Muscles and Fights 2 Reviewed... Still Time to Submit Comics to Volume 3

Muscles and Fights 2, an anthology a number of Conspiracy folks are in (including me), was recently reviewed here. Muscles and Fights 3 is coming up soon... the deadline is January 15th. Visit the Muscles and Fights website to get the guidelines for submitting your work. Also, there is a contest for designing "The Guy" for the back cover.

City Pages: True Tales of the Twin Cities

We recently collaborated with the City Pages to put together a comics feature on the subject of True Tales of the Twin Cities. That issue is out today in coffee shops, bars and other fine establishments all over the Twin Cities, and online here (with 18 more comics than appear in the printed issue).

Some thanks:

Thanks much to all who participated and made this project a wonderful success!

Big special thanks to Kevin Cannon of Big Time Attic for organizing everything (and for drawing the most mind-blowingly beautiful comic of the lot)!

Thanks to City Pages for having us... let's do it again soon!

UPDATE: They have added an area where you can comment on the issue here. Please do!

Chapter 10 of Kevin Cannon's Far Arden is Online

Chapter ten of Kevin Cannon’s fantastic tale of arctic rapscallion Armitage Shanks, Far Arden, is online... only two chapters to go!



Click here to start reading at chapter ten.

Click here to start at the beginning.

Click here to read more about Kevin Cannon's mad, mad project.

Click here to cheer Kevin on in his comments.

Please Please Check Your Specs for the City Pages Submissions

We've got three submissions in so far for Kevin to scan, and all of them have been to the wrong specs, so I want to reiterate them... please make sure you double-check them before submitting!!!

Please confirm that your comic coincides with one of
these dimensions (panel corner to panel corner of your
art):

QUARTER SIZE HORIZONTAL:
9.75" wide by 2.75" tall

HALF PAGE HORIZONTAL:
9.75" wide by 5.85" tall

HALF PAGE VERTICAL:
4.87" wide by 11.75" tall

A Couple More Things on the City Pages Opportunity

2 more items on the City Pages opportunity:

• I confirmed that in addition to the previously mentioned half page sizes, quarter page sizes are also acceptable...9.75" wide by 3" tall. Again, you'll want to leave a quarter inch at the top for the header they are going to put on it, so your working space would really be 9.75" wide by 2.75" tall.


• I also confirmed that 300DPI is acceptable for scanning in greyscale. I would do 800DPI if you are scanning black and white.

At this point we have 20 artists who are planning on participating, and 3 more who are hoping to if they can find the time... and you could too! Let me know if you're planning on it.

Email me at

More on the City Pages Comics

I have some additional info about the City Pages opportunity mentioned yesterday:

• Nick Vlcek, the fella who is going to do the layout at City Pages has some size specs for us. The ideal format is a half page. Here are the 1/2 page sizes:



1/2 horizontal is 9.75” by 6.1” tall

1/2 vertical is 4.87 by 12” tall




They’re going to have to make them both smaller by about 1/4” (off the top) to title them consisently.




I would guess they would be fine with quarter pages too, so I'll ask.




I'm also asking about scan sizes... I assume 300 DPI greyscale or 800 DPI black and white scans should do the trick, but I'm going to confirm.



• Kevin Cannon of Big Time Attic has kindly offered to scan any artwork you get to him before July 3rd. Just drop it off or slide it under the door in an envelope at Big Time Attic. Big Time Attic is located in the same building as Diamond's Coffee shop where we have our monthly meetings the first Thursday of every month... it's at 1618 Central Ave NE in Minneapolis... they are in suite 216.


• City Pages will be running all of the comics submitted on their website, regardless of whether they have the room to run them in the print version. So anyone who does this will get paid something, presumably. Participants will have to discuss what makes sense for splitting up whatever funds are earned from this.


• We've already had 12 people commit to doing a comic for this, and a couple more who are hoping to find the time. The more the merrier! The cartoonists definitely doing one at this point are:



• Ken Avidor


• Bud Burgy


• Kevin Cannon


• Danno


• Andrey Feldshteyn


• Michael Furious


• Ursula Husted 


• Matthew Kriske


• Bob Lipski


• Kevin McCarthy


• Curtis Square-Briggs


• Steven Stwalley



It should be a hell of a feature, I imagine.



• Again, please let me know asap if you plan on definitely participating in this.

Twin Cities Cartoonists, City Pages Wants Your Comics

City Pages is doing a cartoon feature in an issue next month on the subject of "True Tales of the Twin Cities," and City Pages editor Kevin Hoffman has asked us to provide the content. This is a wonderful opportunity for both the individual cartoonists featured and the Cartoonist Conspiracy in general, and I hope a lot of you will submit work for it.

Here is the bullet pointed info for your perusal...

• The deadline is the end of the next Cartoonist Conspiracy meeting on July 5th starting at 6:30 at Diamond's Coffee Shoppe. At that meeting, in addition to the traditional jam comics, people will be encouraged to create a comic to potentially run in the City Pages on the subject of "True Tales of the Twin Cities." We will collect submissions at the end of the meeting to scan and send over… artwork will be returned at the following month’s meeting. If you have done the work in advance of the meeting, we would greatly appreciate if you scan it yourself and give it to us on a cd.


• Doing work on this strip in advance of the meeting is strongly encouraged… we want to dazzle the City Pages readers with our collective talent, so hopefully many of you will be inspired to do something more thoughtful than you might do during one of our four hour meetings.


• If you are planning on submitting, please let me know by next Thursday, June 28th (the sooner the better).  Mr. Hoffman is hoping to get an idea of the head count in advance so he can plan accordingly. Please don’t commit unless you definitely intend to deliver. You can email me at .


• They estimate that they will run 7 or 8 strips if they get enough worthy material. They have at least five pages to run it on. They did not specify format, so I believe that is open. Obviously, if you run over multiple pages, it could reduce the chances of it being run.


• Don’t use color.


• Sign your work. Put your contact information on the back. Work given to us without contact information will not be submitted.


• Include your url in the strip if you have a website so people can find more of your work. If you don’t have a website, you really should… if you want something quick, comicspace makes it easy as peach pie to show your work off.


• City Pages is certainly not intended to be a family publication, and you are certainly encouraged to submit whatever you want to… but they probably wouldn’t run a lot of the sort of content that shows up in a typical one of our jams, so you may want to save the giant ball of swinging johnsons pooping in Christ’s butt for another comic.


• This is a paying gig… what it pays will be most likely determined by their budget for it (which has not yet been determined) divided by the number of cartoonists who get work published in the issue.


• You don't have to consider yourself a member of the Cartoonist Conspiracy to submit, although you will probably be associated with us if you do. Perhaps you're already a member and you simply don't know it? Go here for more information about becoming a Conspirator.


• If this goes well, they will most likely want to do it again in the future.

There may be more updates before the meeting, so keep your eye on the Cartoonist Conspiracy blog. Thanks much to those of you who plan on participating.

Kevin Cannon's Far Arden Chapter Nine

Chapter nine of Kevin Cannon’s fantastic tale of arctic rapscallion Armitage Shanks, Far Arden, is online... only three chapters to go!



