Midmococo is making some big changes with our meeting time and place. Our previous time and location wasn’t working for most people and we found that most of us had an easier time making it out to Eastside Tavern’s Monday Geek Night.
New time and place
We now meet every Monday night, 8:30pm at Eastside Tavern, downtown Columbia. This is during Eastside’s Drink and Draw/Geek Night.
Thanks to Skip Harvey for letting us make Eastside or official meeting location. I look forward to seeing you there.
Illustrator Tom Huck currently has an exhibit up at the Sidney Larson Gallery on the Columbia College campus. The exhibit will runs through November 30, 2012. (A gallery talk and reception was held earlier today at 1 p.m.) From the press release:
The Columbia College Art Department is pleased to exhibit new editions of prints by noted printmaker Tom Huck. Tom Huck is an American printmaker best known for his large-scale satirical woodcuts. He lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri where he runs his own press, Evil Prints. He is a regular contributor to BLAB! of Fantagraphics Books. Tom’s prints are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Spenser Museum of Art, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, St. Louis Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fogg Art Museum, and the New York Public Library.
Grab your pencils, crayons and markers and get ready to draw funny monsters, ghouls and goblins. Join cartoonist James Mouser for a night of terrifying tee-hees, hair-raising ha-has and ghoulish giggles! You will create more monsters than Dr. Frankenstein ever did as you learn easy cartooning techniques. Ages 6 and older. Teens and adults welcome. Registration begins Tuesday, October 9.
The State Historical Society of Missouri has a new exhibit titled Frank Stack at 75 coming up next week. A opening event for the exhibition will be held October 13th at 1:30 p.m. The exhibit is up October 13th through January 2013. Here’s more about the exhibit from the SHS website:
Frank Stack has been painting Missouri for almost fifty years. During that time, he has developed an international reputation as a painter, comic artist, and printmaker with pictures housed in museums and private collections around the world. Stack’s work has appeared in The Village Voice, American Artist, and the Academy Award-nominated film American Splendor. Between 1963 and 2003, Stack also mentored hundreds of art students as a professor at the University of Missouri. The SHSMO has been collecting Stack’s work since the 1960s, and with this retrospective—of oils, watercolors, lithographs, etchings, and comics—will honor the artist on his 75th birthday.
The 14th annual Toonfest is coming Saturday, September 15th in Marceline, Missouri (Walt Disney’s boyhood town). Check the website for the full schedule of programs. Here’s the 2012 guest cartoonists:
Local comic artist Rob Davis is one of the artists on the newly completed “Robyn of Sherwood” Graphic Novel. The book is written by Paul Storrie with art by Rob Davis, Michael C. Larson and Thom Zahler. Here’s a blurb from Davis’ site:
In this introductory story, Robyn and the remaining “Merry Men” take on King John and the latest man to hold the mantle of Sheriff of Notingham. Will the famed outlaw’s daughter live up to the legend and triumph over King and Sheriff or will she and the aging outlaw band go down in defeat?
The second volume of The Sunday Funnies is now available for purchase on Russ Cochran’s website or through a comic shop near you. Printed locally in Columbia Mo. by Tribune Publishing, this is a three newspaper set of classic reprint comics obtained by Russ Cochran from Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The pages are printed on 22″ x 16″ newsprint, 32 pages each in length (a total 96 pages) on 60lb offset stock. See our blog post about the first volume.
The State Historical Society of Missouri is currently showing a cartoon exhibit titled Donkeys & Elephants: Animal Symbols in Political Cartoons. The exhibit opened May 22 and will stay up until November 2012. Here’s more from their website:
In the United States certain animals have come to be associated with certain political parties and concepts. This exhibition explores the creative use of animal symbols in American political cartoons and ephemera from the late 19th to the early 21st centuries. To understand this symbolism, viewers must learn a visual language that changes decade by decade.
A Capital City Cosplay event is happening on June 23rd, 2012. The event is from 1:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Missouri State Capital, 201 W. Capitol Ave, South Lawn, Jefferson City, MO. Here’s some more info from their facebook page:
Are you ready for the biggest Cosplay event in Jefferson City? Extravagant costumes and many characters you love will be here. Get ready because it’s going to be a Crazy fun day. This will not be a competition, but rather a social gathering to showcase what the Show Me State can do in the Cosplay realm! So if you Cosplay, like Cosplay, or want to have fun with all the great Cosplayers of Missouri, Join Us.
