• "Ouch! Ow! Yeah!"

On our last day together, we voted that our group be named "Marek and the Midgets," and that's the name we used when we played our final concert. I'm not sure where the name came from, but one thing is for sure: these young musicians brought tons of enthusiasm and courage to the original material we created over the week. Many of our members hadn't even really played their instruments very much before the camp started, so our music came out simple, raw, and fresh. I loved seeing that look of pure rockin' pleasure on everyone's faces whenever we locked onto a groove together.

Comics Camp Links, and Other News

In between long car trips this weekend, I've been reading through my Comics Camp boxed set from the past week. I'm continually impressed by the inventive minds and adventurous imaginations that congregate at these workshops! Every story is so individual, original, and recognizably unique to its creator. On the first day, I tell the kids that their job is to make the comics only they can make. I'd say this group succeeded at that!

I've posted a list of titles and a photo gallery from the week on my Comics Workshop site. When I get some scanner time, I'll put out some sample pages. We have some great artwork; I wish I could post it all.

My erstwhile assistant Colin has started posting his notes from the week on his LiveJournal page

With the relatively quiet week ahead, I'm looking forward to finishing up my Mimi's Doughnuts strips for August and September, doing some daytrips with my wife Denise, and getting ready for the next next week's Comics Camps in Alstead (with Colleen Frakes) and Hopkinton.

OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS:

On Thursday, July 19, from 5:30-7:30 PM, I'll be leading a comics-making demo on the sidewalk outside Creative Encounters at Keene. That's the art supply shop just off Central Square. We'll use lots of different materials to create some giant sidewalk comics. The purpose is to have fun, and to raise awareness about A) the value of Comics as an art form, and B) the weekly Comics Workshops I'll be leading at ArtWorks of Keene in the Fall. Come on down and join in the messy fun!

Also, I'm assuming I'll see you at the big book release party on July 21!

Keene State College Comics Camp Mini-Comics Convention!

Friday brought the exciting conclusion of the Keene State College Comics Camp, and readers of all ages mobbed our "artists alley" tables, looking for copies of the latest, coolest mini-comics in town (...in the state? Nahhh... in the WORLD!). As our stacks of still-warm minis disappeared into eager hands, I overheard one young creator giving the quote of the day: "I never thought I'd be SO famous!"

With Comics Camps, as with any artistic program for young artists, it's all about giving the kids ownership of their decisions, their creations (in this case, characters and stories), and their output (in this case, mini-comics). The Mini-Comics Convention provides an intense, structured culmination for a week of very hard (and enormously fun) work.

All together, we gave out over 300 copies of our mini-comics to an audience that will enjoy and share them all over our New Hampshire, and we went home knowing that all our work has found readers not just among our friends and families, but even with other camp families and members of the college community.

Friday also brought an album release party concert for our afternoon camp band, "Marek and the Midgets"... but that's another story!

Endurance, &c.

Endurance, patience, commitment, and fun-loving goofiness... all these essential ingredients have come into play as our comics rush towards completion for tomorrow's Keene State College Kids On Campus Comics Convention! We're keeping out pens to the paper and racing against time to wrap up 16 different projects by our Friday morning deadline.



It's SO inspiring to see these young artists embarking on these projects. For some, it's their first really focused multi-page comics project ever. Today alone, I enjoyed conversations with several campers about their discoveries and growth over the week. One showed me why he thought his most recent page was his "most readable page ever", and another explained why he'd totally changed his drawing style between his first camp project and his final project; "I just drew eight pages today, in the time it took me to draw my first two pages on Monday!" This personal transformation happens alongside all the great conferences and collaborations going on between artists who were just meeting shyly for the first time on Monday... it's no wonder we're all tired at the end of the day!


In the afternoon "Band" camp, we've also been on a creative tear...

Today, we created a song that just might be one of the most fun singalongs ever, a punk anthem, and several strange free-jazz sorts of jams... stay tuned for mp3's!

What IS Comics?

It's always fun to get a bunch of young comics creators together and ask them that age-old question,

"Should the question be, 'What IS comics,' or should the question be, 'What ARE comics?'"

What exactly do we mean by the word "comics", anyway? Here are some nifty Comics taglines, brought to you by the artists of my most excellent Keene State College Comics Camp:

• Comics: Pictures that tell a story.
• Comics: Adventures in the Mind.
• Comics: Funny and entertaining.
• Comics: The best type of book -- (whether) funny book, good, old, or new.
• Comics: Funny. interesting cartoons that will make you laugh and make you want to READ MORE.
• Comics: Small books that are funny (the creators try to make people laugh!)
• Comics: Funny book thingies.
• Comics: A series of pictures and small dialogue.
• Comics: Black and white people in panels.
• Comics: You read them left to right and top to bottom.
• Comics are action fighting books.
• Comics: Pictures that tell a story.
• Comics are fun to use and are easy to read.
• Comics: A type of picture book with much more than one picture on each page... a book that shows the characters' action and dialogue in pictures.
• Comics: Putting pictures together to make the stories you live by!
• Comics: Turns your brain on fire.