Click here to start reading at chapter nine.

Click here to start at the beginning.

Click here to read more about Kevin Cannon's mad, mad project.

Click here to cheer Kevin on in his comments.

Kevin Cannon's Far Arden Chapter Eight

Chapter eight of Kevin Cannon’s fabulous epic 288 hour comic serial, Far Arden, is online, with more ripping polar bear action!



Click here to start reading at chapter eight.

Click here to start at the beginning.

Click here to read more about Kevin Cannon's mad, mad project.

Click here to cheer Kevin on in his comments.

Far Arden Chapter Seven

Chapter seven of Kevin Cannon's epic 288 hour comic, Far Arden, is online, and continues to get better and better... Kevin is blowing me away with this stuff every month. You would think, producing this stuff under such time constraints (all chapters drawn in 24 hours) that something would suffer... art, storytelling, plot, composition, layouts, design... hell, lettering! Kevin continues to make it all flow perfectly and beautifully, and make it look deceptively easy.



Click here to start reading at chapter seven.

Click here to start at the beginning.

Click here to read more about Kevin Cannon's mad, mad project.

Click here to cheer Kevin on in his comments.

Far Arden Chapter Six

Huzzah! This month's chapter of Kevin Cannon's epic 288 hour comic, Far Arden, is online! With this chapter, we reach the halfway mark in our narrative.



Click here to start reading at chapter six.

Click here to start at the beginning.

Click here to read more about Kevin Cannon's mad, mad project.

Click here to cheer Kevin on in his comments.

700 Things

The 700 projects have greatly expanded since my last post... the 700 Things group was started to create 700 lists of 700 things to name and draw. Here is the current list of 700 projects you can participate in:

700 Things
700 Hoboes
700 Zombies
700 Pirates
700 Underwear Clad Vigilante Mutants
700 Bunnies
700 Unicorns
700 Robots

The 700 Underwear Clad Vigilante Mutants Project

We've previously mentioned the 700 Hobos Project on a few occasions. ApeLad, by far the most prolific drawer of hobos (and also one of the best) recently completed his interpretations of all 700 of John Hodgman's 700 hobos (plus change). Without missing a beat, he announced the new 700 Underwear Clad Vigilante Mutants project. I'll definitely be participating. This time the names are all user submitted... they have 640 at the time of this post. Then the drawing begins!

In addition, a 700 Bunnies Project just popped up. I'll probably start a 700 Gangsters project when the Vigilante Mutants comes to an end, unless someone beats me to it.

How to Make Mini-Comics

We recently completed work on the first volume of the Cartoonist Conspiracy L'il Library (to be used at this weekend's Mouth Off event at The Center For Book Arts)... How to Make Mini-Comics. Click on the image below to download the pdf... then print it out, cut it up, fold it, staple it and learn. Please note that this is a pretty big (4MB) file, so please help conserve our bandwidth and only download it if you intend to use it.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License. It may be printed and distributed freely. It is intended to be an educational tool, and it is our hope that it will be widely used as a "textbook" for teaching how to make a mini-comic.

Thanks to Adam Wirtzfeld, Bob Lipski, Maxeem, Bud Burgy, Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, Dank!, and Eric Lappegard for helping me (Steven Stwalley) put this together.

Note that any cartoonist who is interested can contribute a volume to the new Cartoonist Conspiracy Li'l Library. This is intended to become a downloadable pdf library of cartooning tips and techniques in mini-comics format, all using the above creative commons license. Let us know if you're interested.

Participate in The Gross Comics Project

This month, some members of the Minneapolis Cartoonist Conspiracy cell embarked on the Gross Comic Project at our monthly Saturday Open Studio. It isn't what it sounds like.

Like 24 hour comic day, the goal of the Gross Comic Project is to produce a certain number of pages in a certain amount of time… in this case 144 pages in 144 hours… a gross of pages, get it? 12 hours a month for a year.

Unlike 24 hour comic day, however, the goal of these comics is quality more than speed… if we are going to invest this much time in it, we want to produce something fun, readable and well-drawn, rather than just quickly produced. To that end, we allow all the planning, drawing, and even working on actual pages outside of the monthly 12 hour sessions that a cartoonist chooses to do. However, the 12 pages should be completed by the end of the 12 hours.

If you go over, that's fine, just get it done as quickly as possible after that... if it takes you until the next month, though, I'd say that would be a definite failure.

Here are the completed first month's 12 pages from this weekend:



Here are the first 12 pages of Kevin Cannon's Oceanis.



Here are the first 12 pages of Zander Cannon's Heck.



Here are the first 12 pages of Steven Stwalley's Ezekiel Fishman Versus the Martians.

Note that this project was inspired by the stellar work Kevin Cannon is doing on his 288 Hour Graphic novel Far Arden. Since he is doing a Gross Comic this year as well, I think he will probably hold some sort world's record for this sort of thing (he probably already does). That's right, Kevin will be doing (at least) 432 pages in an hour this year... more pages than there are days in the year!

We have at least 6 other cartoonists joining us in this undertaking next month... Dank!, Shad Petosky, Tim Sievert, Maxeem, Curtis Square-Briggs and Eric Lappegard.

You can join us too!

We'll link to all participants from this blog... just send the link to us, or put it in the comments.

Our next 12 hour session in Minneapolis will be at the next Minneapolis Saturday Open Studio (where it will be every month). The Saturday Open Studios happen on a different day every month, so you'll have to check the site for the dates. The next two are March 17th and April 21st at:

Minnesota Center for Book Arts
(Just down the street from Big Brain Comics)
1011 Washington Ave S, Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Phone: 612-215-2520

Those of you participating other places may want to consider doing it on the same day, because it will be more fun to have all this stuff hit at once, but it isn't a requirement.

Judging from the pages so far, I think this is going to be a pretty amazing project to look back on in a year.

Help Beta Test A Cartooning Textbook

Cartoonists Jessica Abel (La Perdita) and Matt Madden (A Fine Mess) are looking for some cartoonists or aspiring cartoonists to help test out their textbook on making comics that they are working on.

Note that the talented Miss Abel has a section of her artbabe.com site where she has provided some very cool tutorials on making, selling and getting comics that you can check out and see where she's coming from.

Do You Want to learn to draw comics?
We are looking to form a group of volunteers in your area to help us "beta test" our textbook "Drawing Words and Writing Pictures".

We are in need of motivated volunteers to create a comics group that would meet regularly to learn how to make comics using the teaching materials from our new comics textbook. we will be in frequent contact with the group and will offer any support that may be needed. We estimate the course will take about EIGHT MONTHS to a YEAR.

Read more about it on our message board here.

826 Valencia Volunteering Opps

I've talked to a lot of Bay Area cartoonists about volunteering at 826 Valencia as a field trip artist and a lot of people have asked me what to expect. I posted the most recent book that I helped create and a little breakdown of what the process is like on my blog, so if you've wondered what to expect if you volunteer for a field trip read this entry. It's super fun and at the end of each session all the kids and volunteers get a bound copy of the book the story they just created.

