April 27, 2009

Trees & Hills comic group announce new fall anthology

Contributions wanted for SHELTER comic anthology

The Trees & Hills comic group is proud to announce a new anthology of regional comics called SHELTER, which will debut this fall.

SHELTER features comics inspired by the themes of housing and home, including aspects such as affordability, cohousing, gentrification, green building, housing cooperatives and homelessness.

This is the second anthology themed around social topics released by the Trees & Hills group and is a follow-up to 2008’s SEEDS anthology, which focused on food.

Trees & Hills is looking for comic creators and cartoonists from Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts to contribute to the all-ages anthology. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 15 and the comic will debut at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland in late September.

“Our last anthology, SEEDS, focused on food,” said Colin Tedford, a New Hampshire cartoonist and the co-founder of the Trees & Hills group. “Shelter looks at another basic human necessity and, like SEEDS, allows us to address social issues and connect with our communities.”

Contributions that tackle local or regional issues on this theme are strongly encouraged.

“SHELTER is the next evolutionary step in connecting comics and communities,” explained Dan Barlow, a Vermont writer and co-founder of Trees & Hills. “Our creators are very interested in working with local builders, shelter workers and advocates who have expertise in housing issues.”

SHELTER will be the sixth comic anthology from the Trees & Hills group since it formed in 2006. Last year’s SEEDS anthology broke new ground by focusing on the timely and engaging topic of food, tackling issues such as sustainability, eating organics and the vegetarian lifestyle.

Trees & Hills is an all-ages community comic organization for creators in Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts. Creators of all styles are encouraged to join.

Submission details:

The deadline for submissions is Aug. 15 and comics should be appropriate for all age groups.

Size of the comic will be 5.5 x 8.5 inches, so please draw to those proportions.

Submissions should be between 1-6 pages long, although we can make some exceptions.

Files should be 300 dpi greyscale or 600 dpi B&W tif.

Please also send a sentence or two about yourself (with website or other contact info if you like) for the contributor notes section.

Comics can be sent to organize@treesandhills.org

Any questions can be directed to Trees & Hills co-founders Colin Tedford and Dan Barlow. They can be reached at organize@treesandhills.org.

For project updates, check out www.treesandhills.org.

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.

OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS TO NEW COMICS ANTHOLOGY

The Trees & Hills comics group is looking for your comics and cartoons about food for a new anthology to be published early this fall.

SEEDS, our fifth anthology featuring creators from Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts, is themed around food – why we like it, why we need it and where we get it.

[Read more →]

I’ve just received word of a new quarterly quarter-size anthology called Candy Or Medicine, edited by Josh Blair - not produced in our region, but looking for submissions. Deadline for the next issue is December 10; submission guidelines are here, and you can order Volume One here.

In other news, if you feel you have space for a photocopier, check out the free ones in this NH Craigslist listing, or email me (colintedford at gmail dot com) about the one I rashly got on Freecycle that’s too big for my tiny living space. Makes me wish we had a Trees & Hills studio!

MONTPELIER, Vt. - On October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union shot an object the size of a basketball into space. And the world was never the same again.

To celebrate the historic launch of the Sputnik satellite, the Trees & Hills comics group of Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts will publish a mini-comics anthology featuring cartoons inspired by the event that kicked off the space race.

The anthology book, the second one published by Trees & Hills this year, will be released in time for the 2007 Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland in early October. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 19th and anyone interested should soon contact the group co-founders, Colin Tedford and Dan Barlow.

We’re also looking for someone to arrange an awesome cover image for the book, which would obviously be eye-catching and cosmic. There is a strong chance that the cover will be screen-printed this time too! Anyone interested in drawing the cover, please let us know.

The size of the mini-comic anthology will be 5.5 x 8.5 inches and it will be black and white. We are mostly looking for work that would appeal to people of all ages, so if there is a question about content or style in your cartoon, please just ask us first.

