The third comic jam of January 2010 (we meet the second and last Thursday of each month) is going to be on Thursday Feb 11, 2010 at 6:30 PM AND at a new location.

The upcoming jam will be again at the Borderlands Cafe (next to the Borderlands Sci-Fi Books) on Valencia St. Our first time at this location at our last meeting was great. Hardwood floors, old sci-fi paper packs, great snacks and drinks and some great art from all involved.

So, why not join us.

Location: 870 Valencia Street, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94110(415) 970-6998‎
Here is their site http://www.borderlands-cafe.com/and here is the store next door http://www.borderlands-books.com/

Time: 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm ish

MAP HERE

What to bring: drawing materials, sketchbook, your latest work, samples of favorite artists and artwork, stuff.

See you there.

Saturday, February 13 | 1:30-3:30 | Albuquerque Main Library | Albuquerque, NM

The February 7000 BC meeting will be held Saturday, February 13 in Conference Room #2 at the Albuquerque Main Library, 1:30–3:30.

Free parking for up to 2 hours in the Very Special Arts Garage at 5th and Copper. Bring your parking stub to the circulation desk for validation. There is also on-street metered parking.

This will be a working meeting — bring comics to work on, take time to collaborate, or get input on your projects. After the meeting, we’ll move on to dinner.

New members are always welcome. Please send an email with any questions.

I recently did some product reviews for our friends at Wet Paint. You can read them here. Since they are the best and the friendliest art supply store I have ever been to, and since they have generously supported the Conspiracy for a number of events (including most of the 24 Hour Comics Days), it was a pleasure to do it. They are looking for more reviews… if you are interested in contributing some product reviews to them, let me know and I’ll get you in touch with them. You can email me at:

Here’s an interesting interview with Phil Foglio where his discusses his experiences with publishing his comics for free on the web.

“…For years people had been coming up to me and saying “I would like to get into comics” and I had been saying “Screw comics. Do a webcomic. It’s the wave of the future and your production costs are super low,” and eventually I realized that instead of just giving this advice I should take it.”

   Even if the rat sees his shadow it’ll still be cold.  So come warm up the old fashioned way–by drawing jam comics!

The Minneapolis Cartoonist Conspiracy meets at 6:30 until 10:00 the first Thursday of every month at Diamond’s Coffee Shoppe in Northeast.

Generally, we draw collaborative “jam” comics, socialize and drink caffeinated beverages. Afterwords, we often have uncaffeinated beverages somewhere else.

The meetings are open to anyone who wants to draw with us, and the results are posted here sooner or later (and sometimes even printed).

Diamond’s Coffee Shoppe
1618 Central Avenue Northeast
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Bus info here.

Please spend some money at Diamond’s while you’re there, even if it is just a cuppa coffee… they are excellent hosts, and we wanna stay welcome there.

Big Time Attic hosts our monthly jam meetings at Diamond’s… they will be supplying us with a big old plate of pastries or something. Thanks fellas!

Now available for download — the latest issue of string, the regular anthology of comics from 7000 BC.

Download a PDF of string #18 and check out future issues every month. In this issue, a new installment of Courtney and Jeff’s Peoplings and Bram and Caleb’s New West (see links below to download previous issues), and new work from Mayhem, Courtney, and Josh — plus a selection of comics produced at our jam at Artisan.

(If the link for the PDF isn’t opening the file up for you, it might work better to right or option-click and download it to your computer.)

Previous issues: string #1 | string #2 | string #3 | string #4 | string #5| string #6 | string #7 | string #8 | string #9 | string #10 | string #11 | string #12 | string #13 | string #14 | string #15 | string #16 | string #17

1-28-10 Meeting for the first time at the Borderlands Cafe on Valencia St. San Francisco we created the below comic. Since the café is connected with the Borderlands Books next door they have .50 Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels that acted as inspiration for our comic jam. Each one of us picked a book or two and then we would draw the first panel of a panel-by-panel comic jam by borrowing from the cover illustration. From there on we passed the pages around with each artist continuing the story till about half way where we order all the stray pages and numbered them. Then we just had to make them all conect up somehow. While it was hard to connect up the pages, the end result is very cool. A big shout out to Doc Pop who had the idea for the Jam and to Mike Hale drew our amazing cover illustration.

