The Windham Solid Waste Management District in Brattleboro, VT is looking for someone to illustrate some recycling awareness strips based on pre-existing descriptions & scripts.  The deadline for applications is May 30; the full call for submissions is here.

May 1 is Free Comic Book Day, and in addition to re-launching TWIG, we plan to distribute a Trees & Hills Free Comic Book Day collection. To participate, print up 100 copies of a comic (dimensions no larger than 5.5″ x 8.5″) and either mail it to us at PO Box 645, Winchester, NH 03470 or email us at organize@treesandhills.org to meet in person. We’ll assemble all the contributions into a single packet with a special T&H cover and give it away! Use any color paper you like. Please leave a little extra room at the left edge for binding, and remember to include your name & web address (or other preferred contact info), preferably on the comic itself. 4-8 pages would be nice, but we’ll take single sheets, too.  Some of these will go to kids, so submissions should be suitable for a “general audience”.

If for whatever reason you don’t want to print 100 copies of something, we’ll still be happy to distribute a FCBD comic for you.

Related: If you’d like to table at the Free Comic Day Festival in Rochester, NH, either email organize@treesandhills.org to ask about joining the Trees & Hills table, or see here to get your own half-table for $10.

Starting on May 1, 2010 (Free Comic Book Day), Trees & Hills will relaunch its free comic TWIG in a new format. While still a single sheet printed in B&W on both sides, it will now be folded in half to make four 5.5″ x 8.5″ pages and released bimonthly rather than monthly. As before, we will also publish TWIG online as image files to read, with the current issue available as a pdf for anyone to print and distribute.

Our first deadline is April 15, with subsequent deadlines at two-month intervals (June 15, August 15, etc.). We will accept strips from under a page in size (they should ideally fit the width of the page) up to 3 pages long (the front page has less space available because of the title); we can also accommodate a single 8.5″ x 11″ page. Previously published material is fine. All submissions should be suitable for a “general audience”, as we’ll be leaving them around in restaurants & etc. Email 600 dpi B&W or 300dpi greyscale TIFs to organize@treesandhills.org, or mail clean photocopies to us at PO Box 645, Winchester NH 03470.

I’ve neglected our poor web shop basically since Seeds came out (busy, wanted to redesign it, etc.) - but no more! I’ve set up the shop on a new, easy to use platform and put up our anthologies and comics by myself, Colleen Frakes, and Sam Leveillee. In the coming week I’ll add comics by Marek Bennett, Anne Thalheimer, and others.  Check it out!

As you may have gathered from the title, I particularly want to showcase two items in the shop:

SHELTER! You can finally buy it online from us, not just from Microcosm!

PLAY! For a brief time (we plan to print at the beginning of April) you can preorder our forthcoming anthology PLAY. Don’t miss out! All preorders will come decorated with at least one artist sketch, and will ship mid-April. (We plan to start preorders much earlier for the next anthology, with multiple levels of support and special bonuses.)

This week we printed another 100 copies of SEEDS and SHELTER, bringing the total number of copies of SEEDS to 700.

[Read more →]

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.

If you plan to attend this coming Saturday’s Nicaragua / Shelter release party at Hub Comics in Somerville MA, you should also plan to attend the release party for the Boston Comics Rountable’s history-themed Inbound #4 anthology at Atomic Bean Cafe in Cambridge beforehand. New England Comics Power!

On Sunday December 13 Trees & Hills has a table at the Stars & Skulls Craft Fair in Hadley, MA. Anne Thalheimer will have her own table with her comics and monster hats; come on out and see us!