Tuesday, we created simple "Scene-Action-Result" pages that showed our new characters in action. Wednesday we discussed the all-important topic of READABILITY, and started to practice proofreading and critiquing each other's comics using our new vocabulary. As we move into the final days of the week, we're racing against the clock to finish our individual projects (a 4-8 page mini-comic from each camper).

I've overheard several campers making plans to continue their comics, or even to form mini-comic publishing ventures together, after this week is over. We're definitely gathering momentum... now if I could only find some spare time to work on my own project, "Count Pigula"!

The First Day of Comics Camp...

Well, the Comics Camp 2007 Season officially opened today with a morning camp at Keene State College. We're waaaay up on the top floor of the building (since the room turns into a music room for my "Let's Start a Band!" camp in the afternoons).

We spent our first day creating funky characters. We studied each others artwork for the use of shape, contrast, texture, and motion, and for eye-catching features like eyes, mouths, and tentacles. By noontime, each camper had created a "Splash Page" featuring a totally new character! We had everything from talking peanuts to robots to jedi tubers to totally normal-looking scientists... and tomorrow, we'll start to make mini-comics about them.

Due to inscrutable registration demographics, this will be my first ever comics camp that is all boys. How strange! When I started doing camps in 2002, I thought I'd really have to market the program to girls, but over the years that hasn't been the case at all! In many camps, I've had more girls than boys... but not this week.

I'm super-pleased to have the stalwart Colin Tedford assisting with this camp. After the campers left, he threw together a lovely 20-page mini-comic of all of our splash pages. Thanks to Colin, we can start off tomorrow by reviewing our artwork from today, reduced and reproduced on the copy machine.

Education: Cute, Fluffy, and Vital!

There's this empty house down the street that's recently become a colony of starving feral cats. Over the past month, my wife Denise and I have rescued 13 little kittens from the colony. We take the kittens out of the property, feed them at our house, and then deliver them to the regional Humane Society shelter for adoption. It's a rescue mission, because if we didn't take those kittens out of there, they'd live short, terror-filled lives of disease, malnutrition, combat, and coyote chases. They'd also reproduce like crazy, and we would have hundreds of cats down there in a matter of years.

Another reason we're taking them is that kittens are irresistably cute. Or at least, they are when they're healthy and friendly...

This whole experience has really taught me a lot about the value of education. The peaceful affection you might experience with your cat (or any other pet) is NOT natural; it's the product of intense socialization at an early age! When we first catch THESE feral kittens, they snarl and scream, clawing wildly and biting into anything they can reach. They are terrified of all humans, and cannot bear the stress of physical contact. Denise and I both received minor scratches from these beasties while chasing them down and securing them in boxes. However, I'm pleased to announce that after a couple of weeks of constant, compassionate attention, careful nurturing, and (let's not forget) food, the kittens are affectionate, socialized, and ready for adoption!

We just caught two more kittens yesterday, and they're probably from the same litters. They're totally unsocialized, however, and have never been around humans. Instead of snuggling and purring when you approach, they resist ferociously. Since they're already almost eight weeks old, we're not sure they'll ever be able to be socialized.

I've been thinking about this process of socialization and education as we gear up for another Summer of Comics Camps. We need positive experiences and support to feel secure enough to work and play together productively. This is true whether we're in the process of becoming active, friendly kittens or creative, productive comics artists. The earlier and more constant that experience is, the farther we'll be able to go as we develop and grow.

Cue the music: Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, "Teach Your Kittens Well..."

MoCCA ArtFest 2007 (Notes and Links)

Okay, here are my notes from June's MoCCA ArtFest in New York City. I had a wonderful weekend of comics, old friends, new faces, sidewalks, trains, city sights and smells... in many ways the most intense four days of the month. I traveled by train with Colin Tedford, and we got to talking about lots of stuff we'd noticed, both in our own experiences and in watching others. Here are my reactions and observations about the convention scene, presented as advice... as much to MYSELF as to all my Trees and Hills cronies who joined us at the convention.