A big thank you to Alan Beatts and the staff at the Boarderlands Café for making us so welcome. It’s a great place to go and draw so why not stop by and check it out. They don’t have wi-fi, so bring your sketchbook or a good book to read and enjoy the relaxing setting.

The CCSF meets on the Second and Last Thurusday of each month, currently at the Borderlands Cafe. Check back here to the blog to check up on upcoming events through out the year including the Cam-Jam at the Cartoon Art Museum next month.

click on the cover below to read the book on the issuu.com website.

Click here to read the Jam Comic...Time Cop

I didn’t realize that Gary Coleman had died! That poor, adorable man… and the delicious, delicious taco underworld he got wrapped up in. Read all about it here:

Blood, Sweat, and Tacos: The Last Days of Gary Coleman

Click image for pdf — a morbidly obese 10.7 mb!

The Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco and the Cartoon Art Museum Bookstore present CAM-JAM 2010 – #1 on Sunday February 21, 2010! 11:30 am to 5:30 pm

It’s a New Year and time for more collaborative comic jam fun with the artist from the Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco. Spend the day drawing and creating with a local talent while we challenge ourselves to create and print a mini-comic with the events theme(s) by the end of the day. The themes for this CAM-JAM are: Brush and Ink, Samurai and Superhero, Poetic and Wordless.

Where: Lobby of the Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission St. San Francisco CA
When: Sunday February 21, 2010 – 11:30 am to 5:30 pm
Cost: FREE, but copies of the final mini comic will cost the price of printing. ++
What (to bring): Yourself and your favorite drawing tools, especially your favorite brush pen. Feel free to bring clippings/copies of reference that fits the theme as well as your networking paraphernalia.
How – Schedule below: (note: you are not required to attend the whole day, but you are encouraged too)

11:00 am – Set-up and schmooze.
11:30 am – Warm-Up Jam: Group Mash-up Character Design.
12:00 pm – Our Warm-up Jam drawings will taken and scanned while we set up for the mini-comic jam. Note: If you worked on the Warm-Up Jam drawings and stay till the end, you get to take a drawing home with you. Free art, woot!

Feel free to bring printouts/clippings of inspiration based on this sessions themes to share.

Set up to draw. Take a break for a quick lunch or snack.

12:30 pm Start the Comic Jam!

We will break into small teams of 2-4 artists who will be tasked with creating a short 2-8 page comic using the themes of the event. Card stock will be provided to draw on and some ink and brushes to try, but feel free to bring your favorite tools too.

A few volunteers will be helping us to scan pages when your team finish one, so we should be able to get the work on-line/printed faster then last year.

4:30 pm STOP

While any last pages are quickly prepped/scanned to make copies, the group will work on the final cover.

Everyone cleans up! Shop at the bookstore!

A team of expert copiers will jet on over to the copy store while any remaining artist will help vote on their favorite Warm-Up Jam drawings that are now displayed on the Bookstore Wall. There might be a possible prize as well.

5:00 pm ish Book arrive for you to take home with samples of everyone’s work. **

** Each artist can get copy(s) of the final Mini-Comic at cost; a few extra copies will be available at the bookstore for a full price as our way of helping this wonderful non-profit museum out.

++ (Legal stuff) By participating in the Jam you are giving permission for your work to be placed on-line by the Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco and that a limited number of books can be sold as a fundraiser for the Cartoon Art Museum through its bookstore. Every effort to give credit and promote the participants will be made.

Random Numbers will be given by anyone who did the Warm-Up and we will go in order with each person taking an original drawing home.

5:30 go out for food/drink and schmooze, draw more, network, have fun.

So, why not join us?

Questions: Contact the CCSF organizer Brian Kolm at staff@atomicbearpress.com

Hope to see you there.