Thursday, April 29, 2010

What I Did On My Vacation



I went on vacation for ten whole days!


We flew into Portland, then drove to Westport to dig for razor clams, them off to Steilacoom to see the Mathias clan, then took the express bus to Seattle, walked all around the city, then took a train back to Portland and went to a comic book convention, where I caught a cold!

There's some more photos here.

Apologies to everyone who I didn't get a chance to talk to or buy books from at Stumptown. I was covering both my table and the Center for Cartoon Studies table, which made it difficult to get away. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with everyone at TCAF or MECAF later this month!

Some highlights from the show:

-Running out of copies of CABOOSE before 3pm on the first day!

-Selling out of The Trials of Sir Christopher early on the first day.

-Getting my contributor copy of Bear Fight! and seeing the anthology win a couple of Stumptown Awards.

- Jon Chad (my boyfriend/table partner) getting a little starstruck after meeting Kate Beaton and Craig Thompson.

- New Clutch! New comics from Joey Sayers!

- Chatting with the Secret Acres guys.

- Photobooth! (My head is huuuuge!)


I'll do a more complete post about the vacation later, once this cold has cleared up and all my sketches are inked.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Stumptown this weekend! April 24-25

Stumptown Map

I'll be at table #3 at Stumptown this weekend, right next to the Center for Cartoon Studies and Jon Chad.

I'll have copies of:

Woman King
Tragic Relief
Trials of Sir Christopher
Color Comics
Big Sexy Anthology
Tag Team Anthology

Hope to see you there!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Speed Lines Event

On April 10th, during the MoCCA art fest, a group of us headed over to Washington Square Park to participate in a collaborative public art project. I love public art!

Speed Lines

From the press release:

Speed Line will be a collaborative comic strip in which each artist will contribute one 3'x3' canvas panel. The comic will unfold frame by frame as artists improvise characters and a story line, however each artist will only be able to see their frame and the frame directly before theirs (much like an exquisite corpse en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse). We anticipate that the end result will be a fusion of styles and mediums.

Speed Lines

featuring:
Ariel Schrag
Dina Kelberman
Molly O'Connell
Colleen Frakes
Noel Freibert
Conor Stechschulte
Will Varner
Chris Day
Patrick Glass
Nathan Bulmer
Daniel Edward Calhoun
Lyla Ribot
Nick Shakespeare
Devin Moore
John Carnes

Speed Lines

Can't speak for the rest of the participants, but I feel the event was a success. A small crowd gathered to watch us work (including a class of elementary school kids, the highlight of my week). We each had just 40 minutes to finish a 3'x4' canvas (20 to start, to give the next artist an idea of what we were going for, then 20 to finish up while they started their panel). This was both the largest and quickest painting I've ever done, and I left the park feeling really energized, if a little sun burnt, and had a great walk back to the festival. Hope NYU organizes something like this for next year, or at least an exhibition of the work.

More photos here.

MoCCA 2010 report- the General Admission Blues

I didn't have my own table this year, just came as a fan. And...it wasn't the best experience.

Here's the story- I actually did have my books on a table with the Center for Cartoon Studies, BUT MoCCA but limits on the number of "Exhibitor" badges each table was allowed to buy (this is the first I've ever heard of a con doing this). Six was the magic number for a full table, I didn't make the cut and my distributor couldn't get me a badge for the same reason, so I planned on buying a "General Admissions" ticket at the door.

JP Coovert and Joe Lambert at the One Percent Press table

Arrived at the Armory at around 10:30am, there is no indication they are throwing a comic convention there. No signs or posters up, nothing indicating where we should stand in line. All I see is a bunch of military recruits running drills in front of the buildings, and a bunch of nerds trying really hard to stay out of their way.

We manage to form two lines. As more people arrive, we get asked "which is the line for pre-paid tickets?" a lot. We had no idea what we're doing.

At about 11am, a poor volunteer comes out and informs us we all need to form one line to the right. I'm in the wrong one, and go from being like 4th to way the hell around the corner of the building.

11:05am, the same volunteer comes out again, to tell us the doors will be opening in 5 minutes...they open at about 11:30, at which point we're asked to form two lines (??) pre-paid tickets to the right, everyone else to the left. Things are a bit of a mess in the hallway, I pay for a two-day pass, get my hand stamped, but am not given a ticket for the 2nd day and have to go back and argue with people.

CCS freshmen Beth, Nomi and Emily looking like pros.

So it's close to noon by the time I actually make on to the convention floor and can put my books down on the table. I am hungry, cranky and in no mood to spend money. And I have to immediately leave to catch lunch before heading to the Speed Lines event at NYU (separate blog post forthcoming).

It's about 4pm by the time I manage to get back to the show, and take a first walk around the floor. I have a program with a map, as well as a supplemental page with corrections to the table layout, and still never manage to find the Comics Bakery table.

I stole this map from their site. A huge chunk of "Row A" was gone, replaced by this weird no-man's-land of bar tables. Also, the poor girl at table 38 F (Tania DelRio from The Bazaarium, according to my program) deserves a refund . There was like three feet of clearance between her and the back wall- the row LOOKED like a dead end, no one was going near her.

All whining aside, I spent the last two hours of the convention walking the floor, shopping and trading, and had a nice time.


Monster Hats!

Getting into the show the second day is just as disorganized. I wasn't compulsively checking the clock this time (not having a heavy backpack full of books makes all the difference) so I don't know exactly when the doors opened, just that it was late. When I did make it to the front to and get my hand stamped to go in, I heard the security guard next to me ask a volunteer to close the doors again as they weren't ready yet. No idea what happened after that, as I was already in, and had a nice time on the surprisingly empty convention floor.

Again, sorry for all the whingeing and negativity, but the show needs to be a positive experience both for exhibitors AND the general admissions public, so that they'll wanna come back, spend money, and read new comics.

Suggestions for next year:

1. Get rid of the limit on exhibitor badges.
MoCCA raised the prices of tables, forcing more people to share in order to be able to afford the show at all, and then they drive the knife in a little further by limiting the number of people allowed to share. Really? This is how you want to do business?

2. Open on time.
It shouldn't be this hard.

3. Signs.
Let people know there's comic books in the building! And where to stand in line so they can get in to read them.

Okay, off to Portland Oregon for Stumptown. Let's see how it compares!

More photos here.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

JIM HANLEY'S UNIVERSE: The First Annual JHU Women In Comics Signing 4/8!

JIM HANLEY'S UNIVERSE: The First Annual JHU Women In Comics Signing 4/8!

On Thursday, April 8 beginning at 6:00pm, Jim Hanley's Universe proudly presents
Hope Larson (Salamander Dreams, Chiggers), Abby Denson (Tough Love, Dolltopia), Paige Pumphrey (check out her site here), Monica Gallagher (Gods and Undergrads), Katie Skelly (Nurse Nurse!!), Colleen Frakes (Tragic Relief, Woman King), Lucy Kinsley (Radiator Days, French Milk) and our own Rachel Freire! Plus we are working on couple of more names so stay tuned!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Sir Christopher book


Available for pre-order at I Know Joe Kimpel, will ship out after 04/10.

CF-SC-01
The Trials of Sir Christopher
118 pages, legal digest (8.5" x 7")
B+W, color letterpress cover
$8.00

Drawn in one month as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), November 2009. The complete challenge is here, plus a bonus story. The covers are hand set type, made in the Baker-Berry Library Book Arts Studio.

It won't really be for sale at MoCCA (I'm not going as an exhibitor this year, just a fan), though I might bring a few copies in my backpack with me. It'll officially "debut" at Stumptown, April 24th and 25th in downtown Portland. Hope to see you there!