After the cosplay event, a Capital City Dance Party will converge at 8:00 p.m. on the Jefferson City Fair Grounds. The cosplay event is being hosted by Cosplacon LLC, who will be doing a larger cosplay con next year (June 27-30, 2013) in Jefferson City.
The Columbia Art League has many different class offerings for their Young Artists’ Summer Art Camps 2012. A few cartoon and comic related classes are offered including Cartoon Creatures June 25 – 29, Art Illustrated July 16 – 20, Once Upon a Line July 23 – 27 & Story Book Art August 6 – 10. For more information on how to sign up, go to the CAL Summer Art Camp webpage.
Village Books is having a Save the Bookstores event on June 16th. Come by 11:00 till noon to meet cartoonist Martin Pope. Pope will be around to talk about his new sci-fi adventure strip, ‘Vorto the Pirate’ (starting July 22nd), sharing his experiences as a writer for the Cartoon Network, working on his latest strip, and signing your favorite Uncle Robot merchandise. In addition, catch all the local authors who will be on hand to read or discuss their works throughout the day. The Save the Bookstores event will run from 10:00am to 3:00pm. Village Books carries new-run comic books and graphic novels, in addition to used books.
Peter Poplaski visited Columbia this last month. Now living in France, Poplaski has worked with many comic creators over the years including R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, and others. Denis Kitchen even published a Poplaski sketchbook in 2006. Poplaski and fellow traveling artist Rika Deryckere were hanging around the new Grindstone Lithography Workshop that was recently opened in Columbia.
The first ever DoDeca-Con is a comic book/pop culture convention being held in Columbia, MO at Kemper Arena (1270 E Boone Industrial Blvd Columbia, MO 65202) on May 4th through 6th 2012. Check out the schedule of events or the floor plan for the show. Tickets are available for purchase online.
The con will feature independent comic book creators, retailers of comic books, anime/manga, & costumes. The con will also feature a number of informational and educational workshops on comic creation, cosplay and gaming.
Photo by Tribune Publishing’s Susan Currier – Reprinted with permission.
Publisher Russ Cochran is best known in comics for his EC reprints, but this last year he’s started another reprint project: The Sunday Funnies. The project reprints full size comic sections, containing historic Sunday pages from favorites such as Gasoline Alley, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, and many others. The reprinted pages are from the archives of Ohio State University, which includes Bill Blackbeard’s large and comprehensive collection of Sunday comics.
Cochran’s business is run through his West Plains Missouri office in the Southern part of the state, which is one reason why he decided to go through the publishing arm of the Columbia Tribune, Tribune Publishing, to publish the classic comic strips. Tribune publishing is one of the few presses in the state that can print 32″ wide for a 16″ x 22″ comic section. You can see more pictures of the printing process over on the Scoop blog.
The Sunday Funnies was originally conceived as a 32-page monthly comic section, but the publishing plan has changed to a 3 part 96-page quarterly comic section. The first three issues came out in December 2011 as a 96-page bundle and include classic comics such as Alley Oop, Bronc Peeler, Crazy Quilt, Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat and Wee Willie Winkie’s World, Right Around Home, and Stumble Inn. The next 96 page bundle should be out in April or May.
You can order issues from Cochran’s website or get them through a comic shop that’s ordered them from Diamond Comic Distributors.
John W. Lynch passed away earlier this month on March 2nd. Lynch was an art teacher most of his life, part of which he spent in Columbia. According to his obituary, he started the commercial art program at Columbia College where he taught from 1973 – 1984. Lynch played a part in helping develop the Columbia City Emblem in 1974 when he had eight of his students submit designs for the city to consider. (The winning design by student Robert Freeze was widely adopted by the city.) When he left Columbia, he moved back to teach art at his alma mater, the University of Central Missouri, for 28 years.
While in Columbia he started drawing a comic strip called “Breaker Breaker.” According to a Columbia Tribune article from June 24th, 1977, the strip capitalized on the CB Radio craze of the 1970s, and featured Chub and Libby, a husband and wife; Tulsa, Libby’s brother; and Tulsa’s dog, Rin 10-4. Lynch wasn’t a CB fan, but local CB enthusiast Mike McCormack helped out with writing chores on the strip. At the time of the article, the strip was gaining momentum and was running in 45 newspapers around the country.