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MIX + Minneapolis / St. Paul Comics Scene Report

mix 2011 poter by tom kaczynski

My Minneapolis / St. Paul comics scene report went up over the weekend on Frank Santoro‘s Riff Raff column over at the Comics Journal. Frank asked for 400 words. I pretty much ignored him and turned in 2000. Not on purpose Frank!

After having lived in New York for almost a decade I expected a hard adjustment to a smaller Minneapolis scene when I moved back three years ago. But it became quickly apparent that the Minneapolis/St. Paul comics scene was nothing to sneeze at. In fact, the Twin Cities really are one of the great comics places in the US. Anyway, I’m sure I missed a lot of people in my report, so feel free to point them out! Heck, if you think you can do a better & more exhaustive Mpls/St. Paul report go for it! And Let me know when/if you do it. Actually, wouldn’t it great if there was a sort of ‘annual report’ that summed up the comics scene every year? I’d love to see something like it. Check out my effort out if you haven’t already.

As part of the report I was also going to do a MIX 2011 report, but things got wordy and I’m sure Frank appreciates that I didn’t include it in the piece. Instead I was going to detail my impressions on this blog. However, in the meantime, cartoonist Dustin Harbin wrote a great exhaustive report on the eXpo. He pretty much nailed it. Instead of wasting more pixels on yet another report, you should all just read his. I really appreciate his honest take. From my local perspective it was a great show. An amazing array of guests (Koyama Press! Adhouse! Top Shelf! Jim Rugg! Dustin Harbin! Ander Nilsen! Sarah Glidden! Julia Wertz! John Porcellino! Mike Dawson! Eamon Espy! Jon Lewis! Karen Sneider! Robyn Chapman! Rina Ayuyang! David Huyck! Microcosm! + more!) arrived and seemed to have a great time. I made decent money, but it’s hard not to do that at you local show when you don’t have travel expenses to contend with. My main concern was with the out of town guests. I really wanted them to do well, have a great time and come back in the future. I hope they will. Kudos to Sarah Morean for pulling off a great show. Check out Dustin’s report. Oh and I uploaded all my MIX pics to Flicker if anyone cares.

mix 2011 banner by tom kaczynski

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Book Arts Fest 2008

book-arts-fest-2008-doodle.jpg
I spent Saturday and Sunday tabling at the 7th Annual Minnesota Book Arts Fest at the Minnesota Center for the Book Art. The event is scheduled just in time for the great month-long consumer frenzy known as Holiday Shopping. Most people come looking for handmade gifts, cards, envelopes, prints and calendars. They found plenty to choose from. I shared the table with cartoonist Will Dinski. We valiantly attempted to flog paeans to smoking and voodoo economics fantasies onto the unsuspecting public. Together with Lacey Prpic Hedtke, Sarah Morean, and The Good Minnesotan we formed a Zine-to-Comics-multi-table-continuous-almost-commerce-free-semi-autonomous Zone. At some point Matt Peiken came by and video taped some of the proceedings. He posted some of the footage online. I made the cut despite being nearly incoherent.

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Fall Con 2007

TCAF 2007 sketch
Actually this sketch is from TCAF, but I never wrote a report from that.. so there.

A very late (and very brief) report on Fallcon in St. Paul from a couple of weeks back. Fallcon 2007 ended up being a great show despite the fact that it mostly catered to the back-issue crowd. That’s actually what made it so refreshing for me. I haven’t been to a convention like this in a long time. On top of that tables were free for creators and there were free sodas and hot dogs… how can you not go wrong!?

It also helped to have awesome neighbors: Will Dinski, Sara Morean and Sam Hiti. I was sorry I had to miss the second day. I wish I had taken pictures! Here are a few people that did: The Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic and The Daily Crosshatch.