Hey everyone, I’m in Minnesota! Today I officiated a wedding for my friends. Next, I’ll house-sit for them while they honeymoon (I’m a full-service minister!). While I’m doing that I hope to hang out with some of the many cartoonists here in the Twin Cities, draw lots of comics, and get around town a bit. Maybe I’ll even scan some of the sketches I’ve made on this trip! I return to the hill country on November 1st.

Home

Home page 1

Here’s the first page of “Home”, a story from the new Trees & Hills anthology Shelter. The following four pages show the house’s life after foreclosure. “Home” was written by Trees & Hills co-founder Daniel Barlow; when the original artist wasn’t able to finish the piece, I volunteered (insanely, given everything else I had to do) to draw a quick version at the last minute. I’ll post ordering info and a page from my own story soon.

A Public Service Announcement

A Public Service Announcement page 1 (cropped)

Whoah, what’s going on here?! It looked like a sort of dull installment of Spinning World, and then it got all – all sexy?

This is most of the first page of my contribution to Big Sexy, an anthology I haven’t yet mentioned that I’m co-editing. The remaining pages are way sexier than anything heretofore shown on my little website, so if you want to see the rest you’ll have to get a copy of Big Sexy (to do which you’ll need to be a legal adult). It debuts this weekend at SPX (I’ll be there), and shortly thereafter will be available through Offshore Comix online and gradually through local retailers – a mere $6 for a whopping 92 pages!

Here’s the intro I wrote for the collection:

A society’s sexual art can reveal a lot about that society beyond the “basics” of what turns its people on – which I think is why some of us have such difficulty finding pornography we can enjoy without reservations. Modern mainstream porn is the porn of a sexist, racist, class-divided society.

We want something better.

The comics in this anthology express a variety of sexuality’s many aspects: social, solitary, fantastic, realistic, straight, gay, serious, humorous, and more. What they share in common is their spirit. The artists have each drawn on their interests and values to bring us something positive. They have presented sex in ways that make sense to them.

Together they present us something we hope is much more inclusive and enjoyable than the narrow visions so often sold to us as “sexy” – a Big Sexy, with room for everyone.

Super Friendly Garlic 1 of 8

Super Friendly Garlic 1

As you can see, I’ve decided to create a comic designed to become the next blockbuster movie hit…(I’ll replace this with a proper scan when the comic is finished & I can bring myself to tear it out of my sketchbook.)

Square Dance #3

Square Dance #3 by Colin TedfordSquare Dance #3 – The first comic of my own that I’ve printed in a while contains Spinning World strips for the months of June through October, “Vigil” (a short wordless “poem”), an Hourly Comic, “Mission to the Heathens” (wordless adventures of a man in a miter trying to convert his neighbors), and “Ask Jack” (Halloween hijinks). Back cover features a drawing of an ocean creature of your choice, as long as you choose crab.

5.5″ x 8.5″, 20 pgs Out of print  

Updates are comin’…

So…I lost energy for a while and stopped updating the site; then when I tried to start, my site had a weird spam issue so I stopped again. I’ve finally gotten around to updating my installation of WordPress, which I think should fix the problem. I’m a little embarrassed not to have a big backlog of comics waiting, but I do have a couple installments of Spinning World and the final pages of Mission to the Heathens, plus a new minicomic to sell and a bunch of big (and/or little) ideas.

I also plan to redesign this site. I basically know how I want it to look, I just need to put in the work to make it happen (and bend Comicpress to my will).

I hope all is well with you!

Pulled into the public eye

Wow, I’ve been so out of it that not only have I hardly drawn anything, but I forgot to post last month’s Spinning World (and even weirder, I uncharacteristically lettered it in all caps and didn’t notice ’til afterward)! It’s up now, posted under the date it would have been.

As much as I may still(!) need time to hibernate, spring has sprung, and I can hide no more. I have a piece in the new Always Comix vol. 5: Evil. It’s an evil little book for the evil little price of $7, and you can learn more and get it here, and see a page of my comic here.

The Keene Sentinel recently interviewed me (and others) for a nice article about the Trees & Hills Comics Group (there’s even a photo – look out!). EDIT: Arg, it’s behind a subscription wall now! I’ll see if i can get a copy to post.

This coming weekend I will be staffing the Trees & Hills table at the Maine Comics Arts Festival in Portland, ME, which is clearly going to be an excellent show (organized by the fine folks at Casablanca Comics). I will, sadly, not be joining my T&H comrades at MoCCA in NYC the first weekend in June this year, but I do hope to have a new minicomic out by then.

Great Moments In Nuclear History 6: Three Mile Island

Spinning World: Great Moments in Nuclear History 6: Three Mile Island

Hey, this month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the meltdown at Three Mile Island! Three Mile Island is often abbreviated as TMI, which nowadays also stands for Too Much Information, which is kind of funny since prior to the meltdown, plant staff had been falsifying records to avoid shutting the problem-plagued reactor down for repairs so frequently.

Spinning World appearsed each month in The Commons.

Updates 2014-06-20:

Butterflies & Teapots

butterfly comic

teapot comic

How was your Groundhog Day? I hear the groundhog predicted to watch out for biting butterflies in the spring. Here are a couple more old index card comics. I didn’t finish the anthology comic I was working on during Hourly Comics Day in time for the deadline, so when I finish the last two pages we will have some Real Comics Update Action around here – hopefully kicking off a pattern of such.

Monadnock Community Gardening Talk

Oh dear, I’m giving a talk this Saturday to “officially” kick off the Monadnock Community Gardening & Seed Saving Initiative with which I am involved. Wish me luck! Fortunately for everyone there will be plenty of other fun things to do at the Celebration.

seed.jpg

New Picasa Galleries

I’ve set up a new Picasa place online to store & show off my sketches & whatnot: Click and behold. I think it should be easier to keep updated than the old sketch-blog. Eventually I will add more albums and get things labeled and whatnot. There are RSS feeds all over the place there so you can keep up-to-date that way if you’re into that. Maybe you can get email updates? Certainly if you are hooked into the Google Hive you can engage with it in fancy ways; it’s still new to me, so I still don’t have a grasp of all my gallery’s features. Eventually, too, I will take down or repurpose my sleeping sketch-blog, and post some proper links to the new gallery. Next thing you know, I’ll be redesigning the whole website again…

Online Exhibit at Greylock Arts

Check it out – Greylock Arts of North Adams, MA has put up an online exhibit (with in-person viewing kiosks) of Hourly Comics made by Trees & Hills folk last year (including, of course, me):

“Hourly Comics Day 2008: A group exhibition of Hourly Comics created by the Trees and Hills Comics Group on February 1st, 2008

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Hourly Comic Day is an event where cartoonists from all over the world draw a journal comic for each hour they are awake. The guidelines are simple: “For every hour that you are awake on february first (that’s february first for whatever time zone you happen to be in), you make a comic describing something about the past hour. Maybe you ate some cereal? Maybe you used the restroom? Say you wake up at 7am. make a comic some time before it becomes 8am! then after 8am, make a comic before it becomes 9am!”

Colin Tedford and Daniel Barlow, co-founders of The Trees & Hills Comics Group put the word out to their group. Members of the Trees and Hills group took on the challenge of the hourly comic. This exhibit is a collection of some of the local comics created that day.

View Exhibit

A kiosk for viewing both exhibitions will be available at MCLA Gallery51, 51 Main Street, North Adams MA. Gallery51 is open Monday-Sunday 10-5 pm.”