On Thursday May 31, 2007 San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy Cell will be having our Comic Jam at Muddy Waters Café. The meetings are on the second and last Thursday of the month. Folks start arriving around 6:30 to 7:00 pm and we usually hang around till 9-10 depending on how folks are feeling.

We are continuing to work on a exciting jam comic that combines a loose story outline with panel to panel collaboration. It features BOTH bunny and robots, so you know it’s going to be good. It’s coming along really nice, but we need some more help. So if you are an artist who wants to come out and Jam, we’ll be pleased to have you join us.

The location can easily be reached from BART/MUNI.

The new location is:

For more information, comments, questions …. e-mail Doc Popular.

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

This last weekend was the Maker Faire in San Mateo, and the San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy was there running a jam comic.

Our table, which was located in the big expo room (close to Yahoo!’s booth), was filled with pencils, pens, and paper. Cartoonist Conspiracy members answered questions from some of the Faire’s 40,000 attendees and tried to encourage as many of them as possible to create a panel for the Maker Jam Comic. Jeff Plotkin and I started at 10 am on Saturday morning with 10 blank pages, and by 5pm on the following Sunday we had 9 and a half finished pages (not to mention the cover and autograph page).

I estimate that we had over 30 artists sit and draw with us, and I think the resulting jam is pretty good. In terms of promoting comics and our local Cartoonist Conspiracy cell [which has it’s next meeting on Thursday May 31st at Muddy Waters in the Castro], I’d say this is one of our most successful events yet.

You can find “Maker Jam Comic” in the gallery page or download the pdf here

The Goldberg-esque cover was worked on by several artists in pencil, inked by me, and colored by Brian Kolm (who also helped put together the pdf). To create the rest of the book, we numbered the blank pages (1 through 10) and started creating panels on the tops of random pages. After the first panel on a page had been drawn, a different artist would write and draw the consecutive panel before passing it off to another cartoonist. Once we got down to the last panel on a page, that artist would find the first panel on the following page and try to link their page to the next one in their panel.

Photos are from sbocaj’s Make Faire flickr set.

Opening Reception: June 1 | 6:00-8:00 pm | VSA North Fourth Art Center | Albuquerque, NM

Exhibtion: June 1-July 21 | VSA North Fourth Art Center | Albuquerque, NM

Workshops: June 16th and 30th | 10am-4pm | VSA North Fourth Art Center | Albuquerque, NM

N4th Gallery in VSA North Fourth Art Center has joined with 7000 BC to present Strip: Undressing Comics, an exhibition that exposes the process of making sequential art. The exhibit provides a unique look into the processes and products involved in comics creation. Fourteen creators from 7000 BC showcase nineteen projects, demonstrating a wide range of work across a variety of media and subject matter. The show documents the stages of taking an initial idea to finished product, from scribbled thumbnails to email exchanges, from photo reference to printed book.

In conjunction with the show, 7000 BC will be conducting two day-long workshops, open to the public ages 15 and up, that will guide participants in making their own comics.

Strip: Undressing Comics is sponsored in part by The Art Center Design College.

For more information, or to register for the workshop, send an email.

Update: Some photos of the show coming together.

Available for download — Smallest Date Ever, the jam comic we made at today’s 7000 BC meeting.

The May meeting will be at the Sheraton Imperial–Animazement Convention in Durham, NC on May, 26th at 2:00 PM. The meeting will take place in the hotel, not in the convention. We will meet in the lobby at 2:00 PM and then decide where to take it from there.

IMPORTANT: Parking will be difficult. If anyone asks, you are going to the convention. Also, due to other events in the area, the hotel recommends you avoid using Page Rd. to get to the convention/hotel.

Directions to the hotel.

Howdy ya’ll. Just a heads up that the San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy will be at the Maker Faire this weekend.

We will be leading an ongoing Maker Faire Comic Jam at a table… somewhere in the Faire.. sorry I don’t know where yet.

Anyways, if you know my phone number and would like to reach me there, please do.

Otherwise, they should have maps and information on hand.

Sunday, May 20 | Noon | Backroads Pizza and Second Street Brewery | Santa Fe, NM

Unfortunately, One World Coffee has shut down, so we’re going to try holding the first phase of our meeting at Backroads Pizza (807 2nd St # 1); it’s kind of diagonally across the street from Second Street Brewery, where we’ll be moving the meeting around 2-3:00 (if not sooner). Another jam will be happening, along with the usual show-and-tell of recent work, and business around 5:00.

Send an email with any questions.

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.

An update on the last post. According to the comics gossip column Lying in the Gutters, Fantagraphics and Ellison are going into mediation, so with a little luck this case won’t drag on much longer. From here:

“I understand that both Fantagraphics and Harlan Ellison were asked if they would participate in mediation over their current legal confrontation and that both have, at this time, gladly agreed. This will occur on May 29th at the Federal District Court Of Appeals in California. It will be attended by Ellison, Groth and their respective legal representatives.”