Table Display & Presentation -- How you set up your artwork and your table seems incredibly important. I keep thinking Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Thousands (or at least hundreds) of people are going to walk by your table, and they all have to be able to understand several things:

• Who you are
• What you do
• What it's all about
• What style you use
• How to buy/get/read it

They have to understand that in a matter of one or two seconds, too. It's fascinating to watch people walk by the table; their eyes move over certain comics, catch on others... If they feel comfortable enough, they'll approach and look at a book, maybe even flip through the pages... I found it incredibly helpful to just walk around the convention floor and see what tables I found myself stopping at (or passing by), and why. My suggestions for table displays:

• LIMIT the number of choices. One or two products is better than a hundred, if you want people to focus in and look seriously at something. Choose your "flagship" title and eliminate the more peripheral "C-list" options.
• Give passersby a NAME or WEBSITE they'll remember. Make a sign and make it bold and/or colorful. Even if they don't stop to read your stuff this time around, the next time they come through (maybe even next year?) they'll remember your name! RECOGNITION IS THE FIRST ESSENTIAL STEP IN INITIATING BRAND LOYALTY!
• SMILE and TALK to people. Let them know you want them to spend some time at your table.
• Have an introductory SENTENCE or PHRASE (or two) that simultaneously DEFINES and DESCRIBES your comic and makes them WANT TO KNOW MORE about it. (This is the sentence you find yourself repeating over and over again by Saturday afternoon.)
• Put your comic IN THEIR HANDS. Give them a guided tour.
• Have something NEW, even if it's just a freebie preview or something like that. People should walk away from the table with a sense of something to come from you in the future.

Commerce & Culture -- Also, I just want to note that I spent ALL of Saturday at my table talking to readers/shoppers. While it was fun, it was also draining. I left the convention Saturday feeling pretty wiped out, isolated, and strangely disconnected from all the activity and action around me. Sunday, I took the first few hours of the day to roam the convention floors, hunting down artists and publishers I wanted to meet, giving out and trading copies of my zine, making contacts and meeting new people and convention buddies. I came back to my table refreshed and energized by all the interaction with my favorite artists. Yes, I'd missed a few hours of business, but the trade was well worth it. We're at that convention to NETWORK with each other and DISTRIBUTE our artwork! Next time, I'm going to try to give away even more of my work to other creators.

Links -- The corollary to that sentiment is that we need to let each other know we appreciate our artwork. In that spirit, here are a few of my favorite titles from the piles and piles of EXCELLENT comics I collected at MoCCA '07:

• Bisk -- Wordless Norwegian dog comics by Bjorn O.
• Tragic Relief -- Colleen Frakes' folktale-inspired comic about... well, you'll just have to read it. It's creepy. (Colleen's also leading a Comics Camp with me this summer!)
• Pizza Wizard -- Sam Gaskin's been eating too much pizza.
• Field Guide to Cartoonists of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Western Massachusetts -- Trees and Hills gives you the most cartoonists for your dollar.
• The Bird and the Bear: Doormats of Life -- One of my favorites, by Alex Kim. It's a slow, heart-ringing look at a young couple who decide to become superheroes.
• Papercutter anthology -- a fun selection of up-and-coming artists.
  Phase 7 -- Alec Longstreth awesome award-winning comic... The only other issue #11 (that I could find) at the convention!
• Syncopated -- Brendan Burford's anthology of journalistic and non-fiction comics.

There are lots of other great comics in my travel-bag, but that's it for tonight. Before I close, I should just say thanks to everyone who traded with me, thanks to my Auntie Lindell for lunch on the way to the convention, and thanks especially to my college buddies Adam and Margaret for lending me a comfy couch with a breakfast balcony 20 stories above Lexington Avenue!

The Declaration of Indie Pen-Dance

On this fourth of July, 2007, I'd like to dedicate this blog to COMICS and EDUCATION and all the GOOD that can come out of drawing, reading, and learning about the world around us.

Namely, WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT:

• -- COMICS are a POWERFUL art form that ENGAGE readers in ACTIVELY CONSTRUCTING MEANING and LEARNING about new ideas in new ways!

• -- COMICS put pictures and words into sequence to communicate INFORMATION and tell STORIES.

• -- STORIES help us define, recognize, and change the world around us.

• -- DEFINITION, RECOGNITION, and CHANGE are integral parts of a life-long process of EDUCATION.

• -- True EDUCATION increases AWARENESS, COMPASSION, and PEACE in the world.

• -- Truly great COMICS will EDUCATE and EMPOWER readers and creators alike!

Hmmm... it seems like I'm forgetting some good ones. Oh yes:

• -- COMICS are an ACCESSIBLE art form that can be UNDERSTOOD, ENJOYED, and CREATED by EVERYONE.

• -- ACCESSIBLE art enables and empowers ALL VOICES to contribute.

• -- COMICS empower us to UNDERSTAND and CONTRIBUTE TO our world in MEANINGFUL, ENJOYABLE, and ORIGINAL ways.

And let's not forget the bottom line:

• -- COMICS are DARN FUN.

Can you think of anything else?

First Post

This is my first post. I'm creating a blog in honor of the Fourth of July and Kittens. Happy Fourth of July! Happy kittens!