Punchbuggy Tour at CCS
Friday March 19, 7pm
94 South Main Street in White River Junction, Vermont

Join Liz Baillie, MK Reed and Ken Dahl for an evening of comics reading, music, and carryings-on! The Center For Cartoon Studies will welcome these traveling cartoonists with a reception, followed by a book signing.

Tuesday, March 23 @7pm – Amherst, MA @ Hampshire College (West Lecture Hall)

Wednesday, March 24 @ 7pm – Providence, RI @ Ada Books

Thursday, March 25 @ 7pm – Somerville, MA @ Hub Comics

About the Authors:

Liz Baillie, author of My Brain Hurts: Volumes One and Two, currently serializing her graphic novel Freewheel on the web. Her work has appeared in publications such as Other Magazine and anthologies such as Side B: A Music Lover’s Anthology (Poseur Ink) and 13 Years of Good Luck (Microcosm Publishing). In 2007 her work was featured on the list of 100 Distinguished Comics as published in the 2007 Best American Comics anthology. She has been nominated for both the 2008 Maisie Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration and 2009 Friends of Lulu Kim Yale Award for Best New Talent.

MK Reed, author of Cross Country, Catfight, and Pale Fire; writer of Americus (illustrated by Jonathan Hill) to be published by First Second Books in 2011. She was a co-editor on the Friends of Lulu anthology, Girls’ Guide to Guys Stuff, for which she received the Friends of Lulu Volunteer of the Year award (alongside co-editor Robin Enrico). Americus first appeared as a short story in Papercutter #7, which won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Anthology or Collection in 2008.

Gabby Schulz (Ken Dahl) was born and raised in Hawai’i. In 2006 he was the Fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies. That same year, the first chapter of Monsters was given an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic. Monsters was published as a graphic novel this September by Secret Acres. Schulz’s other book, Welcome to the Dahl House, was put out in 2008 by Microcosm Publishing.

The Center For Cartoon Studies (CCS) is America’s premiere cartooning school and studio located in the historic village of White River Junction, Vermont. Faculty and visiting artists include many of today’s most celebrated cartoonists.

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.

Presenting some unofficial PHOTOS from the event!

Here, Colin & Megan deal with a big crowd around the display table…

And here, the chief architects of the Trees and Hills Sputnik Project reveal their handiwork to the press. The elegant basketball-sized device boasts a gleaming aluminum coating, and a core of unknown composition, possibly enriched candy.

Thanks to Keene’s own COMIC BOOM for hosting the event!

Trees & Hills latest anthology NEW STARS is now available for online purchase at Trees & Hills Comix Distro! The anthology debuted at SPX in October 2007, and since that month also marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, we took that as our theme. We’re not some kind of fascists, though, so every piece didn’t have to be about Sputnik itself – most of them do relate to space in some way, though. This all-ages anthology by the Trees & Hills Comic Group features an eye-popping full-color cover by Gregory Giordano and comics by Daniel Barlow, Marek Bennett, Miles Cota, Colleen Frakes, Cat Garza, Chris Grotke, Jade Harmon, Tim Hulsizer, Matt Levin, Keith Moriarty, Kathie Mullen, Raymond Prado, Matthew Reidsma, Colin Tedford, and Anne Thalheimer. 5.5″ x 8.5″, 52 pgs. $3.00

This was my first Small Press Expo in Maryland and I gotta say I’m impressed. Smaller and maybe less as quirky as MoCCA, the show still felt like busy, friendly and really, I dunno, happening and hip and other encouraging h words.

Elsewhere on the Internet, you can find all the pictures of gorillas winning Ignatzs and a brief, busy party called the Nerdlinger Awards with a bathtub full of ice and drinks, but these are the images that stick in my head for SPX 2007.

Thursday
Flew out of Manchester, N.H. And into Baltimore with Marek Bennett After a maze of buses and subways, got picked up in D.C. By his friend, Karen, who works over at a famous think tank. After the midnight tour of the city, we called it a night around 1 a.m. That would be the most sleep I get all weekend.

Friday
It was odd at first to be set up by 11 a.m. and then not have people start shuffling in for another three hours (the show, on the first day, began at 2 p.m.). Still, gave me time to say hello to a few people and eat an apple on the grass in the sun.

