Vermont’s Capitol City to Host Unique Comic Book Challenge in October

Montpelier, Vt. – Can you create a 24-page comic book in 24 hours?

Thousands of others have!

Montpelier will again host a 24-Hour Comic challenge on Saturday, Oct. 1st, following up from last year’s successful event. This year, the challenge moves from the local library to Montpelier City Hall, where participants will create a 24-page comic book – story, art and lettering – in a consecutive 24 -hour period.

The event – which occurs on the international 24-Hour Comic Book Day – begins at 10am on Saturday, Oct. 1 and continues for the next 24 hours, concluding early Sunday morning, Oct. 2.

“It may sound hard, but completing a comic book in 24 hours is an amazing and rewarding experience,” said Daniel Barlow, the co-founder of Trees & Hills and one of the organizers of the event. “We’re really looking forward to seeing City Hall filled with cartoonists engaged in a creative marathon.”

The 24-Hour Comic challenge has a unique connection to Vermont: It was created two decades ago by cartoonist Scott McCloud (“Understanding Comics”) as a creative challenge for artist Stephen R. Bissette, a Vermont artist who teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt.

“Scott invented the 24 Hour Comic as a challenge for he and I, a way of breaking logjams and freeing constrained energy by completing, sans preparation, an entire 24-page comic in a mere 24 hours, start to finish,” Bissette explained. “Whatever we did during that 24 hour stretch — including distractions like eating, using the bathroom, napping, walking, whatever – in my case, it included making my two kids lunch and picking them up from school – the clock was still ticking.”

McCloud drew the first 24-Hour comic on Aug. 31, 1990 and Bissette created his days later on Sept. 5. Since then, tens of thousands of others have taken on the challenge, culminating in an official 24-Hour Comic Book Day. The Montpelier challenge takes place on this year’s official global challenge.

Montpelier Alive, the city’s downtown organization, is also one of the organizer’s of this year’s event. The program is also supported in part by the City of Montpelier Community Arts Fund, the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts.

“It’s gratifying to be part of a community that supports the arts,” Barlow said. “City officials recognize that arts events help downtowns grow and prosper.”

The event is free and open to cartoonists and artists who are at least 16 years old. Anyone interested in participating is asked to preregister by e-mailing their name, address and telephone number to  organize@treesandhills.org.

For younger cartoonists, Vermont cartoonist Denis St. John will lead a three-hour interactive teaching session on comic storytelling that same morning at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier.

St. John is a 2008 graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction and the popular creator of the “Monsters and Girls” comics. Participants will concluded that session with a complete mini-comic to show off.

The blog is slowing down again because we’re busy working on Woods, but here are some news items:

• The Center For Cartoon Studies’ Schultz Library managed to save its comics from the recent flooding in Vermont.
• Enter Anne Thalheimer’s raffle to fight AIDS and win T&H anthologies!
• The Marek Bennett Comics Whirlwind descends on Slovakia for a month three months.
• T&H will table (& appear on the “Comics & Social Change”) panel at MICE 9/24 in Boston.

We’ll post some more from the News Bucket when we can.

The next *broke-affordable arts fair will take place on November 26, 2011 at the Fellowship Hall in the Union Congregational Church in Peterborough, NH. *broke is a multidisciplinary arts event that has taken place in Peterborough, NH four times since its inception in 2008. The *broke philosophy is simple: art is for everybody. All *broke events are free to the public, and *broke vendors commit to presenting at least 75% of their wares for less than $50.

Vendor applications are available online @ www.thethinginthespring.com and will be open until September 15th, 2011.

Looking for an easy task? Celebrate and promote comics August 28th with Read Comics In Public Day!

That date is also the deadline for Woods, so if you’re too busy drawing your submission to read comics in public, we certainly understand.

The Xeric self-publishing grant for comics comes to an end next year. Founded almost 20 years ago by Peter Laird with proceeds from the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Northampton, MA based Xeric Foundation has been an important fixture in the small press comics world. Xeric grants to date have totaled $2,500,000, split about evenly between self-publishing comic book creators and local charitable organizations.

In light of the increasing importance and accessibility of the internet, the Foundation plans to devote all of its future grant money to charitable organizations. The deadline for the last self-publishing grant is February 28, 2012.

Read the full official announcement here.

