Million Year Picnic and Jam Comics

Million Year Picnic now carries my mini-comics! They are located in Harvard square:

Million Year Picnic

99 Mt. Auburn Street (Downstairs)

Cambridge, MA 02138

They are a store, by the way. And... possibly a suggestion. I've been there many times before, and their comics range from thoroughly mainstream to completely local -- from Wonderwoman to Jeff Smith to Asterix to Manga to a shelf full of locally made comics and zines. It's like whoever stocked the Boston Public Library's indie/adult graphic novel section did so by grabbing armfuls of books from Million Year Picnic's indie shelves. (The same person also dragged all the authors to MoCCA.)

Since I finally got around to printing some of my comics for MoCCA, I was able to stop by Million Year Picnic with mini-comics. Million Year was really nice and very cool -- they bought a handful of my mini's on the spot, and paid me!

Hub Comics in Union square also sounds very indie friendly and supportive of local mini's, so I plan to stop by there too, eventually. (New England Comics hosts local comics too, but by consignment. )

Also, here is a 'Jam Comic' from New York MoCCA festival.

For reference: that weekend in NYC was wrechedly humid and hot. Also, the top floor of MoCCA, where we were, had no air conditioning. So on Saturday, me and a bunch of comics creators were all eating at a Chinese restaurant. Ron drew the title and the first panel on a sketchbook, passed it around, and voila.

Jaime wrote "The ink on my comics evaporated!" caption and I illustrated it. I can pinpoint Dan M's, Spike's, and Cathy's panels, but I'm not as sure about the others.

(Click on image for larger view)

For good measure, here's another jam comic.
(Can you spot which panel, that I drew a picture for and Lindsey added words?)

A Visit to the Zoo and Harbor

Some sketches and watercolor paintings from a visit to the zoo! And from the harbor where I work.

Return from MoCCA (NYC)

Back from MoCCA! Interesting times. I sold 12 or 15 mini-comics… I think…. Where’s my scraps of paper with talley marks?

So -- MoCCA: where the entire indie graphic novel section of the Boston Public Library comes to life. I saw/said hello to a bunch of webcomic and indie comics people, including the Bluesman guy, Hope Larson, Jason, Raina Telgemeier…

Also, I ended up asking the guy who draws Dr. McNinja for three sketched autographs. He looked sort of patiently annoyed by the time he had to draw the third one. Maybe because I had confessed I didn’t really know who he was, but that I had cousins who enjoyed reading his webcomics and I would like autographs for them.

Also I hung out with interesting people. (Does Spike have a last name?) Lychee for all.

Besides selling my mini-comics at the Boston Comics Roundtable booths, I went around trading my mini-comics with other people’s mini-comics. That was really fun! It was also fun to talk to people who bought my comics. Also fun to just talk to random people, who had puppets for sale, or albatross plushies on their head, or who were hanging out outside during the fire alarms.

Speaking of which, NYC was really, really humid and hot and smelly. It reminded me of when I was working on film sets last summer, and it was kind of nostalgic. For a few minutes.

(And then it was just hot and humid and smelly.)

And now, a note about M&M’s and selling comic books…..

M&M’s are how I ended up saying hello to Hope Larson. This may have been because her bowl of M&M’s were deceptively flavored; “Dark Cherry” or something. I took a candy, bit into it, and I guess I involuntarily made a face of shock, because Hope Larson quickly explained how the M&M’s were a strange flavor. (And then I looked at the books on the table and asked if she was Hope Larson, etc etc)

So the next day, I bought a bunch of (run-of-the-mill chocolate) M&M’s myself. I put them out in bowls along the Boston Comics Roundtable booths, thinking they might attract people. Like birds come to eat peanut butter and orange slices and sunflower seeds. I don’t know if the M&M’s attracted any birds or humans, but the Boston Comics people enjoyed snacking on the M&M’s.

Oh, and apparently, Scott Campbell was there and I didn’t know! I missed a chance to give him my cartoon about Psychonauts. (Lessons for future comic shows: check exhibitor list.)

MoCCA and Improv Story

I am going to the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art Festival (MoCCA) next weekend! I will be part of the Boston Comics Roundtable. Apparently we have a table in the corner on the second floor.


And now, a (typical) story by Alex and me....

The Mouse and the Pickle: A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a Crowned Pickle there lived a tiny mouse. The mouse ate bits of the Crowned Pickle. The Crowned pickle did not like this. He went to the racetrack where he hired a seedy jockey to get rid of the mouse.
The mouse took action, and went to the blue forest, which was the natural homeland of the pickles. The mouse took hostage the pickle ambassador. The mouse negotiated to live among his own kind, while still enjoying delicious crown pickle.
“But how will you do that?” asked the ambassador.
“Tofu,” replied the mouse. “Crowned-Pickle-Flavored tofu.”
And so they lived sort-of-maybe-kind-of-possibly happily ever after.

The End.

(In case you couldn’t tell, this was an impromptu spoken story, with each person adding three words at a time.)