Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival & MCBA's FallCon

Shaun Feltz will be holding down the fort at Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival this Saturday. The Festival is a 1 day event, and admission is free! Free admission is always pretty neat. Our latest book, Yearbooks, which was co-scribed by Mr. Shaun Feltz, will be at said event. What you will find besides our latest books (and our older GMN titles) is some excellent small press books/crafts/comics and other misc. crafts created by some talented local folks and a few not so local. Take a peak, will you?

Event Hours:
10:00am-5pm... or thereabouts.

Location:
MCTC At (Minneapolis Community & Technical College) 1501 Hennepin Avenue S

The other event of which Meghan and I will be covering is MCBA's FallCon. This event is next Saturday and Sunday. There is a fee to check out all the cool local comic books, which is 11$. It is good for both days though, not too shabby ay? And Yearbooks will be there as well. In addition we do have a new little mini that Justin and I did. Something small and a bit weird I am sure. Meghan will be representing the other spectrum of the weird with little crocheted creatures crawling around a new little diorama. We may have some other little things too...

On the 2nd day of festivities, Justin and Sarah will be arriving at the our little neck of the FallCon woods as they will have just gotten back from Korea. They may still be jet lagged and bleary headed which could make for some fun and/or pleasant conversation righty?

Event Hours:
10:00am-5pm or so

Location:
At the State Fair Grounds right off of Snelling in Saint Paul

Stop by our tables, chat us up, look at our odd books and creations, and maybe buy 1 or 2!

Also, a belated thank you to anybody that stopped by to visit with Nic Breutzman, creator of Yearbooks, at SPX last weekend! Just as importantly, thank you Nic for holding down the fort and chatting up folks!
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Bare Tare Craft Fare

Going out in sweat-blazed glory, the 2d Cloud summer touring sched has officially come to an end with Caffetto's 2nd annual Craft fair. I could have done with less sun, more money, and more serious looking little boys hula-hooping through whole noise sets, but I did appreciate seeing those who graced Sarah, Shaun, and I with their presence. Thanks to Shaun for wrangling up some customers, keeping an eye on the table while Sarah and I were away, and keeping me company for the final leg of one of the longer shows I've been a part of. Although people of our ilk were at a minimum (I think Josh Journey-Heinz was the closest I could find to a fellow countryman(get his new book, as I did!!)), I feel that overall our presence was worth the oscillation between genuine enthusies for our booksies and mild interest quickly sprinkled with disregard. Anywho, thanks Caffetto, I can't say I drink much fluids there as of late (living in Seward will do that to you), but a good time was had by us. Bye!
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Zinefest + New Reviews for Yearbooks + GMN changes

So first things first-- this weekend-- ZINEFEST! It's this bloody weekend! Saturday 11am-5pm (the poster has the incorrect start time for Saturday), with an afterparty at ARISE! books!. Sunday 11am-4pm

Justin Skarhus, Sean Lynch and their ladies will be holding down the 2D Cloud/Good Minnesotan fort. Luke Holden and his zine machine will possibly make an appearance as well.

In addition, Sean will be premiering Zine Supreme at said event. It's going to be a mouthful of mouth-wateringly Jawsome zines and comics, so please swing on by the event (and pick up yerself a copy of ZINE SUPREME)!


In other news, we have several new reviews of our latest comic, Yearbooks recently thrown-up on the internets. Huzzah! Up first is one performed by Mr. Shawn Nyland-Hoke of Size Matters. And while you really should read the whole review (and the comic!) here is a snippet "what really makes this project crackle with energy is the vibrancy of Raighne Hogan's colors." Ahh shucks, I turns me head and bats my eyes. Seriously, I do. I have tried really hard to complement Nic's amazing line work with the colours, and after spending me and Maggie's honey moon money on the book, it's nice to hear that.

Up next is a review by Kevin Bramer of Optical Sloth. "Nicholas uses the silences of his characters beautifully to convey emotions that would take him pages of exposition and Raighne nails the drabness of high school while still managing the vibrancy of the students and the general high school art world". Kevin ends the review with "I wouldn’t have guessed Minnesota to be one of the places that could legitimately be called the future of comics, but if these people keep this up they might well get there". Wow! Very grand, thanks Kevin!

"From the jarring psychedelic dream sequence that opens the book, to its closing apocalyptic meditation on the intrusion of the adult world, Yearbooks presents a realistic, sometimes darkly skewed vision of high school life". The above comes curtesy of Matt Dick's review on Exquisite Things. Another wonderful review, thanks Matt!

The last topic to cover in this blog post is that yes, we are having some changes in how we run Good Minnesotan. GMN#4 is going to be delayed until early 2010. The reason for this is pretty simple, Yearbooks was expensive and we wish to focus on pushing that book. The deadline is still roughly in place... Although pushed back several months. We would still ideally like something by folks by mid-August, even if it is only 2 pages of progress as we plan to be applying for grants and what-not to get funding for the project.

Justin Skarhus is the new lead editor going forward as well. We will talk more about this in a very near future blog post. Thanks for reading!
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Yearbooks Launched into the Basket!

When Shaun, Raighne and I were setting up the Launch Party we met a woman who summed up the night's events perfectly:"I have like 600 people's numbers on my phone but only 6 I could call to pick me up at the airport."

We threw our party on Sunday night, on Father's Day, in the rain! Most folks who would normally attend an outdoor summer party stayed home. However, the friends who would pick us up at the airport, wait, let me ammend that, the friends who have picked us up at the airport, formed the bulk of the party. We enjoyed the intimate gathering, and it was fun to meet our friends' friends that had braved the poor weather.

We attempted to project Basket Case on the big screen, but phantom technology problems prevailed despite all efforts by Amanda of Arise and a friendly Walker Arts guard. We ended up hovering around a laptop! It was better suited to the smaller turn out!

We had a lengthy discussion about our shared dislike of Holy Land's hummus's new packaging (more paper, less food) and receipe (way over-whipped). The garlic flavor, which used to be my fav, is now inedible. Luckily Raighne and I baked some cookies which Shaun photographed. They tasted delicious but look like poop in the photo. Sort of fitting?

Thank you to Arise Books, Big Time Attic, Ed Choy Moorman, Dirk Deppey of Journalista, Twin Cities Daily Planet, Dan Olson of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, and Minneapolis's Comic Examiner Ted Anderson for promoting the Yearbooks launch. For anyone who has Minneapolis and/or Minnesota comics events coming up in the future: contact Ted!

Finally a big thank you to Shaun, co-birther of Yearbooks. He helped us copy our flyers, get our stuff and selves to and from the event, bought lots of sweet yuppie treats for our guests, and he was so nice and funny the whole time. He even remembered to take pictures at the party...which once again, we did not. Friends! Airports! Yearbooks!
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Shaun + Brendan = movie manstuff

One of the reasons Raighne and I became publishers is because we have many talented friends to work on projects with. Our friend Shaun Feltz is a filmmaker and writer. He is collaborating with Nic and Raighne on our current series of 3 Yearbooks the first of which we just published. He is also editing our much-hyped and still absent (apologies...we have been doing too many comic cons) podcast interviews.

Shaun directed Raighne in two of his short films. Maybe some of you remember An Expression of Woe within which Raighne cries over a wooden duck? I would like to share another video of Shaun's with you today. It carries a special place in our hearts because it stars Brendan Holloway. Brendan was our roommate for a couple of years (read Justin and Raighne's Sex Box in GMN #3). We are all going to his wedding this Saturday. We wish Brendan congratulations and now let's watch Shaun's film.
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