Vermont’s John Rovnak of Panel to Panel has assembled a 274-page full-color compendium of interviews, articles, comics, and more. Of particular Trees & Hills relevance, the book includes an article about us written by co-founder Daniel Barlow & some interviews conducted by him; a cover and comic by Mark Martin; poetry comics by Peter Money & Rick Veitch, with an accompanying essay by Stephen R. Bissette; and art by Colleen Frakes.

Panel to Panel: Exploring Words & Pictures
Edited by John Rovnak

Featuring:

• INTERVIEWS from paneltopanel.net, featuring David Mack, Larry Marder, Larry Hama, Jaime Hernandez, James Sturm, and Stan Sakai.
• NEW INTERVIEWS with Mark Bode, Glenn Danzig, Jimmy Gownley, Alan Moore, Steve Murphy, Dave Sim, and Jim Woodring.
• BY JINGO: A Personal Meditation on the Comics of Jack Kirby by Rob Walton.
• MARVEL 14: The Incredible History of France’s Censorship of Marvel Comics by Jean–Emmanuel Deluxe.
• KEEP YOUR PANTS ON! The Rock Art of James Kochalka.
• BUDDY COPS in Full-Color by Mark Martin.
• BEAT PANELS: OR; IS THERE MONEY IN POETRY COMICS? by Stephen R. Bissette featuring the graphic poetry of Peter Money and Rick Veitch.
• ORGANIZING COMICS: How Comics Created a Community in Rural New England by Daniel Barlow.
• EUROPE’S KRIMINAL HISTORY: featuring MR. KRIME by Mort Todd with Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe.
• EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Re-Imagined Interpretations of Forgotten Characters of the Public Domain.
• MY SKETCHY SUMMER, or 5 Days Hard Labor at the Center For Cartoon Studies by Philip Charles Crawford.
• CLOVER FIELDS ON FIRE: The Intellectual Architecture of Robert Crumb and the Tyranny of the Masses by Experience Kring.
• Organic Comix presents JIM SIMON’S SHIELDMASTER.
• DEFT MASTERY: The Genius of Early 1960′s Archie Comics by Philip Charles Crawford, featuring Teenage Wildlife: an interview with Craig Yoe by John Rovnak.
• MEET JOE PRIEST: A Personal Reflection on Where Faith and Comics Meet by Fr. Chris Kulig, O.Carm.
•  and more….

Panel to Panel is scheduled to begin shipping Aug/Sept 2011 – order a copy here.

Make forest comics with Trees & Hills co-founder Colin Tedford this coming Sunday 8/21 at the Conway Scenic Railroad Station in North Conway, NH. Work on your Woods anthology submission in a beautiful setting! It’s one of many great activities at the 8 Days of Weeks White Mountain Cultural Festival, celebrating 100 years of the Weeks Act (you know, the one that established the US National Forests?) every weekend in August.

Make forest comics with Weeks Act Comics Artist Marek Bennett (who will also lead a musical “Forest Jamboree”) and cartoonist Colin Tedford this coming Sunday 8/14 at Weeks State Park in Lancaster, NH. Work on your Woods anthology submission in a beautiful setting! It’s one of many great activities at the 8 Days of Weeks White Mountain Cultural Festival, celebrating 100 years of the Weeks Act (you know, the one that established the US National Forests?) every weekend in August.

According to The Commons, underground cartoonist Skip Williamson moved to Vermont!

A bit late posting about Stephen R. Bissette‘s latest book, but here it is:

TEEN ANGELS & NEW MUTANTS: Rick Veitch’s Brat Pack® and the Art,Karma, and Commerce of Killing Sidekicks

Writer/artist Rick Veitch‘s career bridges the underground comix of the 1970s, mainstream DC and Vertigo Comics, and the self-publishing revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. In that extraordinary body of work, Brat Pack® remains a landmark, and Teen Angels & New Mutants is the first book-length, in-depth study of a creator and graphic novel worthy of the autopsy. En route, Teen Angels offers a crash-course on teen pop culture and superhero sidekick history, fresh analysis of Dr. Fredric Wertham‘s seminal books, ponders real-world “new mutants” like Michael Jackson, The Olsen Twins, and Justin Bieber, and charts the 1980s comicbook explosion and 1990s implosion–and more.

Check out Stephen Bissette’s Teen Angels page full of excerpts, info, backstory, reviews, and of course links to purchase (e.g. from the publisher).