Category Archives: Events

Please Help Promote BIG FUNNY (Premiering This Friday, August 7th!)

anthologies, BIG FUNNY, event, Events, gallery show, hype, Minneapolis, mn, press, show, St. Paul

We’ve been doing really well on getting the word out about BIG FUNNY so far… for a list of places that have mentioned the show or the publication, check out the ongoing list on our Facebook page.

That said, the BEST promotion is word of mouth. Please help us to make the opening a huge success! Some suggestions:

1) Please do tell your friends, family, co-workers, associates and potential love interests, you sly dog. In person, via email, via a social network invite, using two tin cans and one taut string, or by serenading outside their windows at three AM. Here is the Facebook event to invite friends to.

2) Please do tell your readers. If you have a blog or website, please post about the event this week. Here is a “chicklet” for your site, if you want it:

BIG FUNNY

3) Please consider distributing some of the postcards and newsprint posters that can be picked up at the gallery.

4) If you know members of the press, please consider directing them to our press release.

5) Please consider hassling strangers on street corners, wearing sandwich boards promoting the event, floating over the city in a BIG FUNNY painted dirigible, or using other means of guerrilla promotion as your fancy dictates. Due to their lack of implements of modern communication, we anticipate an unfortunate shortage of hillbillies… so if you wish to hike the Appalachian Trail with a bullhorn, please contact Jamie.

Please don’t forget to direct folks to our website.

Thanks for your help, and thanks much to those of you who have already done some or all of these things (although it was taking it a little too far shaving the logo in your chest hair, Kevin).

Big Funny: Things You Should Know

anthologies, BIG FUNNY, event, Events, gallery show, Minneapolis, mn, show, St. Paul

About Big Funny
(Things about the project you may not know that we think are cool.)

* Big Funny, at 48 ginormous pages, features the work of 47 contributing artists.

* Only 2,000 copies were printed!

* The project was coordinated entirely by volunteers, who have contributed 1,000 hours to the project to date.

* Big Funny was printed locally in Minnesota.

* The newspaper size, (16″ wide by 22-3/4″ tall with an image area of 15″ wide by 21-1/2″), is true to an original newspaper from the 1910-30’s eras.

* Proceeds earned from Big Funny benefit two affiliated groups: Altered Esthetics, a nonprofit arts organization that works to support artists and The International Cartoonist Conspiracy, a community of comic artists.

* Artist submissions were open to all and chosen democratically by the editorial review panel.

* The original Big Funny Logo was designed by editor Steven Stwalley. The Big Funny Logo featured on the cover of the paper was hand drawn by editor Zander Cannon, and features all the characters from inside the paper itself.

* Even the ads in Big Funny are cool! The ads for sponsors on the back of the paper were hand-drawn by editor Kevin Cannon, with the words for “the Source” ad penned by editor Steven Stwalley. The classifieds feature a mix of original limericks, artist bios, vintage ads from old comics and more.

* Big Funny arrived to the gallery on two ginormous pallets and copies were hand-loaded by the editors to a super secret location to be stored until the day of the opening. Copies of Big Funny narrowly avert both floods and theft while they wait to be released this Friday, August 7th.

Big Funny: A celebration of the Newspaper Comic Strip!

The 48-page oversized newspaper will premiere at Altered Esthetics this Friday featuring poster-sized comic artwork from 47 artists.

In addition to having copies of BIG FUNNY for sale ($5 each), the opening reception will include:

* Original artwork from the publication,

* examples of historic comics pages (some over a century old),

* a retrospective of unseen comic artwork by William Ede,

* live music from The Roe Family Singers and

* the little funny sideshow- a vintage cigarette machine repurposed to vend mini-comics and comic art!

Opening Reception
Friday August 7, 2009 7pm-11pm

Show runs August 7-29, 2009

Gallery Hours
Saturdays 1pm-5pm
Tuesdays & Thursdays 1pm-7pm

Altered Esthetics
1224 Quincy Street NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413.
612.378.8888

cartoonistconspiracy.com/bigfunny

August 7000 BC Meeting/Workshop

7000 BC, Events

August Meeting and Comics-making Workshop | Saturday, June 1 | 1:00-3:00 | Warehouse 21 | Santa Fe, NM

The August 7000 BC meeting will be held at Warehouse 21 and combined with a comics-making workshop. We’ll begin around 1:00 (so that anyone coming from Albuquerque can take the Rail Runner) with the basics, and then move on to getting participants creating their comics with assistance from the group. Around 3:00 we’ll head out for food, probably to Second Street Brewery.