There are always volunteering spots open for field trips, so if you are interested let Jory at 826 know. I've posted his most recent list of field trip dates in our San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy forum.

24 Hr. Comics in San Francisco

Our first 24 hr. comic from Conspiritor Jeff Plotkin in now online. Jeff has posted a journal about his experience as well as the pages of his comic.

It was held at my old school, the California College of Art. So I went down. There were just five of us there: me, Meredith, Mike, Jeffrey M. and Carmen. I knew everyone except Carmen. The turnout was small, probably because there were no SF Bay Area locations listed for the nationwide event. Some of my buddies in the Cartoonist Conspiracy had their own, unofficial 24-Hour Comics Day, and Scott McCloud was probably miffed about it.

To read the whole report on Deviant Art -- LINK

And to read Jeff's comic visit HERE! The comic features a cameo from Cartoonist Doc Popular! CLICK the link under each page to see the read the next one.

We will link to more 24 hr comics when they become avalible.

24 Hour Comic Book Day in San Francisco!

Join the Cartoonist Conspiracy cell of San Francisco for 24 Hour Comic Book Day at the California College of Arts (and Crafts) on October 7th.

Details:
San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy 24 Hour Comic Jam
October 7th @ Noon until October 8th @ Noon.
At CCA 1111 Eighth ST, San Francisco CA 94107
More details on the CartoonistConspiracy.com message board.
or email Meredith: satiredun@gmail.com to sign up.

Good luck to everyone, and don't forget to post your work or a link to your work on the comments here or the message board link above.

>23 and <25 Hour Sequential Art Event Box Set

The Minneapolis >23 and <25 Hour Sequential Art Event this weekend was a blast... Thanks much to Minneapolis Conspiracy Events Monkey Danno for all his efforts in making this a huge success. Thanks also to our sponsors The Minnesota Center For Book Arts, Wet Paint Art, Big Time Attic, Pizza Luce, Grumpy's, Sip Coffee Bar, Big Brain Comics.

I believe we had 34 cartoonists participating... not sure how many completed 24 pages, but I'm pretty sure it was a majority. I can't wait to read them. What will certainly be one of the best, Kevin Cannon's comic, is already online:

http://www.bigtimeattic.com/blog/2006/09/24-hour-comics-day.html

Kevin has done it for the past two years as well, and now has produced three of the best 24 Hour comics I've ever read... they don't read or look at all like they were produced in 24 hours. Kevin was born to do this stuff... I keep hassling him to do it once every month and he could have a 288 page best-selling graphic novel in a year. If you agree with me, you should hassle him too... I desperately want to read "The Ballad of Armatage Shanks."

Any of the rest of y'all who get your comics from the event online, send me the links and I'll post the links to them in the blog and the gallery.

We will be collecting all of the >23 and <25 hour comics from folks who want to collect theirs in boxes at the October Jam meeting at Diamond's on October 5th. To do this, simply print 100 of them into mini-comics and we'll collate them into a box with a groovy Bob Lipski cover. Boxes will be for sale (in limited quantities) to the artists for 50 cents each, after which you can sell them for whatever you want (ten bucks will most likely be the suggested retail) and hopefully recoup the costs of printing your minis.

<25 But >23 Hour Sequential Art Event Tomorrow!

The Minneapolis Conspiracy's 3rd Annual <25 But >23 Hour Sequential Art Event is tomorrow! We currently have 32 participants. Get some sleep tonight, fellas. Click on the below poster to read all about it.



Note that 24 Hour Comics Day is on October 7th... we're doing this tomorrow because October 7th and 8th is the same time as the notoriously creator friendly Twin Cities comics convention Fallcon.

In the midst of the SF 24 Hour Comic Day

So, we started with ten cartoonists at 5:45 pm all crammed into Craig's apartment.

At about 7pm we moved our get together to Muddy Waters to meet join the normal Cartoonist Conspiracy get together (which consisted of ; Jeff Plotkin). That's were we started losing people, sore backs, not enough sleep, yadda yadda. So it looks like there are 6 of us going the full 24, one of those is only focusing on a 7 page project, so... yeah.

Brian is doing something about a Fairy that gets lost in the city.

Tanya is doing a 7 page web comic about Jack and Daxter.

Craig (with a K) is doing a "space opera" comic. He doesn't like to talk about it though.

Rio is trying a stream of conscious comic.. It has a roach in it.

I'm doing a 1001 Arabian Nights type comic...

24 Hour Comic Book Challenges happening RIGHT NOW in San Francisco, CA

It started at 5:45 pm...Members of the San Francisco Cell are, right now, working to complete a 24 Hour Comic Book challenge. That is 24 pages in 24 hours.

The group started in a private residence but moved to Muddy Waters in the Castro district. There the artist plugged away at their stories, stopping only to drink coffee and pastries.

At 11pm they kicked the group out and then ........

Stay tuned to find out more from the folks drawing right now, poster here on the blog.

24 Hour Comic Book Challenges happening RIGHT NOW in San Francisco, CA

It started at 5:45 pm...Members of the San Francisco Cell are, right now, working to complete a 24 Hour Comic Book challenge. That is 24 pages in 24 hours.

The group started in a private residence but moved to Muddy Waters in the Castro district. There the artist plugged away at their stories, stopping only to drink coffee and pastries.

At 11pm they kicked the group out and then ........

Stay tuned to find out more from the folks drawing right now, poster here on the blog.

24 Hour Comic Jam

This Thursday at 5pm, a group of 4 San Francisco Cartoonists will start a 24 hour comic jam. Similar to the super big mega official 24 Hour Comic Day that happens every year, except locally organized.

We have two people signed up for sure, and would like to host two more local cartoonists for the marathon, anyone interested can contact Doc@doctorpopular.com

This even will not supersede the October 7th 24 Hour Comic day event at Last Gasp Publishing, but is just something to tide some of us over until then.

10th international Sketchcrawl! Saturday July 1, 2006

I just received a reminder email about the International Sketch Crawl which will be on Saturday July 1, 2006. What is a Sketch Crawl you may ask? This is from founder Enrico Casarosa, a talented artist who lives and works in the San Francisco bay area:

The basic idea: to record nonstop everything I could around me with my pencil and watercolors. A drawn journal filled with details ranging from the all the coffee I drank to the different buses I took. After a whole day of drawing and walking around the city the name seemed quite fitting: “SketchCrawl” - a drawing marathon. ....
I soon figured out it was much more interesting to do the marathon with a group of artists instead of all by myself! And so SketchCrawl turned communal. After a whole day of drawing it proved to be amazingly interesting and inspiring to share and compare other people’s drawings and thoughts. Different takes on our surroundings, different details, different sensibilities.
The next step was making the SketchCrawl a World Wide event: having people from different corners of the world join in a day of sketching and journaling and then, thanks to the Internet, having everyone share the results on an online forum.

So why not set up a day of sketching in your home town. The whole event seems very fun and cool. make sure you check out the samples from previous crawls, here is a link to the results of the first time.

AND for those of us who need a kick in the ass to get drawings, here is a perfect excuses to do so, and a great way to see someplace from a different way.

