A little over I week ago I rode the bus to Minneapolis to visit friends and do a bunch of other stuff.
On July 5 I attended the monthly comics jam put on by the founding branch of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy in Minneapolis. I had a good time as we each added panels to the “story”, though I didn’t realize ’til the end that each page was meant to be part of a larger whole – oops. If you dare, you can view the results (PDF, and content warning for occasional cussing, incoherence, & rudeness). I slipped upstairs from the jam for a while to visit Big Time Attic, the studio of Kevin and Zander Cannon (no relation to each other; current project: Double Barrel). Zander was out of town, but Kevin graciously showed me around and chatted with me for a while. When I returned, Conspiracy founder Steven Stwalley had arrived. I met him on my last visit to the Twin Cities in 2009, and it was nice to see him again. I came away from the evening with copies of the Big Funny and Just Add Ink anthologies, and left New England comics in my wake – a veritable cultural exchange!
Before and after the jam I spent my time juggling day-job work (it’s portable!) and the first day of CONvergence, a four-day science-fiction & fantasy convention my hosting friends attend every year (the nominal reason for the trip) – more on that later.