The workshop is free and new members are always welcome. Send an email with any questions.

July 7000 BC Meeting

7000 BC, Events

7000 BC · independent comics from new mexico

Saturday, July 11 | 1:00 | New York Pizza Department | 2nd and Central | Albuquerque, NM

The July 7000 BC meeting will be held at New York Pizza Department on the northwest corner of 2nd and Central.

Start time is 1:00, which means that anyone coming from Santa Fe can ride the Rail Runner to the meeting.

Among the usual jam comic and socializing, we’ll be collecting work for the next string and making plans for the Harwood Workshop and Bubonicon.

New members are always welcome. Send an email with any questions.

Drinking Liberally With Ken Avidor This Thursday at the 331 Club

Conspirators, event, Events

Drink with conspirator Ken Avidor this Thursday! Here is the info posted at The Cucking Stool…

Thursday will be an extra special Drinking Liberally featuring Ken Avidor and some of his cartoon/illustrator buddies. Ken promises to bring along his sketch book and pen.

As most of you know, Ken has done several graphics for the Cucking Stool over the past couple of years. He skewers Michele Bachmann with some regularity and writes for Dump Michele Bachmann. Recently, Ken’s work in sketching for Law and Politics at the Republican National Convention won him a Society of Professional Journalists award.

One of Ken’s recent projects was to do the cover of the first issue of False Witness, Bill Prendergast’s graphic retelling of the Michele Bachmann story:

False Witness was noted recently in Talking Points Memo. And the dialogue is genuine Michele Bachmann, too!

We’ll have some copies of the comic available for you to buy, boys and girls, and Ken will autograph the cover if you like. It would make a great gift, especially for the right winger in your life.

We meet six to nine or so at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

Yearbooks – A 2D Cloud Book Launch!

Events, Minneapolis, St. Paul

Yearbooks – A 2D Cloud Book Launch | Sunday, June 21 | 8 PM | ARISE! Books | Minneapolis, MN

What are you doing this coming Sunday? Spending time with dad? Well, after you’ve said your hellos and ate enough potato salad, stop on by Arise! Books @ 2441 Lyndale Ave. S. Minneapolis around 8 PM. 2D Cloud will be having book launch for Yearbooks — a full colour comic book, which also is a part of ARISE! books Summer Series. Best of all, it’s a free event! Afterwards, sometime around duskish I imagine, there will be a showing of Frank Henelotter’s film ‘Basket Case.’ Hope to see you there!

Comic Book Scripting at 2nd Annual UNM Young Writers Conference

7000 BC, Events

2nd Annual UNM Young Writers Conference | Saturday, June 6 | 10:15 – 11:45 a.m. | UNM Student Union Building | Albuquerque, NM


7000 BC is once again pleased to participate in the UNM Young Writers Conference on Saturday, June 6 at University of New Mexico’s Student Union Building. Pete and Shirl will be leading the Comic Book Scripting workshop from 10:15-11:45, teaching the fundamentals of writing for sequential art.

SUBMISSIONS NEEDED–Zine show at MN Center for Book Arts

Events, gallery show, Minneapolis, Opportunities

Call for Zines

Minnesota Center for Book Arts will be hosting an exhibition of zines titled
³Independent Variables: Contemporary Zine Publications² from June 26 to
September 6, 2009 in the Open Book Lobby Gallery.

To participate in this exhibition, work must be received by 5 pm June 26. It
may be dropped off at MCBA¹s Shop desk or mailed (MCBA, attn: Jeff
Rathermel, 1011 Washington Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55415). Please include
contact information with your submission, including an email address.

Note: Work will handled by the public and will be fastened to the wall by a
cord. This may involve drilling into the publication to make a hole for
fastening. Do not submit work you are not willing to have altered and
handled by multiple readers. Works should weigh a pound or less.

We will do our best to exhibit all work submitted. Multiple works by a
single artist are permitted. If the number of submissions is great, the
number of works exhibited by a single artist will be limited.

Work will be available for pick up at the Shop desk the week following the
show. Work will not be returned by mail. Items not picked up by Sept 11,
2009 will be added to the MCBA archives and used for educational purposes.

If you have questions, please email Jeff Rathermel, MCBA¹s Artistic
Director, at jrathermel (at) mnbookarts.org.