Jam War!

Jam War was a blast... much blood and ink was spilled, but many gorgeous pages crawled from the wreckage at the end of it. I wish I could post some, but can't until after judging is completed.

We want to print a book of all the Minneapolis Jam War losers as a mini-comic, so email me if you want to participate in this mini. My team almost certainly will be included... we had a blast losing, though.

Thanks! to Danno for organizing!
Thanks! to Shad for handling everything computery!
Thanks! to Drivas for funding and involuntarily lending us all his lovely visage!
Thanks! to BTA for the paper!
Thanks! to Jeff Rathermel and Book Arts for giving us such a great space to work in!
Thanks! to Wet Paint for providing supplies and letting us stock up at a discount!
Thanks! to Reiner and Grumpy's for the drinks and discounts!
Thanks! to Nat Gertler for conceiving and organizing the national event!

More Great Press for Lutefisk Sushi

The Lutefisk Sushi show and box got a great review from Peter Scholtes this week on page 39 of the current issue of the City Pages (dated March 29th). Unfortunately, it hasn't made it online at this point, so you'll probably have to seek out a print copy yourself to read it.

Lutefisk Sushi Opening Overview

Well, the Lutefisk Sushi Volume B opening was a roaring success... we had a great turnout, lots of fun, and a lot of sales. Best of all, we put together a fantastic box set of comics... you should all be proud. When you tell folks about it, make sure to mention that they can still check it out on Saturdays until April 21st from 11-4, or by appointment with the gallery.

We had a great write up in Minnesota Monthly... we were also written up in the Pulse and we were mentioned in the Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune, on the front of mnspeak.com, on a City Pages blog, on the Comics Reporter, and on the Minneapolis public radio station The Current by Mary Luccia on Thursday (and on the MPR website calendar)... and probably some other places. If you know of other press that we received for the show (or have any clippings you want to give me, including of the stuff mentioned above), please let me know about it.

Also, I encourage you all to send your digital photos from the opening my way so we can put them on the website... suggested captions encouraged, in case we don't know who is pictured in the photo. You can view some photos from the opening by Shad here and by Nik Arnoldi here.

Participants can pick up their boxes at Big Time Attic any time (make sure you cross your name off the list when you get it)... if you haven't made it over by April 6th, that is a good time for it, since the monthly Cartoonist Conspiracy meeting will be taking place at Diamond's Coffee in that building that evening.

For those of you who participated in the Weiner Roast, I'm hoping to get those dropped off at BTA very soon as well so you can pick up your ten copies... I have them rubber banded between cardboard with your names on them.

It is possible we may be having a closing party as well, which would be a very good thing to harass people you know that missed the opening to show up for... I'll keep you posted.

And now that we pulled this thing off, some thank yous...

Thanks to everyone at Big Time Attic for their extensive efforts putting things together, in every part of the process... the website, the silkscreening, putting up money for printing Weiner Roasts, collating, making signs and tags, laying out and printing the postcard, helping hang, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.... and etc. Shad, Kevin, Max, Zander, Tim, Brett, Brittany and John all did a tremendous amount of work to make the show happen and look great.

Thanks to Ken Avidor for being an exceptionally good sport and letting us further soil his bad reputation with the Weiner Roast, for putting together a fantastic display of his life's work, and for making us all look good with his art for the box and website.

Thanks to Lonny Unitus for doing such a gorgeous job screen printing the boxes with Shad in deep, rich, velvety colors... they really couldn't have turned out better.

Thanks to Danno, as always, for helping make so many of the comics look so much better than they would have without his knowledge and expertise in the zine arts, and for helping with putting together 400 Weiner Roasts!

Thanks to everyone who helped with setup and hanging... Sean, Andrey, Quillan, Bob, Danno, Shad, Kevin, Seamus, Chris, Tim, and anyone else who helped that I'm more than likely forgetting.

Thanks to Sean for putting together his Shitty Art display in the bathroom.

Thanks to Dave, Jenny, Karl and Kurt at Creative Electric for providing such a great venue for our chaos, for helping extensively with setting up, for dealing with the crowd and for manning the sales at the show.

Thanks to everyone who helped promote the show on websites, blogs and through word of mouth. Please continue to do so until it closes!

And, of course, thanks to all the artists who participated in the box and the Weiner Roast and made the whole thing possible.

Help promote the Lutefisk Sushi show part 2

Here is an easy to use animated gif banner for you to post around the web...



And an image of the box...



Link these to http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/sushi

Please Help Promote Lutefisk Sushi

We're doing a lot to promote the event (we've contacted a lot of local media, posted on message boards, printed up 1000 postcards which are being distributed all over the Twin Cities, & did some other miscellaneous stuff)...

BUT WE COULD REALLY USE YOUR HELP GETTING THE WORD OUT!

Here are some ways you can help promote the upcoming Lutefisk Sushi show...

If you have a website, you can download a banner for the Sushi show to add to your site here:

http://cartoonistconspiracy.com/sushi/lutefisk_sushi_banner.zip

If you have a blog, please blog about it.

If you have friends, please invite them and tell them to invite people.

If you know journalists, please encourage them to cover the opening.

Also I encourage you to give these threads a "bump" to help with Sushi show promotion...

http://www.tcj.com/messboard/ubb/Forum1/HTML/011307.html

http://www.tcj.com/messboard/ubb/Forum1/HTML/011304.html

http://comicon.com/index.html

http://www.sequentialtart.com/community/Forum7/HTML/001512.shtml

You could also post the word on other message boards you frequent.

Thanks much for your help!

The Lutefisk Sushi Volume B site is live, and it is gorgeous. Thanks much to Big Time Attic and Ken Avidor for putting this together!

JAM WAR Declared!

Dank (aka Danno) has declared a Jam War in Minneapolis here... sharpen your pencils! Here's the poop from Dank...

------------------------------------------------

Attn All Conspirators, and fit men and women of fighting age:

WAR has been declared on the cartooning world!!!
..no, no. Not that Danish Jihad business...

a JAM WAR!!!!

The people who bring you 24 HOUR COMIC DAY have decided that APRIL 1st, 2006 from 11am to 11pm is to be the first JAM WAR.

Basically, teams around the WORLD(US and Canada so far)have 12 hours to complete 8 pages on a theme to be chosen that day. The winning 3 teams recieve cash and prizes!
EIGHT PAGES!!!
TWELVE HOURS!!!
Minneapolis can so sweep this whole contest!

Big Brain has elected to sponsor us, and Book Arts will once again be providing us space(THANKS GUYS!).

What I need from you is a firm commitment to fight for truth, liberty, and cash prizes.
I also need you to "register"
Do so by sending a draft card(or a quick e-mail saying you're in) to:
staplegenius@yahoo.com
Please respond by March 10th.

Michael Drivas over at Big Brain has asked we work in teams of 4, so on March 10th, all the registered participants will be randomly drawn into said teams.

If you wish to be a TEAM CAPTAIN, please also indicate
that in your e-mail of interest.(what will a team captain do? I dunno yet. But its always good to have a field commander in battle.)

