Democracy has come to the Trees & Hills comics group.

Well, sort of!

This summer, Trees & Hills comics will print a best-of book. It will collect loved comics from the group’s first four anthologies – Trees & Hills & Friends, Field Guide, New Stars and Swingin’ Hits - along with a few brand new pieces to round out the collection.

If you appeared in one of our first four comics, we’ll probably ask you soon if we can reprint one or more of those comics.

Here’s where everyone else comes in (although contributors please feel free to do this too).

We are looking for your top three comics from the first four Trees & Hills anthologies. We’d like to know which ones are reader favorites and clearly should be reprinted in our cute little book.

Send your favorites over to organize@treesandhills.org

Please also tell us which of the four comics we’ve published you’ve read, so we know which ones you are picking from.

We ask that you have all your favorites in to us by April 1.

Thank you! 2009 looks to be an exciting year for Trees & Hills. In addition to the best-of book collection, we also plan to appear at MoCCA and SPX, along with unveiling a brand new themed mini-comics anthology in the fall.

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – Harry Potter who?

To celebrate the release of a new anthology featuring nearly 20 new comics by regional cartoonists, the Trees & Hills comics group will be throwing a party at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction, Vt. on the afternoon of July 21.

Everyone is welcome to join us!

Trees & Hills members and friends will be celebrating the release last month of, “Field Guide to Cartoonists.” The 52-page mini-comic anthology features new work by members of the comics group, including Stephen R. Bissette, Colleen Frakes, Cat Garza, Jennifer Omand and Ethan Slayton.

The book costs only $3 and copies, along with other comics created by local creators, will be on sale.

While the rest of the world is face deep in a new book about some odd little British wizard, cartoonists, comic creators and fans will be partying in Central Vermont, creating and sharing comics and listening to several cool bands!

Performing at the party will be Marek Bennett, the N.H. Creator of the comic strip, “Mimi’s Doughnuts.” Following his set will be Hot Hot Pie, a super group of cartoonists attending or living near the Center of Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt.

The events begin at 3 p.m. with a potluck. There is a $5 suggested donation at the door for the musicians. White River Junction’s amazing and unparalleled Main Street Museum is located at 58 Bridge Street. Check them out at www.mainstreetmuseum.org

The Trees & Hills comics group is a collective of comic creators from Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts. We formed two years ago during a comic drawing event at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center that challenged creators to draw a 24 page comic in 24 hours!

In addition to hosting monthly drawing parties for cartoonists, the Trees & Hills comics group publishes and distributes comics throughout the three states. The past year has seen the group featured at several comic conventions, including the 2007 MoCCA Art Festival in New York City.

For more information, please visit www.treesandhills.org

N.H. cartoonist Marek Bennett mans the Trees & Hills / Mimi’s Doughnuts table at the 2007 MoCCA convention in New York City on June 23. Thanks to Matthew Reidsma for the photo.

We met a lot of people who previously had never heard of the Trees & Hills comics group. And we sold and gave away lots of comics, including our new 52-page anthology, Field Guide to Cartoonists of Vermont, New Hampshire and Western Massachusetts.

Trees & Hills members walked away from MoCCA 2007 tired and partly bruised, but with open eyes and excitement for the future. Here are a few thoughts, three days after the end of the show.

1)Location: The Trees & Hills/ Mimi’s Doughnuts table was located on the seventh floor of the Puck Building, six floors up from the three other MoCCA rooms. This meant we got about one-fourth the traffic that the other floors saw, but the incoming natural light and breathing room turned our floor into a nice island away from the bustle of the convention.

Reviews are a bit mixed on this. Marek Bennett (Mimi’s Doughnuts) preferred the location. But he’s a true natural with relating to people and sold what appeared to be a good number of comics and a few shirts. Trees & Hills co-founder Colin Tedford and I felt that the access that the downstairs floor would have given us outweighed the nice, upper floor atmosphere.

2)Comics. We got Trees & Hills comics into a lot of fan’s hands, including an editor at DC Vertigo, several small press publishers, The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald (who later posted a picture of me and listed the anthology title on her blog), Brian Wood (a former Vermonter) and lots of others. This was clearly a success and at least one big indie publisher expressed interest in a graphic novel one of our cartoonists is working on and I was told by a major publisher that I should pitch to them.

3)Vermont Comics. The Green Mountain State was well represented. The Center for Cartoon Studies had two tables at the show and their SUNDAYS anthology sold out on, appropriately, Sunday, and was one of the true buzz books of the show. Rick Veitch (Army @ Love, Rare Bit Fiends) was right around the corner from our table and he had some nice original pages for sale. Alison Bechdel had a huge line for sketches, which nicely occurred directly behind our table.

We did expect to sell more comics. For me, the show did highlight the oddity that – at this level of the comics industry at least – we are almost all operating at a loss. But its the love that keeps us doing it, even if sales are fractions of costs.

Still, the networking and the crackling energy and excitement and the after parties (monsters dancing on stripper poles!) made it all worth every cent. On the second day of the show, I happily put down the $325 to lock in our table for next year.

Members of the Trees & Hills comics group (www.treesandhills.org) are proud to announce that we plan to publish a second anthology of work by regional creators early this summer.

Submission details for the new anthology are located near the bottom of this message.

In October 2006, the comics group published the 60-page opus, Trees & Hills & Friends anthology, which featured cartoons by over 20 creators from New Hampshire, Vermont and western Massachusetts.

The mini-comic, which featured work by Stephen R. Bissette, Cat Garza and Marek Bennett, has sold more than 100 copies. This total does not include the copies that we gave to contributors for their work, meaning there may be nearly 200 copies out there in circulation.

The release of that book capped the first year of operation for Trees & Hills, which was formed by NH cartoonist Colin Tedford and VT writer Dan Barlow following a large turnout to a 24-Hour Comic event just more than a year earlier in Brattleboro, Vt.

Publishing and distributing the anthology was the first major expansion for the group, which had since been focusing on holding semi-monthly drawing parties, managing a Web site and tabling at local comic book conventions.

Format: The 2007 anthology – which does not yet have a name – will be 5.5 x 8.5 inches with a one-color cover and black and white interiors. It will be a mini-comic; the same size width and length as the previous anthology.

Content: There will also be a change in the content we are looking for in this publication. This time around we are looking for all-ages contributions, whereas the first publication was a showcase of the talents of the many members of our group.

Now, we are hoping for a comic that children, teenagers and adults will all be able to enjoy.

Details: Every contributor will receive one copy of the book per page published. We’re looking for copies of the content; please do not send original art. If you live in Vermont, please send the contributions to barlowdaniel at gmail dot com and New Hampshire artists can send their work to colintedford at gmail dot com

Creators from Massachusetts can choose either Dan or Colin to send their artwork to.

Photocopies snail mail submissions can be sent to Colin Tedford, PO Box 645, Winchester, NH 03470 or Dan Barlow, 182 Main Street #2, Montpelier, VT 05602.

The submission deadline is Saturday, May 26.