All contributors will receive one copy of the comic per page of their work we publish and can buy further copies at cost. It will be for sale at conventions, on-line and at various retail outlets in the three states.

Also, please do not send original art! High-quality scans of the cartoons can be e-mailed to either Dan Barlow at barlowdaniel at gmail dot com or Colin Tedford at colintedford at gmail dot com. Snail mail photocopies can be sent to Colin Tedford, PO Box 645, Winchester, NH 03470 or Dan Barlow, 182 Main Street #2, Montpelier, VT 05602.

The Trees & Hills comics group formed at a 24-Hour Comic challenge in Brattleboro, Vt. nearly two years ago. Since then, the group has published two anthologies featuring new work by regional creators such as Stephen R. Bissette, Cat Garza, Marek Bennett and Colleen Frakes.

“Field Guide to Cartoonists,” the latest anthology, was released in June 2007 at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival in New York City. For more information, including the time and location of the group’s next drawing party, please visit www.treesandhills.org

Members of the Trees & Hills comics group (www.treesandhills.org) are proud to announce that we plan to publish a second anthology of work by regional creators early this summer.

Submission details for the new anthology are located near the bottom of this message.

In October 2006, the comics group published the 60-page opus, Trees & Hills & Friends anthology, which featured cartoons by over 20 creators from New Hampshire, Vermont and western Massachusetts.

The mini-comic, which featured work by Stephen R. Bissette, Cat Garza and Marek Bennett, has sold more than 100 copies. This total does not include the copies that we gave to contributors for their work, meaning there may be nearly 200 copies out there in circulation.

The release of that book capped the first year of operation for Trees & Hills, which was formed by NH cartoonist Colin Tedford and VT writer Dan Barlow following a large turnout to a 24-Hour Comic event just more than a year earlier in Brattleboro, Vt.

Publishing and distributing the anthology was the first major expansion for the group, which had since been focusing on holding semi-monthly drawing parties, managing a Web site and tabling at local comic book conventions.

Format: The 2007 anthology – which does not yet have a name – will be 5.5 x 8.5 inches with a one-color cover and black and white interiors. It will be a mini-comic; the same size width and length as the previous anthology.

Content: There will also be a change in the content we are looking for in this publication. This time around we are looking for all-ages contributions, whereas the first publication was a showcase of the talents of the many members of our group.

Now, we are hoping for a comic that children, teenagers and adults will all be able to enjoy.

Details: Every contributor will receive one copy of the book per page published. We’re looking for copies of the content; please do not send original art. If you live in Vermont, please send the contributions to barlowdaniel at gmail dot com and New Hampshire artists can send their work to colintedford at gmail dot com

Creators from Massachusetts can choose either Dan or Colin to send their artwork to.

Photocopies snail mail submissions can be sent to Colin Tedford, PO Box 645, Winchester, NH 03470 or Dan Barlow, 182 Main Street #2, Montpelier, VT 05602.

The submission deadline is Saturday, May 26.

The deadline for the Keene Free Comics TV Turnoff Week Special has been extended to the end of this month - email your submission to colintedford at gmail dot com (previously-drawn items are fine, as long as they fit in).

Also, don’t forget to come see us and other fine cartoonists and zinesters at the Boston Zine Fair this weekend (March 24-5)!

In addition to the above events, 3/19 is the deadline for the Keene Free Comics TV Turnoff Week Edition, and 3/20 is the Pioneer Valley Comic & Cartoon Schmooze - click over to our fancy new Calendar for details on all these things.

In other news, I’d like to remind people we do have a forum - I wandered by it yesterday to find a February post from a Missouri resident who’s assembling a 50-State Jam! Check it out if you’d like to participate (I call NH, though!)

Also, Part Two of the awesome HOURLY COMICS DAY CROSSOVER is up on the Comics page.

If you are hoping to get your comic into the Brattleboro Commons, you need to get them to Jade Harmon (commonscomics at gmail dot com) by March 1 - see the call for submissions for details.