Finally, Michael also requests a confirmation fee of
$5.00 from each soldier (to help offset the $150 he's gotta throw down to sponsor us, as well as to help with snacks and such.) The fee will not have to be payed until after final teams are announced on the 10th of March, but please try to stop by Big Brain and pay up by St Patricks Day(the 17th).

Ummm...I think thats it. If you have any more questions, either
1) contact me, danno, at staplegenius@yahoo.com
2) check out comicsjamwar.com
or 3) read the info below

May Mohammed be with us as we lay waste to our hated cartooning enemies around the globe and(did i mention) WIN CASH PRIZES!!!!
--danno

Comics Jam War is a collaborative cartooning competition which will be held in comic book shops across the U.S. and Canada. Teams of 2 or more cartoonists will be given some starting information about the story they have to create, and will then each have 12 hours to create an 8 page comic book story. The stories will be judged by a group of comics professionals.

Prizes (all prizes are per-team):
First place: $300 US, plus copies of an anthology comic that includes all the winners and honorable mentions (50 copies or $395 worth at cover price, whichever is more )
Second place: $200, plus copies of the anthology (30 copies or $245 worth at cover price, whichever is more )
Third place: $100, plus copies of the anthology (30 copies or $245 worth at cover price, whichever is more )
"Honorable mentions" chosen to appear in the anthology (numbers to be determined): copies of the anthology (30 copies or $245 worth at cover price, whichever is more )
Teams can have anywhere from 2 to an infinite number of people on them.
Teams must work at an official sponsoring event host site.
At noon Eastern time (9 AM Pacific time), the details for the story content will be posted on the event website. 12 hours later, all work on the story must be complete, and the story must be 8 black and white pages (no more, no less) in the standard American comic book format.
The work should not include vulgarity, nudity, obscenity, or other material that would keep it from seeming appropriate for general audiences. It also should not violate any copyrights and trademarks.
Participants must promise not to publish their finished work in any form (including, but not limited to, print and online comics) until the judging is complete and the winners are announced. In the event that your story is selected for the anthology, you may not publish the work in any other form through December, 2007. About Comics retains the rights to publish the material in Jam War-related collections. (There will be a participant form at the event. All members of the team must sign this form or the work will not be considered in the judging.)
Each team must include a designated captain. All prizes will be sent to this captain whose responsibility it will be to distribute the money and copies to the team. About Comics takes no responsibility for this distribution.
Entrance fee (if any) and other details will be set by the event host.
NOTES ADDED JANUARY 28th:

Bring your own art supplies! Rather than supplying something that doesn't meet your needs, we want you working with the materials that you're most comfortable with. So bring your drawing tools, your favorite paper or board, or even computer. Just remember to keep the height-to-width ratio appropriate for the typical American comic book.
The food situation will vary from location to location, so if you don't know that your store is supplying food, be sure to bring enough munchies to last you through the 12 hours.

LUTEFISK SUSHI VOLUME B CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

LUTEFISK SUSHI VOLUME B CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

While we don't have an official date yet, Lutefisk Sushi Volume B will be happening, with the opening at Creative Electric Studios some time early next year. For those of you who aren't familiar with the previous event/compilation, you can see more about it here.

We need submissions!
The focus of the show will again be around a big ol' fancy hand-serigraphed box of mini-comics with a cover by Roadkill Bill artist Ken Avidor. It will be limited to 150 copies... every participant will receive one.

To participate:
1) You must live in Minnesota or be Doug McNamara or Jesse McManus. It has something to do with the Mc, apparently. Persons named Andy Singer will also be accepted.
2) You must provide us with 160 copies of your comic. Not 161, not 159, not 2,364. 160. Your mini-comic can be no larger than 5.5" x 8.5", or it won't fit. It can be any format and length. Last year we even had a scroll hand-silkscreened in invisible ink.
3) You may also include other comics you wish to have sold at the gallery. Make sure your name is in the comic somewhere and put a price on the cover. Comics that have no price on the cover or somewhere obvious will not be sold.
4) You must matte, frame, or otherwise make presentable and hangable any originals you intend to have displayed. Kevin still has papercuts from last year. It is not required that you display originals, but it is encouraged. Put your name and the price of the piece on the back (remember the gallery takes a cut when pricing).
5) You must submit everything by no later than January 1, 2006.
6) You must include the form with your submission.
7) You must show up on opening night to pick up your Bento Box, or you must make other arrangements before then if you plan on getting one.
8) You must pick up your remaining original artwork, unsold comics and money (if any) at the end of the show. Any money not picked up by the artists will be kept by the gallery to buy beer... and any artwork or comics left behind will be peed on by feral, unneutered, violent cats in heat.
9) While it is not required, your assistance would be greatly appreciated collating the Bento Boxes at the collating party. Hopefully we'll only have to collate them once this time.

We intend to include ALL submissions that meet ALL the criteria in the box. Entries not meeting ALL of the above criteria will most likely NOT be included in the box, and we will make our best attempts to be cold-hearted bastards about this. No previous comic book making experience is necessary to participate. While we plan on having all entries meeting the criteria included in the Lutefisk Sushi Volume B Bento Box, if we get a whole hog slaughter of entries, we may have to cut it off somewhere- we'll let you know if the limit is getting close on the conspiracy website. We had 35 participants last year, and the box was packed to overflowing. We will use a bigger box this year.

In addition to the boxes, there will also be a lot of original artwork from the participating cartoonists on the walls. Using the artwork from the comic you submit to the Bento Box is preferred, although it is not required. ALL artwork should be priced for sale... let's make the gallery some money, they have a mortgage to pay. Submitting multiple items for display is fine. Due to limited space, we may not get all artists in the box represented on the walls, but we'll give it a shot.

In addition to the main show, there will also be a "sideshow" similar to the King Mini exhibit last year. This year we are featuring Ken Avidor (creator of Roadkill Bill). As part of this we also plan to produce a mini-comic featuring Ken's work and works submitted by participants that are inspired by, satirizing or commenting on Ken's work or Ken. Think of it as a comic "roast." This comic will be included in the boxes. Everyone is encouraged to contribute a page to this comic, although it is not required.

Profits from the originals and comics will be split with the artists and gallery last year it was 60 (artists), 40 (gallery)- it hasn't been negotiated yet but it will most likely be in that neighborhood this year as well. Profits from the Bento Boxes will also be split with the gallery, and our part will go into covering supplies and other miscellaneous expenses, including the collating/decorating/hanging Afghani party pizza... remaining funds will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in the form of paid memberships for participants- we hope to get memberships for all participants, but in the event we don't make enough money to do this we'll draw the appropriate number of names at random.

Lutefisk Sushi Volume B is being sponsored and organized by The International Cartoonist Conspiracy (www.cartoonistconspiracy.com), Creative Electric Studios (www.creativeelectricstudios.com) and Big Time Attic (www.bigtimeattic.com).

