Fall Crop Reviewed at POOPSHEET FOUNDATION

Earlier this year, we snuck the first issue of Meghan Hogan’s Startled Maggie series out into the world at large. It’s a beautiful and quiet little comic. We’ll have some more to announce with this series soon. Check the new reviews -- all positivity from Justin Giampaoli at Poopsheet Foundation!

Startled Maggie

“...it’s hard not to fall prey to the charm of this book; the end shot with the dandelions is a lovely capture of the simple magic of youth.” -- Justin Giampaoli

These last 3 are the latest from our fall 2012 crop at the 2dC comic farm. Ablatio Penis is the first comic we’ve published by Will Dinski -- still pretty-damn excited by that fact. Period is by the young upstart, Christopher Adams. Also a first. We’ve got some mega-schemes with that guy for 2013. MEGA. Lastly, RDCD Fist 1.5 is a new mini by Justin. Very cool and very weird, originally made for Jason T. Miles NO ME. Glad to see Justin’s been working on a whopper for a while now per his RDCD Fist series. Excited for 2.0!

Ablatio Penis

“...proudly printed by union workers and I like the sense that he’s sort of taunting us with the use of the ol’ red, white, and blue cover graphics.”
“...a worthy topic that more people need to be exposed to in any election cycle. Grade A.” -- Justin Giampaoli

Period

“Period is a bold statement on the notion that larger things are happening in the world...” -- Justin Giampaoli

RDCD Fist 1.5

“Inside, it offers a dizzying descent into wavy black and white lines, like an old TV scramble...” -- Justin Giampaoli

Lastly, for anyone interested, we are running a little pre-order for a crinkly newsprint split called Deep in the Woods by Noah Van Sciver and Nic Breutzman via Kickstarter. Vid preview below:

Twin Cities Book Fest this SATURDAY

2dc is returning to the MN State Fairgrounds once again this weekend -- this time with Will Dinski repping / pimping / signing his latest and greatest, Ablatio Penis. Both Justin and I (Raighne) will be milling around the show floor and behind the table this time too. I'll be there when the doors open, and Justin will be there when they close, so if you like one of us more than the other, plan accordingly!

As it’s autumn out, we’ll have our fall colors surrounding AP -- expect to see Christopher Adams' 2dc debut comic Period as well as Justin's newest little inscrutable menace, RDCD Fist 1.5.

As always, the usual 2dc party favors will be on hand too, such as the on sale Little Heart (50% off!! just try and dodge that deal), the quiet beauty Startled Maggie, the wordless fable Things You Carry, the dirty Minnesotan flavors of Motherlover, Noah Van Sciver’s Ignatz nominated The Death of Elijah Lovejoy, and so on. So VISIT US already!! You won’t be disappointed, promise. 

Rob Reviews RDCD Fist (RRRF...)

Well, it finally happened: my first mini made its way through the gates of The Comics Journal and into a thoughtful review by Rob Clough. I feel fortunate to have had Rob take the time to parse my brief, mostly stream-of-consciousness little narrative; it definitely helps me maintain my motivation to plug away at Redcd Fist II. One comparison that has come up at least twice that I can recall (once from Tom K. when I traded him for his first Gabrielle Bell mini, the second from Raighne) before Rob's review is the Cronenburgian undertones of the story, something I didn't think about while making it, but in hindsight makes perfect sense. I'm a huge admirer of his work (Videodrome is easily in my top tier of movies), so I'm not surprised his influence seeped in there. 

I'm also glad to have been reviewed together with Jason Overby, someone I really respect as a cartoonist. I picked up my first copies of his work at Stumptown last April and I'd have to say that his work, along with Blaise Larmee and Jason T. Miles', were definitely my favorite single-creator comics of the show. The blog that he runs with Blaise and Austin English, cometscomets, is also one of the most interesting comics blogs of the moment in the way I used to feel about the Comics Comics blog. Still like those guys, but it feels like that blog finally found a job after college and had to start 'taking shit seriously'. Anyway, what copies are left of this guy will be available on the new 2dc internet store once Raighne creates it. We have a lot of comics I'm excited about slated for 2011, more on those as they become ready (or rather, when we become ready to beg for your monéy!)

