Category Archives: Cartoonist Conspiracy Li’l Library

Guide to Pimping the Conspiracy at Fallcon

Fallcon is almost here. It’s that magical time of year in the Twin Cities where you can meet all of your favorite local cartoonists and promote your comics. It’s also a good time to plug the Cartoonist Conspiracy and help it grow! Here are some good ways to promote the Conspiracy at Fallcon:

Ask people if they like to draw – This is a great conversation starter because it indicates that you are not trying to sell them something (at least at the moment). If the person likes to draw, let them know about our jam sessions in Minneapolis (First Thursday at 6:30) and Saint Paul (Third Thursday at 6:30). If they don’t like to draw, odds are they have an artist friend who might be interested. Hand out flyers, and don’t forget to mention the upcoming 24-hour comic day!

Tell them about past Conspiracy Projects – The Lutefisk Sushi boxes are great attention-getters. At Microcon people would stop and stare at them, saying, “Lutefisk Sushi? Really?” Exploit their captured attention by telling them what Lutefish Sushi is all about! If they’re still paying attention, you can also tell them about the Eric Lappegard tribute book Alley Cats and the 24 Hour Comic Day box sets.

Hand them a copy of “How to Make Minicomics” – This is a great little manual on what minicomics are all about! You can find a pdf of the comic here. I will be assembling a bunch of these for Fallcon, so stop by my table and pick up a few.

Show your Conspiracy love with style – Wear an official Cartoonist Conspiracy Fez! E-mail Steve Stwally for details at .  Also, feel free to wear any Lutefisk Sushi, Vegan Ninja, or other Conspiracy-related apparel you may have.

Volunteer at the Conspiracy Lounge – We need YOU! See this post for more details.

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.

Creative Commons License
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.