DOWNLOAD THE SUBMISSION FORM HERE

Homeless hoboes

Many more hoboes have been posted to the 700hoboes gallery on Flickr... Sean Tenhoff did a really nice one... unfortunately, both his and mine are still homeless waiting for flickr to approve our ability to post to the general public, so you can see them when typing in the 700hoboes tag. Seeing as I posted it well over a week ago, this seems to be a very slow process... if you think you will be interested in doing this sort of thing in the future, I again encourage you to create an account now.

24 Hour Comic Anthology Out

The Big Time Attic blog points out that the new 24 Hour Comics anthology is out in stores... it features three cartoonists from the Minneapolis Big Brain Comics/Conspiracy 24 Hour Event from earlier this year. They are also three of the best 24 hour comics you're likely to ever read... by Quillan Roe, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon.

Draw a Hobo

Hobo #444: "Colin the Cheerful F*ck"
Originally uploaded by sstwalley.

Mark Frauenfelder of boingboing.net has announced a fun public art project for cartoonists to draw one of 700 hoboes mentioned in a song by John Hodgman and Jonathon Coulton that can be found at

http://www.areasofmyexpertise.com/hoboes.html

Images for the project are being posted on Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/700hoboes/

This is a good opportunity for your work to get a lot of exposure potentially... boingboing is one of the most read blogs on the web... don't forget to include your website in the image (and a mention of the Cartoonist Conspiracy would be great if you wanna).

Here's one by me, although my account on flicker hasn't been approved yet, so it isn't in the gallery... hopefully they will improve it in spite of the fella's name...


Flickr seems to be a good way to do this sort of thing... we'll probably have some drawing projects of our own along these lines soon. I encourage you all to get Flickr accounts now if you think you'll want to participate in this sort of thing, so you won't have to wait for your account approval later to participate.

The 365 Days Project

The 365 Days Project (not to be confused with the Year Long Graphic Novel Project, which you can participate in this Saturday) was a great blog where they posted a weird audio track every day for a year... and you can still download them all.

A few of the tracks on there that I've heard are cartoonist related, so I thought I would recommend them here.

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows by Basil Wolverton.



Wolverton is one of my favorite cartoonists, and now I love his music too... if anyone has any more recordings by him, I'd love to hear them. His music fits his comics perfectly... corny, bizarre, and charming.

Read more about it here.

Tom Glazer - That Ignorant, Ignorant Cowboy

This track isn't by a cartoonist, but a comic book was made around it... a government-published VD education comic drawn by Harvey Kurtzman, "Lucky Fights It Through: The Story of That Ignorant, Ignorant Cowboy.”

Read more about it here.

And finally, the Metamorpho Theme Song... I have no idea why this didn't catch on like the Batman Theme.



More info here.

Speaking of singing cartoonists, I caught the Roe Family singers on Monday for the second time... they now have a regular Monday gig at the newly remodeled and cozy 331 Club... every Monday night from 9:00-10:30, no cover. Conspirator Quillan Roe and his wife Kim play with Conspirator Adam Wirzfeld on the musical saw... the music is fabulous, old-timey and varied, from Fats Waller and Hank Williams covers to spirituals. It is easily the best way you could possibly spend a Monday night in the Twin Cities.

331 Club
13TH Ave NE
Minneapolis
(612) 623-3803

Jam Comics on the Blog

In an effort to liven up this blog a bit, I'm going to start posting jam comics frequently one page at a time before they go into the gallery... that's right, you get to read them here first. Even though we haven't posted the last few months of jam comics, I'm going to start with this month's jam, since the main character is so compelling and charismatic. Today, I'm going to post two images, since the first one is a cover... this month had a total of 17 pages on the theme... hm, I wasn't there for the theme, but I think I know what it was... click on the thumbnails to view the pages.

Cover:

Page 1:


I'll post a new page every day or so... if you're jonesing for more, our old jams are archived in the gallery (as these jams will be after I post the entire month on the blog).

THE YEAR LONG GRAPHIC NOVEL PROJECT

For those of you who participated in 24 Hour Comics Day, beyond the exhaustion you felt you were most likely excited and exhilirated at how much work you could get done in a limited amount of time. We've decided to embark on a project inspired by the 24 hour event that hopefully will bear even more exciting creative fruits.

We are starting THE YEAR LONG GRAPHIC NOVEL PROJECT.

THE GOAL: To complete a graphic novel in a year.

THE CHALLENGE: To complete a minimum of three finished pages of comics towards a larger work by the end of each month for a year. More than three pages is, of course, excellent.

THE RULES:
1) The end of the month is defined by the end of the new six hour monthly meetings at The Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
2) While the intent is certainly to produce a lot of pages in a limited time, it is also to produce a lot of high-quality work. Therefore, you can do as much work and planning outside of the meeting time as you want to. In fact, you can come to the meetings with your required number of pages (and as many more as you want) already completed.
3) You can start at any meeting... at this time these meetings are intended to be ongoing indefinitely. It should be noted that many people will probably start at the first meeting, so if you want a good race, this may be a good place to start.
4) If you do the bare minimum, you'll have 36 completed pages at the end of the year... 36 pages completed is the shortest length that will be accepted as a successful year long graphic novel.
5) You are not required to tell one cohesive story to be considered a graphic novel. You could do all one page strips. There are absolutely no rules about content, other than that the content must be comics.

The Minnesota Center for Book Arts has generously offered some monthly space for Minneapolis area cartoonists to draw in. We will now be meeting on one Saturday a month to draw(this will replace the Sunday Funnies meetings... times will be listed on the Cartoonist Conspiracy website).

It should be noted that this is an open studio time for all cartoonists... you are not required to participate in the Year Long Graphic Novel Project to come and draw with us.

The first meeting will be July 16th 10AM-4PM in the MCBA Flexi Space (for those of you who were at the Spot On Festival, this is the room Big Time Attic had a table in, next room over from the space where we had part of the 24 Hour Event).

July 16th 10AM-4PM
The Minnesota Center for Book Arts
The Open Book Building (in the Flexi Space)
1011 Washington Ave S, Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55415
PHONE: 612-215-2520

3 Conspirators in new 24 Hour Comics Anthology

Congratulations to the brothers Cannon and Quillan Roe on their inclusion in the new 24 Hour Comics anthology... a total of 24 cartoonists are included in the anthology, chosen out of hundreds of entries from around the world. Great work fellas!

http://www.24hourcomics.com/blog/?p=285

"Kevin Cannon delves into adventure on the high seas (created at the Cartoonist Conspiracy event)"

"Quillan Roe brings a walk to the page (created at the Cartoonist Conspiracy event)"

"Zander Cannon, known for his work on Top Ten and The Replacement God, has an unusual take on the private eye (created at the Cartoonist Conspiracy event)"

Nat Gertler also notes on the blog:

"One interesting note: most of the selections were created by females. The traditional view of cartooning as a male-dominated interest is certainly being challenged by this new generation."

We've also had a lot more women showing up at the Conspiracy meetings lately... this is a really great trend. It is nice to see that comics are no longer alienating half of the population.

"The book is slated to ship in October. If you saw last year’s book, the format is basically the same: 496 pages, conveniently sized (5.5″x7.75″) paperback, for $24.95."