The Trees & Hills/ Mimi’s Doughnuts table was near the front door, the first table in on one of the center aisles. Pretty great location, especially considering I Know Joe Kimball, the collective of Center for Cartoon Studies students and graduates who debuted the Dead Man’s Hand western anthology (which I and several other Trees & Hills regulars are published in), were right next to us. The Center for Cartoon Studies was nearby too, along with the SUNDAYs collective, another group that has sprung from CCS.

We were debuting NEW STARS, our new mini-comic anthology with comics inspired by the Sputnik launch 50 years ago this month. Marek had a new copy of his Mimi’s Doughnuts Zine, which also featured a story about Sputnik. We did a package deal of the two for $6 and that seemed to seal several sales.

Several times I had people come up to the table because they had heard about NEW STARS and sometime over the weekend Matthew Reidsma
sold out of all but one of his contributor copies because people just saw it at his table and wanted to buy it.

The book sold pretty well, I think, because of the hook of its theme (I’ll forever have the pitch, which I probably repeated 1,000 times, stuck in my head) and because of the gorgeous cover image by Gregory Giordano

Tim Hulsizershowed up Friday afternoon with Meagan Frappiea, finally sealing the wonderful fact that I both had a hotel room there to sleep in and my own bed in that hotel room. Tim got me into a great party over in Sara Bauer’s hotel room, who thankfully had a corkscrew for the two bottles of wine that I wanted to share with people.

One thing I noticed was the the attendees were mostly looking for square-bound collections of comics or graphic novels. We did well with out self-published mini-comic anthology, but even when I did my buying, it was more for the collected books of creators I know than new mini-comics, which I usually try to do at these events.

There just seemed to be so many cartoonists who last year had minis and this year had professional and beautiful collected books. Great for them and an interesting trend, I think, because I suddenly found myself spending money on say, Julia Wertz‘s FartParty collection from Atomic Press, than buying an armload of $3 minis from a bunch of great new creators I never heard of.

Saturday
We did great on the second day. Within the first three hours I had surpassed the previous day’s sales. I bumped into The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald and gave her a copy of NEW STARS. She told me she posted my press release a few days ago – it’s right over here. I had no idea because I felt like I hadn’t been on the Internet at that point since 1996.

I drank wine at the Ignatz Awards (Dead Man’s Hand was nominated for the debut comic award!) and met comics writer Matt Rhodesand his wife, Shannon, with whom I would later spend a good part of the evening with chatting about Alan Moore, Amsterdam, tattoos and the nature of the universe. Somehow I ended up in Kevin Dixon‘s hotel room talking about Fats Domino and Alf.

Sunday

With a flight scheduled for the early evening, I only sat in on on the day’s first panel on media and comics, which distributed vital info on things like sending your comic to a magazine to be reviewed or how long your press release should be. Already being in that biz, little was knew to me, but I did catch a glimpse of my Internet dream girl Whitney Mattheson, the blogger behind USA Today’s Pop Candy.

SPX felt more social and even communal than MoCCA, mostly because this show is much smaller and is held in a hotel, where most of the exhibitors are staying too. It’s also a really energizing convention; Marek and I chatted on the way home Sunday about future plans, both for our comics and the Trees & Hills comics group.

I know I’m going to forget people, but shout-outs to Dave Kender, the founder of The Boston Comics Roundtable and Bellen’s Box Brown, two people I was hoping to spend more time with.

Next year: camera, blogging during the conventions, more comics for sale and a vow that I will go to bed at a decent time one of the nights.

ZZZZZZZZZTTTT!

Colin! Emergency! NEW STARS selling out!

KKKXXKKK-ZZZZTTT!

Huge crowds… milling about… must talk to every customer…

KKKKKKKKKKTTTT!

CCS Alumni holding our right flank… Much mob interest in their work, too… “Dead Man’s Hand” nominated for Outstanding Debut Award…

Boston comics group also here in force… Must get to their table…

Dan going back to hotel room for reserve copies of anthology…

ZZZT!

“Field Guide” anthology also sold out! Marek sold out of ADULT MEDIUM T-shirts!

SEND REINFORCEMENTS BEFORE IT’S TOO LA———

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZK****

I’ll be at the Trees & Hills table at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland Friday and Saturday. Mimi’s Doughnuts’ Marek Bennett will be there too.

NEW STARS, which is printing right now, will be available at table G1 for only three bucks. We’re near the front doors, so hopefully you can find us!