Category Archives: Minneapolis

Whole Lotta Scanning Goin’ On

Jam Comics, Minneapolis

We’ve let the Minneapolis jam scanning get horribly behind over the last year… I’ve decided to see what I can do to remedy some of that this week… watch the blog for a whole lotta comics this week!

Instead of posting the individual jam pages at this point, I’ve decided to post the individual months as PDF files… these will ultimately be available in the gallery in both low-res versions (for viewing online) and hi-res versions (for anyone downloading to reconfigure and print anywhere they want under our creative commons license… note that if you participated in the jam, it can be for non-commercial or commercial purposes… otherwise, it’s just non-commercial).

All scans are greyscale, unedited as-is from the original pages… print versions will be 300 DPI.

Here’s the first one from July 2005… click the image to grab the low-res, reader’s pdf. This one is just over 2MB. The themes for that month were “Obscure Stories About Blues Musicians” and “16 Pages to Live.”

Also note that I just uploaded the first 6 months of jams from the Rice, MN cell… you can grab that here. That one weighs in at 7MB.

Cartoonist Conspiracy Mentioned in Pioneer Press

Minneapolis

There’s a great comic strip by David Steinlicht and Julio Ojeda-Zapata in the St. Paul Pioneer Press today about Free Comic Book Day… you can see the whole thing here. Best of all, it shows a bunch of characters from local cartoonists, and makes a nice mention of the Cartoonist Conspiracy in the panel shown below.

Pictured in the panel, clockwise from left, would be the little girl in Zander Cannon’s “He Becomes Who Kills Him: A Horror Story” mini-comic from the Lutefisk Sushi Volume B box, one of Sean Tenhoff’s Bean Men, Bob Lipski’s Uptown Girl, my character Soapy the Chicken, and one of Ken Avidor’s demons.

The strip also mentions Twin Cities locals Sam Hiti, Ryan Kelly, Dan Jurgens, Patrick Gleason and, of course, Charles Schulz.

Thanks much to Conspirator Steinlicht and Mr. Ojeda-Zapata for the plug!

Don’t Miss MicroCon!

Events, Minneapolis

Today if you’re in the Twin Cities you won’t want to miss MicroCon, the second largest comics convention in the area (the first biggest being FallCon, which is put on by the same folks in the Fall).

Hosted by the Midwest (formerly Minnesota) Comic Book Association, the Twin Cities conventions are no ordinary comic conventions… for one thing they offer free table space to any cartoonist who requests one. This is a rare and generous thing for a convention to offer, indeed.

As a result, you have a huge number and variety of cartoonists doing all sorts of comics… much like the Conspiracy, participating cartoonists include everything from seasoned professionals to rank amateurs… drawing every sort of comic you can imagine… manga, superheroes, funny animals, smut, and even stuff that doesn’t neatly fall into a genre.

Beyond that, the conventions always have a good vibe (cartoonists not having to hustle to make enough bread to cover a table space definitely are a part of that, along with the free food for creators, and the general friendly respect given to all creators by the members of the MNCBA). Really, it’s gotta be one of the best conventions in the country to be a creator at.

Jam War!

Events, Jam Comics, Minneapolis, Projects

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!

Lutefisk Sushi Opening Overview

Events, Lutefisk Sushi, mini-comics, Minneapolis, Projects

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.

Please Help Promote Lutefisk Sushi

Events, Lutefisk Sushi, mini-comics, Minneapolis, Projects

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!