SPOT ON FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND JUNE 11-12

The Spot On Fair is this weekend and it should be fun... It is part of the Spot On: The Art of Zines and Graphic Novels gallery show that has been there since April 9th (and has recieved some favorable reviews) Many conspirators are participating. There will be a conspiracy table (as well as tables for many other cartoonists and zine makers) where any conspirator can bring comics to sell, and we'll attempt to manage it (Please put prices on the cover of anything you want to sell, and give us a sheet with the price of the books and the number of copies you're leaving with us... we absolutely will not deal with your books if you do not do this, unless you talk us into it). We accept no responsibility for lost or stolen books.

This is also intended to be a trading festival, so regardless of whether you have something to sell, bring comics and zines to trade to people for their comics and zines.

Here is the schedule:


SPOT ON FAIR SCHEDULE


Saturday June 11 (10-5)


10-12 Family Day - Zines


Construct your own zine with Alec Mueller - comic artist and By Design graduate.


1-2:30 Craft of Cartooning: Tips and tricks from Cartoonists

Featuring:
Kirk Anderson
Ken Avidor
Andrey Feldysteyn
Shad Petosky
Andy Singer

3-4:30 Cartoonists and their influences

Featuring:
Ken Avidor
Andrey Feldysteyn
Steven Stwalley

Sunday June 12 (12-5)


1-2:30 Tom Cassidy


3-4:30 Mini-Comics: the Art of Making Comic Books by Hand

Featuring:
Bob Lipski
Doug McNamara
Danno Oschendorf
Quillan Roe


Shad Petosky and Rana Raeuchle will also be participating in some of the panels... I imagine some other folks may join in as well.

Thanks much to Big Brain Comics for donating the table for the Conspiracy... Big Brain, if you didn't already know, is just a half a block away from the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, who is hosting the fair, and houses one of the most amazing masses of comic literature you'll ever see in one place. Thanks also to Book Arts and Jeff Rathermel for concieving and organizing this event.

The Minnesota Center For Book Arts (MCBA)
(at the Open Book)
1011 Washington Ave. South
Suite 100, Minneapolis, MN 55415

www.openbookmn.org
www.mnbookarts.org

Hope to see you there!

Weird Illustrated Deadline Looming

The deadline for the first Rubber Chicken Funnies anthology, Weird Illustrated, is rapidly approaching... May 23rd is the day. I hope a lot of you are still planning on submitting. You can read the submission info here. Previously completed work is acceptable for submission, although I hope to see a lot of new material.

Cinco De Mayo Jam in Minneapolis

The next Minneapolis meeting of the Cartoonist Conspiracy is at the Spyhouse Thursday May 5th... Cinco De Mayo. The Minneapolis Cell of The International Cartoonist Conspiracy usually meets at 6:30pm on the first Thursday of each month at the Spyhouse, unless otherwise noted on the website. In addition, we meet the third Sunday of every month at Grumpy's (May 15th this month).

Generally we meet, draw jam comics, drink caffeinated beverages, and socialize. Once we're happy with the jam comics, we usually either go home or go get non-caffeinated beverages somewhere.

We're going to do one 12 page extended jam on a random topic and whatever miscellaneous jams people want to work on this meeting. If you want to suggest a topic to possibly be drawn out of our bag of topics, you can post it here.

The last two months of jams have just been posted here and here. The Beatnik Brigade/Modern Day Voodoo/Comic Found on the Bus strip from March turned out really well, I think.

I'm planning on bringing at least one of the boxes of 24 hour comics we made for 24 Hour Comics Day to the meeting... if you want to buy one they are ten bucks. It is a limited edition of 100 boxes, each box contains 17 comics drawn in 24 hours on April 23-24 2005, and it will never be reprinted. Let me know if you want one in advance so I can bring it for you.

The meeting is at:

Spyhouse Coffee
2451 Nicollet Ave.
Minneapolis, MN
612.871.3177
MAP
BUS INFO
(Route 18 passes by The Spyhouse frequently)

24 Hour Comic Day Blog

The Cartoonist Conspiracy is participating in 24 Hour Comic Day.

Follow along here:

http://www.24hourcomicday.com/blog

24 Hour Comic Day Freebies

You may be wondering what we have sponsors for, so here is the scoop...

Big Brain Comics and The Minnesota Center For Book Arts are both generously providing us with space to work in... a lot of it. In addition, Big Brain will be providing some food. Michael Drivas from Big Brain and Jeff Rathermel from Book Arts have both generously offered to stay up with us too... thanks guys!

Wet Paint Art will be giving us a lot of art supplies to use (you will still want to bring your own, however, to make sure you're covered). Tim from Wet Paint Art (who will be participating in the event) tells me participants will be provided with a bag containing:

- a Copic brush pigment liner (black) & Copic SP refillable .2mm pen (very
nice pen!)
- sample bluelined Manga bristol sheets from Copic
- Staedtler 5-pen set of black pigment liners, various points
- a group of Sakura pens with a variety of points and colors
- sample Strathmore 500 professional bristol sheets and swatchbook from
Strathmore
- Wet Paint newsletter & comics supplies flyer

Big Time Attic's Zander Cannon provided the poster for the event, and BTA's Shad Petosky will be covering the event live on the web. The brothers Cannon will both be participating.

Grumpy's Bar will be providing us with some of their delicious food stuffs... if you have never tried deep fried macaroni and cheese, this could be your chance!

We just had two new sponsors sign on for the 24 Hour Comics event in Minneapolis today. Pizza Luce' has offered to give us some pizzas, and Dunn Bros Coffee has offered to give us some coffee to keep us going (both pizza and coffee will be arriving in the evening on Saturday sometime).




Thanks much to all our sponsors for their efforts and generosity.

Nine Panel Shuffle

I was thinking this may appeal to the same sorts of people that 24 Hour Comics Day appeals to...

"Nine Panel Shuffle" is a new free Flash tool I've built for cartoonists to use. Using Flash, it takes nine panels and places them in a random order in a nine panel grid. It includes a "shuffle" button which rearranges the panels in a different random order. You can see it in action here.

Think of it as the comics equivalent of poetic structures like limericks or haiku... inherently limited, following a defined structure, but potentially interesting within those limitations.

I intend to have a section of the Conspiracy site that will showcase Nine Panel Shuffles built by different cartoonists. If you decide to pursue a Nine Panel Shuffle, please let me know where your work gets published, so I can link to it... if you have nowhere to publish it on the web, you can probably talk me into posting it for you too.

And another one.

Garrick Van Buren just signed on to join us as well.

And another one.

Garrick Van Buren just signed on to join us as well.

Another one

I should note that some more people may have signed on since I got the information the other day... Andy Singer just signed on as well.

Roll Call for 24 Hour Comics Day Minneapolis

Here's who's in at this point (in the order they signed up, with an asterik next to those who are in for their second year)... we may end up with a few more stragglers...

Quillan Roe
*David Steinlicht
*Danno Ochsendorf
Nathan Lauster
Troy Cummings
David Wolter
Carl Nelson
*Sean Tenhoff
Tone Redmon
*Ken Avidor
Phil Redmon
Scott Williams
*Kevin Cannon
Zander Cannon
Tim Jennen
Dan Frye
Gail Catheryn
Andy Devore
*Adam Wirtzfeld
Shane Stevenson
*Steven Stwalley

That would be 21 noble fools. Three more and we have one for every hour.

