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Special Guest Becky Cloonan: Just announced! Becky Cloonan, artist of "Demo", "American Virgin" from Vertigo and "East Coast Rising" from Tokyopop.

We are very pleased to announce that Chris Giarrusso will be joining us for the festival. Chris is the creator of the very popular Mini Marvels series for Marvel Comics and the upcoming G-Man Learning to Fly trade paperback from Image Comics.

Visit Chris' (extremely fun) website for more!

http://www.chrisgcomics.com/


Just announced: Gabrielle Bell!!!
Gabrielle Bell was born in England and raised in California. In 1998 She began to collect her "Book of" miniseries (Book of Sleep, Book of Insomnia, Book of Black, etc), which resulted in When I'm Old and Other Stories, published by Alternative Comics. In 2001 she moved to New York and released her autobiographical series Lucky, published by Drawn and Quarterly. Bell has contributed to many acclaimed anthologies including Mome, Kramers Ergot and The Drawn and Quarterly Showcase. Her work has been selected for the 2007 and 2009 Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction. Bell's comic "Cecil and Jordan in New York" has been adapted for the film anthology Tokyo! by Michel Gondry, to be released in March 2009. Her latest collection, also titled Cecil and Jordan in New York, will be published at the same time. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is working on a second volume of Lucky.

Alex Irvine has written fourteen books and a number of comics including the upcoming "Daredevil Noir" from Marvel Comics.  He lives in South Portland and teaches at the University of Maine.  www.alexanderirvine.net.

The Boston Comics Roundtable was founded in October 2006 by David Kender, to foster community for comics creators in the Boston Area.   Since then the group has grown from three members to nearly fifty, meeting weekly in Harvard Square and sending contingents to conventions around the country.   In 2007, the BCR begain publishing “Inbound,” an anthology of local comics, currently on its third issue. 

For more info:  www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com

Dan Mazur lives in Cambridge, MA and is part of the Boston Comics Roundtable crew.  He has created the print and web comics, “Palindrams” and “Lummox,” among others.  His comics have appeared in the anthologies “Inbound” and “I Saw You: Missed Connections,” and his strip “Canyon Comix,” ran for five years in the Topanga Messenger of Topanga Canyon California.  He;s also taught comics at the Art Institute of Boston, Brookline Arts Center, and the Calmont School.   

Some of his stuff’s at www.webcomicsnation.com/danmazur.  

Aya Rothwell grew up reading books and catching insects. She went to film school, worked in NYC for a bit on movie sets, then came back to Boston to draw comics. She makes stories about birds, cats, ghosts, time travel, aliens, potatoes and other things that snare her interest. Her films have been screened at film festivals, her animation won an award on Newgrounds.com, and she is creating work for upcoming Boston Comic anthologies.

You can find Aya's work at www.AyaRothwell.com and her blog at ayarothwell.blogspot.com

Franklin Einspruch draws, paints, writes, and cajoles computers into

doing things for him as his wife and a houseful of various

domesticated animals look on in alternating awe and bewilderment. His

comics appear at The Moon Fell On Me and have also been featured at

Top Shelf 2.0. Franklin has exhibited his paintings at galleries in

Miami, San Diego, and Scottsdale, AZ, and he has served as artist in

residence at programs in Greece in Taiwan. His art criticism has

appeared in the Boston Globe, the Miami New Times, the Sun Post, NYFAA

Interactive, and on Artblog.net, which he has produced since 2003. He

lives in Boston.  Link:  http://themoonfellonme.com

Alexander Danner's current projects include the online series

"Gingerbread Houses," illustrated by Edward J. Grug III and

"Uncertainty," illustrated by Tym Godek.  His comics have appeared on

ModernTales.com and in the Boston comics anthology "Inbound," and two

of his stories, "The Discovery of Spoons" and "Five Ways to Love a

Cockroach," have received Webcartoonist Choice Awards.  He is

co-author of the book "Character Design for Graphic Novels," and

teaches Writing the Graphic Novel at Emerson College.

Cathy Leamy is a Boston-based cartoonist. She's the creator of the autobio/humor 
minicomic *Geraniums and Bacon* and the artist for the webcomic *Planet Wifey*. 
She is also a member of the comics collective Boston Comics Roundtable and has 
published work in the group's anthology, *Inbound*. 

The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) offers a two-year course of study that centers on the creation and dissemination of comics, graphic novels and other manifestations of the visual narrative. Experienced and internationally recognized cartoonists, writers, and designers teach classes. The school is located in historic downtown village of White River Junction, Vermont, in the old Colodny Surprise Department Store.

Norm Feuti is a syndicated cartoonist and author living in Plainville, Massachusetts. He is also the lucky husband of a beautiful wife, and a proud stay-at-home dad for his two wonderful children.

His syndicated comic strip, Retail , presents a humorous look at the retail industry by chronicling the daily events at the fictitious Grumbel’s department store. The humor of Retail plays out through the day-to-day trials and triumphs of four main Grumbel’s department store employees (Marla, Cooper, Val, and Stuart) and the customers they encounter. Retail is distributed worldwide by King Features and appears in about 70 newspapers throughout the US and Canada.

His first book, Pretending You Care: The Retail Employee Handbook , is a parody guidebook for retail employees that includes over 200 Retail comic strips. Pretending You Care is published by Hyperion. It can be purchased on Amazon.com and at fine booksellers everywhere.

His web comic, Gill , is a fresh and edgy new strip that takes a humorous look at the life of an 8-year-old boy who lives under less than ideal circumstances. His parents are divorced. His mother struggles to maintain their meager existence. His estranged father floats in and out of his life to offer crude and confusing advice. Gill is an exploration of childhood and an imperfect American family in all its dysfunctional glory. You can read Gill 5 days a week at www.gillcomic.com .

Joseph Lambert graduated from The Center For Cartoon Studies in May 2008. He is the creator of several mini-comics, one of them, “Turtle, Keep It Steady,” was published in Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Comics 2008, for which he also designed the endpapers. Look for more of Joseph’s work at www.submarinesubmarine.com.

Melissa Mendes is a student at the Center for Cartoon Studies.  Someday she wants to start an artist-mentoring program for high school kids, while still making her own comics, and maybe children's books.  You can see more of her work at www.tropist.com/mezilla. 

Call (207) 780-1676 for details.

Presented by:
Casablanca Comics
151 Middle Street
Portland, ME 04101