New Shops, New Review, and a Thanks to YOU!

First review of Justin's wonderfully strange mini RDCD Fist over at Midnight Fiction.  It is an odd little book and my short diddy taking up the rear probably doesn't help make anything more clear.  Anyways--Woohoo!  Thanks Richard Krauss!

Note: RDCD Fist will be for sale in the shop in the next month.  It's a super limited run and will thusly not be made available to shops.

Meghan and I spent the first week of this month in France, more on that soon, but in the mean time we got orders for GMN4 and other books at some new shops!  They are as follows:

Fatbottom Books in Barcelona Spain, Le Pied de Biche Galerie Librarie (The Crowbar Gallery & Bookstore) in Paris France; Desert Island in Brooklyn, NY; Casablanca Comics in Portland, ME; Ada Books in Providence, RI.

And last but not least, 2 of our more usual shops in NY ordered some copies of GMN4, Forbidden Planet and Jim Hanley's Universe!  Thank you for your orders and thank you Tony Shenton!!

Oh, and this is the last page from RDCD Fist (from the story I did).  I don't think it gives anything away other than being weird.

MIXCAFFETTOCRAFTOPTICALSLOTHGMN4

The time is almost upon us, the time being MIX at the Soap Factory on 8/21! As we've noted in past posts, GMN4 will be printed and for sale to the public at large. The plan is to have 100 of the 500 assembled in time for the show, but about a third will be spoken for by contributors, meaning the remaining 70 will be available for the low low price of $5 a pop. We've added about 40+ pages of new content, so for anyone who took a gander at the Sunday edition earlier this year, we've upped the ante noticeably. There were a couple of people who slipped through our last drag of the net, but I feel that what we have is a very strong cross-section of the cartooning/sequential art scene currently in existence in this state we call home. We will be accompanied by many of Minnesota's finest cartoonists and comics-related institutions as well as plenty of out-of-towners, it should be a sight to behold. There will be other events circling the show:

...all of which and more can be found at the show's site. Thanks again to Sarah Morean for giving us advance notice of the show and all of her efforts in putting this together. The local comics scene is richer as a result of her.

I (Justin) haven't had any formal feedback from our man in the field known as Feltz about last weekend's Caffetto Craft Fair, but I'd like to thank any and all who stopped by our table and dual gratitude to those who picked something up! It goes without saying that we appreciate Shaun's efforts in repping 2D Cloud as well.

Although it was posted a little after our fundraising efforts had concluded, Kevin Bramer of Optical Sloth fame did us the honor of doing a quick rundown/impression of "the sprawling Good Minnesotan #4" (his words). Barring a little confusion in regards to what we sent him (he was sent a copy of the Sunday edition of GMN4 as well as a copy of my first mini, RDCD Fist, but he thought it was all part of GMN4), the review was generally positive. Given how much ground there was to cover and the average length of his reviews, it's understandable that a lot of the anthology wasn't discussed, which he acknowledged. Overall he seemed to be impressed with what we had put together, as he concluded with "If you’ve seen the past issues of this series you know that “Good Minnesotan” is a mark of quality, and they didn’t disappoint this time around." Although it was lumped in with the GMN4 review, he did seem to enjoy RDCD Fist as well, describing it as "...a bizarre pile of transporting vaginas, submachine guns, brain-eating and quiet contemplation. You’d love it!" A little side note on RDCD Fist: due to the small run (around 30-some copies), I have been only selling them at shows, but if anyone outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul is interested in buying one and wants to pay shipping, we'll gladly mail you a copy! Here's a shot of the first batch at it's debut at Fallcon 2009:

In addition to all this hubbub, we are hoping to record a conversation between the venerable Dylan Williams of Sparkplug and Zak Sally of La Mano on the trials, tribulations, and rewards of running a one man label successfully, as they're both proof of. If we can pull this off it will be  posted to our semi-new Comics Crit/Interview/wannabe comicscomicscometscometsmarvelouscomahoodedutilitarian blog Itchykeen Art Fiends sometime in the near future. Following next weekend we will be sending gifts out to the proper peoples and starting on books for 2011! We have a couple shows lined up in October, but until then stay crass-y.