I had a blast earlier this month at the Boston Comic Con. Trees & Hills comics didn’t have a new book of its own to sell, but we did have popular new releases by Marek Bennett, Cat Garza and Colleen Frakes. SEEDS, our 2008 anthology of comics about food, was also a hit and this show was the official debut of our second printing.

There were also superheroes there!

50 more photographs of the Boston Comic Con 2009 can be found here at my Facebook page.

50 more photos over at my Facebook page.

Cat Garza, Megan Baehr, Colin Tedford and I dashed down to Easthampton, Mass. Saturday morning for the first annual Webcomics Weekend.

Despite some predictions of doom (will they let us in?), everything seemed to work out fine. We saw lots of old friends and met some new ones. Hopefully, by next year this event will blossom into a real Web comics convention and summit … Trees & Hills would have loved to get a table to sell our comics, but only a select handful of creators were allowed to this year. Still, it was great to peak into the western Massachusetts Web comics empire, all hunkered down in a gorgeous and inspiring old industrial building renovated into studio space.

We sold out of the first printing of SEEDS this month, an amazing feat for a book that is less than three months old. The honor occured at the Stars & Skulls craft show, a fun annual DIY punk rock market in Hadley, Mass, on Sunday, Dec. 14.

A new printing of SEEDS is coming in January - don’t miss it this time!

(Here we have Anne Thalheimer’s monster hats advertised by a fellow monster!)

More pictures from the show below the cut!

[Read more →]

Wondering just what went on at the Planning & Camping Retreat we had back in August? Well, wonder no more! In short: we wrote a mission statement, discussed how we should define our audience and membership (particularly concerning the age spectrum), and determined to work out our “official” values and a list of current and future activities. We also made music, ate delicious food, laughed, and walked in the moonlight. For more details and how to help determine the future of Trees & Hills, read on! [Read more →]

This past Saturday I worked a table for Trees & Hills at the Winchester Pickle Festival in my hometown of Winchester, NH. The sky remained gray all day, with periodic sprinkles of rain - not ideal for an uncovered table of paper products, but I bagged & boarded all the minis to keep them safe (and I never thought I’d have any use for those things!). The rain picked up later in the afternoon, causing most of the vendors (myself included) to pack up early. Still, I took in enough to pay for the table, and had some nice conversations with a different crowd from that at a typical comics or zine event.

Some highlights:
- Selling comics to a man who hadn’t bought any in 43 years.
- Meeting some school-age cartoonists, including a high-school acquaintance’s son who took one of Marek Bennett’s workshops this summer.
- Eating a “hearty garlic” pickle.

Duty-bound to remain at the table as I was, I missed out on the pickle-eating contest and all the other fun activities. Such is the lot of we who toil for the greater good! Events like this really help us get the word out to all kinds of people who may not already be hip to comics, which is a special pleasure and an important part of the ol’ Trees & Hills mission.

Upcoming: Sunday 10/5 I table for Trees & Hills at the Philly Zine Fest.