Strong Eye Contact Announcement and Pre-order

April 25th, 2013

Minneapolis based comics micropublisher, 2D Cloud, announces their first release of 2013, Strong Eye Contact, a conceptual meta-fable and funny-book by Christopher Adams. Debuting at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival May 11th & 12th and available at finer independent bookstores and comic shops in early July 2013.

Strong Eye Contact by Christopher Adams. 104 pages, 9”x6.75”, color paperback, $14.95.

Available now for PRE-ORDER. First 25 pre-orders get a copy of Christopher Adams’ last 2D Cloud release, Period, gratis! In addition, all direct orders come with a free interview zine! All pre-orders will ship in July.

Part strip collection, part art book, Strong Eye Contact performs over the course of 104 pages a very obtuse, but careful meditation on what might be seen as the cultural position of the cartoonist by employing a series of narrative contrasts and formal tensions. The use of mediums often associated with childhood mark-making (crayons, colored pens, markers), gives the book a simplistic sheen that belies the formal sophistication operating just beneath the surface.

On this surface, the reader is led by a quixotic, Buster Keaton-like figure through a kaleidoscope of crystalline memory fragments, coalescing into one narrative track. As this unnamed figure tries, with limited success, to be a typical American: using consumer products, failed vacations, fabricated family life, he also attempts to be a successful comic, much like the collection of pages he lives on.

The day to day saga is wet and alive with water colors, crayon, markers, and steady beats of spacious white deluges. Landscapes are populated with mountainous close-ups, cacti, abstracted-patterns, confusion, vast empty spaces, gaps -- cartooning as a potent puzzle where the strangest magic happens inside the reader's mind.

>>For a web preview // downloadable link, click here<<

About the Artist:

Christopher Adams was born in the New York Metropolitan Area. He is between 5' 10" and 5' 11". He does not eat animals. He is an artist and musician. His latest recordings are Baby Hair, Vegetables and Xmas Boogie. His artworks include videos and comic books. His first published comic is Period, released by 2D Cloud in the fall of 2012. TCAF will see the debut of his first full-length book, Strong Eye Contact. He currently lives and works in Baltimore with his girlfriend and plants.
"Death is not an event of life." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Praise for Strong Eye Contact:

“Rarely have magic markers worked such luminous brilliance.” -- Matt Seneca, comics critic, and cartoonist

"Weird, imaginative, and raw. Adams creates a textural experience leading you through the follies of his character's life." -- Aidan Koch, The Blonde Woman, The Whale

"A bloody Q- tip, the crumbs of a waffle, and an airplane on fire...it all comes together with Christopher's unique drawing system. Is the comedian dreaming or is the comedy a dream?"-- Eamon Espey, Songs of the Abyss, Wormdye

“Like a Mr. Hulot transposed into the America of soft-serve and mini-golf, Adams’ comedian is a normal guy trying to deal with work and relaxation in a landscape of perplexing patterns.”-- Matthew Thurber, 1-800-MICE, Infomaniacs

MARINAOMI and 2DCLOUD announce 'Turning Japanese'

We've been big big fans of Mari's work for some time now and are FUCKING THRILLED to announce to the world that her new graphic memoir, Turning Japanese, will be published under the 2DC banner!! Turning Japanese is the follow-up to 2011’s award-winning Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22.

To read the full press release, click here.

In celebration of this announcement, MariNaomi and Gordon Warnock of Foreword Literary have set up a little contest: you can win a personalized avatar, drawn by Mari! For full details, visit the contest page on their blog.

More to come next year on this book, but we couldn't wait until then to share the news!

Hey EVERY/BODY, Little Heart gets a sequel!....and other 2DC updates.

We've some new NEWS pertaining to Little Heart. Gina Carchedi has become our Little Heart representative and advocate. She will be meeting with MN United and other marriage equality advocacy groups to discuss having them take over the distribution and selling of Little Heart directly, with 100% of the profits going to support these groups!! We're really excited and grateful to Gina for joining the team! We are also hopeful that some real progress is made on these efforts!!

While ownership of Little Heart may be moving into the hands of the groups actively fighting for the cause, there is what we've come to describe as a follow-up or sequel to Little Heart on the way, Every/Body, edited by Greer Lawson, which focuses on people as individuals by examining the topics of body and gender.

This project began as a part of Greer’s internship at 2D Cloud, where it grew rather quickly into something that is 100% Greer’s baby. She's in the process of self-publishing it via a Kickstarter / pre-order program, with 2D Cloud handling distribution upon its release, which is set for TCAF, May 11th-12th.

Contributors include MariNaomi, Annie Mok, Jim Rugg, Rob Kirby, Anna Bongiovanni, and many, many, others. For a better look at the project, please please check out their Kickstarter page, or visit some of the works showcased here.

Interested parties should act fast though, the Kickstarter ends in a handful of days!!


In other 2DC news:

At SPX last year we debuted Will Dinski's latest major work, Ablatio Penis. It's an interesting cocktail of politics, ethics, and how sex can get mixed up in it all in ways the reader can't always guess. This book was launched shortly after all that ugliness in Wisconsin involving governor Scott Walker and his attack on unions. As a nod to that, Dinski chose to have the comic printed at Johnson Litho, a union printer in Wisconsin. The image above is a new postcard we'll be disseminating to continue spreading the word about this great comic throughout the year.

In the future releases camp:

Chris Adams’ debut graphic novel, Strong Eye Contact will be debuting at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this May. You can catch an extended peep of it and Chris’ work via the TCAF tumblr preview.

Noah Van Sciver & Nic Breutzman’s Deep in the Woods had it’s own Kickstarter pre-order late last year. Due to some production snafu’s, that newsprint broadsheet has been pushed back from spring to early summer. Folks that pre-ordered should be receiving their copies a little deeper into this spring, just prior to CAKE, where attendees will see it's official debut! 

And finally, Anna Bongiovanni, in addition to her painted contributions to Little Heart, turned in one of the lengthier works to Every/Body. Not only will you have a chance to see some new work from her this summer, but 2DC will be debuting her first book, Out of Hollow Water, at the Small Press Expo in September!

Stick with us as these and other projects develop (coughcough2dc2.0cough)

Thanks for reading,

xo!
-Raighne