The next Pioneer Valley Comic & Cartoon Schmooze will be Tuesday May 13, 7pm @ Bub’s Bar-B-Q, 676 Amherst Rd, Sunderland MA. It’s a monthly informal gathering of cartoonists & other comics-interested folk, so come out to eat, drink, chat, draw, and (this month) try Bub’s deep-fried Twinkie - if you dare! For more info, contact E.J. Barnes: art at ejbarnes dot com.

On Saturday, May 17 at 2pm, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge MA will host a screening & panel discussion of Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist. The Museum has some video clips on YouTube: click here and check out the clips labeled “Comic Arts Festival” (including four clips of Howard Cruse discussing his work), “Will Eisner Documentary”, and “Peter Kuper meets Norman Rockwell”. This is yet another event in conjunction with the stunning “Litgraphic” exhibit of comics art, closing May 26.

Center For Cartoon Studies
Commencement Ceremony: Saturday, May 17, 11am
Thesis Exhibition: May 17 - June 21

The Center for Cartoon Studies Commencement Ceremony takes place on Saturday, May 17 at 11am at Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vermont. This year’s commencement speaker is Alison Bechdel, critically acclaimed author of graphic memoir, Fun Home.

Thesis Exhibition: Opening Reception is Saturday, May 17, immediately following the Commencement Ceremony. The exhibition will run Saturday, May 17 thru Saturday June 21; it will be open to the public Monday thru Saturday, 10am - 4pm. Graduating seniors will be exhibiting their thesis projects, including preview pages of completed and to-be-completed graphic novels, short stories, visual narratives, and mini comic series. The Center for Cartoon Studies Gallery is located at 94 South Main Street, in the Colodny building.

Here is the second issue of our free monthly comics flyer TWIG, featuring work by Colleen Frakes, Colin Tedford, Morgan Pielli, Tim Hulsizer, & Jennifer Omand.

Right-click here and download the PDF to print, copy & distribute in your area. If you do, drop us a line (treesandhills@gmail.com) to let us know where you’re putting them so we can know how cool you are! This month: bring some to your local comic shop for Free Comic Book Day (Saturday, May 3)!

On to the comics! Click to enlarge.

To submit material, send your 300dpi comics to treesandhills@gmail.com (should be suitable for “general audience”).

As you can see, reconstruction of our website continues. New header image (thanks to Marek Bennett) & 3 awesome columns are in place; things should basically be functional, but please pardon our appearance until we get everything looking ship-shape.

Hey everyone, it’s the first issue of our new free comic! You’ll soon be able to find copies around Vermont, New Hampshire, and western Massachusetts. If you’d like to help out, you can download a PDF version (right-click & download current month only) to print, copy & distribute. If you do, drop us a quick email (treesandhills@gmail.com) to let us know how many & where you put them. If you’d like to print & distribute regularly, email us about it and about getting small ads to help pay for printing.

On to the comics! Click to enlarge.

TWIG #1 contains comics by Colin Tedford, Marek Bennett, Morgan Pielli, and Keith Moriarty. Send your 300dpi submissions to treesandhills@gmail.com!

The long-awaited reconstruction of the Trees & Hills website is now in progress, so please pardon our appearance. There are a few things that will take a while to get to, but everything should be pretty functional soon, and I’ll post about the new features.

Goodbye, Blogger - Hello, WordPress!

The Trees & Hills Distro is back online! Sorry the renovations took so long; it wasn’t too much work, but some personal matters tore my attention away for a while. Anyway, now the world may once more purchase the minicomics of our fair region from one convenient online location.

New features!
- A Store Finder listing shops that have been known to carry our work.
- Comments - Post reviews of the minicomics!
- Artist List in menu, so you can see who we stock & what we have by them more easily.
- Individual product pages so you can link to a specific item you want to tell someone about instead of hoping they find it on the site.
- Bigger cover images! Well, actually they’re still pretty small, but as I scan and upload new comics, you’ll be able to click the thumbnail for a larger view.

The distro’s website has lagged behind what we actually have in stock for some time, but now those items are finally finding their way to the site. The first “new” items in stock are Booty #20 by Anne Thalheimer and A Taste Of Paradise by Megan Baehr. Yay! More comics will be joining the online stock in the weeks to come.

You may notice that some items are marked “out of stock” - why the heck did I bother posting them? Well, after I got the site back up, Hub Comics in Somerville, MA (”the comics shop for NPR listeners”) ordered a bunch of minis! Which caused some things to run out, and made me realize some thing were already gone (whoops!). Anyway, if you live near Somerville, definitely check out Hub Comics, because they clearly love good comics. Thanks, Hub!

The main site here is next up for an overhaul. I’m planning to take a single day to do most of the work, though, so it shouldn’t be a lingering process.

Cat Garza of White River Junction, Vt. works on the latest installment of his “Year of the Rat” comic as he snacks.

Here’s a view of the main teaching room at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Megan Baehr of Putney, Vt. colors one of her comics.

Cartooning Party at CCS
with Trees & Hills Comics Group

Saturday February 23rd, 1-5pm

Join the Trees & Hills comics group and students from the Center for Cartoon Studies for a social cartooning party at the White River Junction, Vt. school. Bring your art supplies and come ready to draw!

This event is co-hosted by the Trees and Hills Comics Group, a collective of cartoonists and other comic creators from New Hampshire, Vermont, and Western Massachusetts. CCS is a two-year college dedicated to the study of comics and visual narrative.

The event is open to the public, although we ask that you be over 18 years of age and RSVP. The school can be found at 94 South Main Street in WRJ, Vt. Please contact Roby Chapman at chapman@cartoonstudies.org or (802) 295-3319 to RSVP.

Light snakes and refreshments will be served at the party and we ask that you help out our hungry bellies by bringing something tasty to share too.

For more information on Trees & Hills, visit www.treesandhills.org

Hourly Comics Day has come and gone! I’m lazy and I haven’t scanned my comics from yesterday in yet. And Colin Tedford will hopefully be posting his soon too. Until then, here’s a few hourly comics from Trees & Hills folks and a few other we like a lot.

(The art above is from Tim Hulsizer’s comic this year)

Tim Hulsizer (NSFW)

Lucy Knisley

Dean Trippe

Box Brown

John Campbell