Shad Petosky will also be returning in his role as intrepid reporter on the scene.

24 Hour Comics Box

Last year, the participants in the Cartoonist Conspiracy's Minneapolis 24 Hour Comic Day event took their completed comics and published them the Sunday after the event in an almost 200 page book (the first time any of us read them all was in book form).

This year, we're thinking of taking a different approach.

Using the "box full of mini-comics" format we used in the Lutefisk Sushi show last September, we plan to have interested participants contribute copies of a mini-comic of their completed 24 hour comic to collate into a limited edition box set.

Doing this is easier than you might think (although doing it on the tight timeline we are hoping to do it in is NOT easy).

You can order blank boxes online here:

http://www.uline.com/Group_29.asp

We will be getting this one for our project:

http://www.uline.com/ProductDetail.asp?model=S-159&ref=1403

Here are a couple other good inexpensive options:

http://www.uline.com/ProductDetail.asp?model=S-650&ref=1403
http://www.uline.com/ProductDetail.asp?model=S-156&ref=1403

For a box cover, you could silkscreen it, use a sticker, or use a rubber stamp.

Here is our plan:

1. Each person who participates in the box MUST complete the full 24 pages. Besides the comics completed within the 24 hours, noble failures will also be accepted.

2. Each box participant must print up 100 copies of their comic by 1:30 PM Sunday and deliver them to a location to be announced. That gives you 4 hours from the end of 24 Hour Comics Day to get them printed and delivered. Yikes.

3. Each participant must sign all their comics.

4. Every participant must help collate the boxes, starting at 1:30PM Sunday. We're all going to be loopy as hell, so we'll have to double check the collated boxes.

5. Participants are encouraged to join us at MicroCon to sell boxes as soon as they are collated on Sunday, assuming we finish in time. Microcon closes at 4:00PM.

6. Each participant will be able to buy copies at cost (which will be cheap... they should be under fifty cents each). The number each person will be able to purchase will be limited, and will depend on how many people participate.

7. Leftover copies, if there are any after participants buy their copies, will be sold. Out of the 100 copies, at least 10 will be sold at Big Brain, and at least 10 will be sold elsewhere (probably Microcon if we make it in time).

8. Any profits made will go into the hosting costs of the Cartoonist Conspiracy website.

Groups around the country participating in 24 Hour Comics Day are encouraged to imitate this method. It is a great, fairly simple way to give participants a cool memento of the event.

(Participants in the event should note that participation in the box is not required)

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, or post them on the board.

24 HOUR COMICS DAY IS COMING UP FAST

I've updated the Minneapolis 24 Hour Comics Day website with Zander's poster and some additional info:

Also, I've posted info to the blog on the national site.

24 Hour Comics Day is coming up fast... we'll be discussing it in a bit more detail at the Sunday Funnies meeting this weekend. If you want to volunteer to help, come on over to Grumpy's... and if you know anyone who wants to volunteer, tell them to come (or contact me).

If you want to hang posters to promote the event, please do so! You can either arrange to get some from me, or, better yet, you can print them up yourself using the downloadable poster here.

If you aren't a Minneapolis conspirator, check here to find a location near you.

24 Hour Comics Day Poster

Here is the wonderful poster by Zander Cannon for this year's Minneapolis 24 Hour Comics Day event... thanks much to Zander for taking the time to put this together. Click on the image or click here to see a larger version. They will be printed up some time this week. Contact me and let me know if you are interested in getting some to hang around town to help promote the event.

Spot On Show

Went to the opening of the Spot On: The Art of Zines and Graphic Novels show in Minneapolis last night, and it is quite spectacular. While it showcases the work of local cartoonists, it also highlights the work of cartoonists from around the world. Being Book Arts, as much of the emphasis is on the presentation of the comics and Zines in the show as it is on the contents of the publications. They had a huge turnout last night, especially considering almost all of the area parking was taken up by Minnesota Twins fans going to the game. If you missed it last night, there is no need to cry since it will be up until June, so you still have plenty of time to catch it. Thanks much to Jeff Rathermel at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts for including so many of us in the show (and thanks to conspirator Chris Coffey for helping Jeff set up the wonderful presentation of all the works).

Speaking to Jeff last night, I also got confirmation that we will be able to use the space at Book Arts for the full 24 hours of 24 Hour Comic Day, which is wonderful. We were wondering a bit what we were going to do with all the elbows in the wee hours of the morning, and this has solved the problem... Book Arts will provide us with an ideal space to work in and have a little space to spead out a bit. At this point we have 20 artists signed on to participate in our Minneapolis 24 Hour Comic event... more information about this will be coming soon. To read more about it now, go here.

Also, I should note that we NEED VOLUNTEERS to help with this event. If you are not participating and can help out, or if you know some people that would be interested in helping out, please let us know.

DEADLINE EXTENDED FOR 24 HOUR DAY MINNEAPOLIS

Although we have a number of folks who have already registered for the 24 Hour Comics Day event going on at Big Brain in Minneapolis this month (14 or 15 at last count)... we still want more! You can still register at Big Brain, or you can register at the monthly Conspiracy jam meeting at the Spyhouse on the 7th. Read more about that event here.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE SATURDAY FOR 24 HOUR COMICS DAY MINNEAPOLIS

!!! UPDATE - REGISTRATION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO APRIL 7TH - SEE ABOVE POST !!!

Just a reminder... Saturday is the deadline for registering for the 24 Hour Comic Day event in Minneapolis on April 23-24... so those of you wanting to participate should get down to Big Brain and register ASAP. Seating is limited. More info here:

www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/minneapolis/24hours

WEIRD ILLUSTRATED

I recently got a submission for Weird Illustrated from cartoonist Nick Jeffrey. He recently won a Xeric grant to print Centerfield, which he sent me a couple copies of with his submission... it is excellent. Apparently, it is going to be distributed through Jeff Mason's Alternative Comics, so keep an eye out for it. Nick has a really nice detailed, dense, scratchy style, and knows how to tell a good story. I'm going to bring the extra copy to the next Minneapolis Conspiracy meeting for some lucky cartoonist to take home. His submission to the Weird Illustrated anthology is really dark and uncomfortably hilarious.

Another contribution I've recieved is from Argentinian cartoonist David Paleo... actually, he's sent a number of things that are so great I don't know which one to use. He's a perfect cartoonist for the anthology, as his stuff is weirder than tits on geese. He is really, really, really good... if you want a point of comparison, his stuff reminds me a bit of Robert Williams comics, but he is definitely doing his own thing. You can check out his website here:

http://mx.geocities.com/illoton/

The deadline for submissions to the Weird Illustrated book is May 23rd...

REGISTER FOR 24 HOUR COMIC DAY MINNEAPOLIS

Minnesota cartoonists can now register for the Minneapolis 24 Hour Comic Day event... read the details here:

http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=456