Kids Read Comics Comes to Ann Arbor!

Check out this awesome poster/illo by Raina Telgemeier for the upcoming Kids Read Comics festival, this year in its new home of Ann Arbor:

Fun fact: The building at the very bottom of the poster is the former location of Borders store #1!

A Short Report (and a Few Pics) from Kids Read Comics

On Saturday I took my nephew (age 11) to the Kids Read Comics festival in Chelsea, MI. Based at the Chelsea District Library and running down Main Street at various locations, it was pretty much everything you could want from a comic festival aimed at kids and teens.

We started the day at a workshop run by Dave Roman on creating characters:

We then hit the kids artist alley and bought a few things (I picked up some minis for our library's nascent mini-comics collection), and then stopped by the Green Brain table where Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier were signing. My nephew bought a copy of Dave's new Astronaut Academy graphic novel, and was thrilled to get his copy of SMILE autographed by Raina (he says it's his second favorite graphic novel, right after Bone.)

We then walked down Main Street (past the Jiffy factory) to the pizza place which was having an all-you-can-eat buffet for the attendees. There we met up with my friend E~ and his family (K~, who buys adult comics for one of the local public libraries, and their kids ages 5 and 1).

After lunch we stopped over at the teen artist alley, where I got to tell Thom Zahler, John Ostrander, Bill Loebs, Barbara Slate, and Gary Cohn how awesome they all are; Barbara was impressed and a bit surprised that I fondly remembered her old Marvel series Sweet XVI!

Walking back up the street, we caught the tail end of one of the quick draw sessions, where artists would do large sketches based on whatever passersby suggested. With my nephew's help we suggested that Raina Telgemeier draw a monkey throwing banana pulp at the headless horseman. Here she is in progress:

while Dave Roman & Jerzy Drozd looked on:

Then we went across the street to look at the Comic Jam! exhibition at the Chelsea River Gallery. Then we swung back up to the kids artist alley for one more run through before heading back home:

It was a great day for a comics festival, and my many thanks to all the organizers for their hard work. I assume there will be another Kids Love Comics festival next year, so I strongly recommend that you find a kid and take them!

Minicomics Monday: SNAP!

I had a good time at SNAP! on Saturday and picked up a lot of cool stuff. I'll do some real reviews of some of the comics in later editions of Minicomics Monday, but here are some highlights:

Easily the coolest thing I got this year was the collected edition of Cool Jerk & Homo Gal, the early minicomic from Sean Bieri featuring the titular Defenders of Detroit's Cass Corridor. I first read these way back in library school when Sara came bounding into class one day, thrust a bunch of the minis into my hands and told me to read them. I laughed then, and I'm laughing now. Plus, for $3 collecting the six minis it's a good deal too.

Matt Feazell was there too of course with a couple new issues of The Amazing Cynical Man, and Pam Bliss had a couple new Kekionga Miniworks, including the oblong-shaped "The Smell of Midnight" featuring everyone's favorite werewolf librarian.

I'm also ready to add Suzanne Baumann to my list of area minicomicsers whose work is not to be missed, as I'm really enjoying her work and she's nice and friendly and really seems to enjoy her cartooning. I picked up both issues of her As Eavesdropped... and laughed quite a few times.

Matt, Sean, Suzanne & Pam shared the middle aisle with Jim Ottaviani (though I see him once a week or so at work) and the kids from the U-M School of Art & Design with the second volume of their Empty Pockets anthology.

But enough with the old faves--how about some new stuff?

I was very impressed by Max Ink and his chapbook series Blink. His art is very good--reminiscent in ways of Alex Robinson--and based on the pages-in-progress he had on hand for his fourth issue he keeps on improving. Plus Max was very friendly and professional; he had a free 10-page minicomic he was giving away and was drawing sketches on the back for people whether or not they bought any of his comix. If he wants to make the leap to 'regular' comics I have no doubt that he'd be a success.

I was pleasantly surprised by Tom Williams' S.P.B.: Rise! I didn't care much for Williams' early work, but this chapbook with its addition of a sepia-toned color scheme brings it to an attractive new level.

Biggest pleasant surprise was Josh Johnson and his new hardcover book The Spindletons. Gorgeous to look at. Johnson also does a lot of handcrafted books which are pretty to look at (though a bit pricey).

In all we spent a couple of hours there. (We being myself and Annette, our Art & Design librarian who was buying items for the library collection. It was quite amusing to see the range of reactions from sellers when she asked them for a receipt!) Once again the fine folks at Green Brain Comics did a great job of putting on a good comic art show. Here's hoping this becomes an annual event!

SNAP! Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Saturday November 4, is the 2nd annual SNAP! Comics Arts Festival in Dearborn, MI. I had a great time at last year's SNAP!, so if you're in the Southeast Michigan/Northwest Ohio area I encourage you to visit this year.

The guest list includes Matt Feazell, Sean Bieri, Pam Bliss, Jim Ottaviani, David Petersen, and many others.

Come support your local comix scene!