I’m sending this letter off to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund tomorrow along with the final funds from the Lutefisk Sushi Volume B show from last year, and I wanted you all to be aware of it’s contents.

It addresses what I see as serious problems with the CBLDF’s current stance on the Harlan Ellison vs. Fantagraphics lawsuit. If you have an opinion you want to share on this subject, please let me know what you think in the comments below, or contact me directly.

You can get more information about Fantagraphics dilemma here, and find out more about how you can help them to win their case (note that they are taking art donations for ebay auction).

Hi there,

Enclosed please find checks totaling $350 made out to the Comic Book Legal Defense fund. These are a second round of proceeds from the Lutefisk Sushi Volume B show of minicomics by Minnesota cartoonists that the Minneapolis Cell of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy put on last year (we sent $876 last year for the first round).

As with Lutefisk Sushi volume A (where the Conspiracy donated over $1000) all of our profits are going to the CBLDF. With Volume B, instead of a direct donation, we have been splitting it up into memberships for some of the cartoonists who participated in the event (we had just over 50 cartoonists participating in the show this time).

Enclosed you’ll also find a list of the relevant information for the 7 remaining participating cartoonists who have requested memberships (we got 35 memberships with the first round). The remaining funds after that are just a straight donation.

For more information about last year’s Lutefisk Sushi show, please direct your web browser to http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/sushi

I also wanted to take this opportunity to express my deep disappointment that you are not assisting Fantagraphics with their legal defense in their lawsuit with Harlan Ellison. This is clearly a first amendment issue, and it is being fought by the what is arguably the finest publisher of comics in the world. If they lose, they face potential bankruptcy, which I believe would be disastrous for the artform. To me, it seems unbelievable that you have not risen to their defense.

Mr. Brownstein’s defense of this inaction, as seen in a recent posting on Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat blog (http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/05/09/cbldf-makes-a-statement) is ultimately unsatisfying. Mr. Brownstein claims that it is not appropriate for the CBLDF to support Fantagraphics in this case because the lawsuit is not over a piece of comic art, but journalistic prose. Mr. Brownstein points out in the comments:

“Likewise, we wouldn’t spend (our supporters) money defending a retailer who was fined for selling a copy of a violent video game derived from a comics property, or a video store who was sued for renting a copy of the Crumb movie, or a cartoonist who was arrested for a work of performance art with no comics in it whatsoever.”

This seems like a reasonable statement. However, this defense seems inconsistent with the CBLDF’s actions in some previous cases, notably the Stu Helm (King VelVeeda) vs. Kraft Foods case, as Dirk Deppey pointed out in his Journalista! blog (http://tcj.com/journalista/?p=353).

I should note that I have respected Mr. Ellison and his strong stands on free speech issues in the past, and I have enjoyed some comics he was involved with (I read most of his Dream Corridor series). Thus I am very dismayed and puzzled by his recent litigation, which is so blatantly a direct attack on the first amendment. It is sad that he puts less value on maintaining his reputation as a voice for free speech than he puts on his misguided attempt at legal revenge.

Mr. Ellison is suing Fantagraphics partially over them using his name on the cover of a book an interview with him appears that he admits Fantagraphics owns the rights to. What kind of precedent does that set if he wins the lawsuit? Could you have a more cut and dried first amendment case?

I assume if the CBLDF took part in an amicus brief, as mentioned in the Beat post, it would be on Fantagraphics’ behalf? I wonder if Ellison supporters reading the Beat post assume that you would do so on Ellison’s behalf?

I think the CBLDF should take a public stand on this case regardless of whether or not they intend to participate in the legal proceedings. Those who support Mr. Ellison based on his previous reputation as a free speech advocate and CBLDF supporter may not be aware they are on the wrong side of a first amendment battle. If the CBLDF publicly sided with Fantagraphics, the bad publicity for Mr. Ellison could go a long way towards making him decide it was prudent to try and resolve this unfortunate lawsuit quickly.

I assume the CBLDF is within its mandate to publicly condemn any attacks on the first amendment regardless of the media involved in the attack, since this presumably costs nothing?

I would also hope that the CBLDF would consider actively using its relationships with both parties to offer to formally or informally help attempt to mediate a resolution to this conflict before it gets to another courtroom. Perhaps this has already been pursued?

As a result of the CBLDF’s inaction on this issue, I will be encouraging the Cartoonist Conspiracy to help fund Fantagraphics’ legal defense rather than the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in any future fund raising efforts we may pursue until Fantagraphics’ legal issues are resolved.

It should be noted that the donation of funds by the Cartoonist Conspiracy on a particular project is not my decision alone, but the decision of the participating membership in whatever project is being pursued, so it is possible donations will still go your way in this time period. I could certainly be outvoted.

I sincerely hope the CBLDF will reconsider its current stance on this divisive issue.

Thanks much for listening, and for your continued efforts in protecting our first amendment rights.

Best wishes,

Steven Stwalley
Webmaster, The International Cartoonist Conspiracy
www.cartoonistconspriacy.com