Events

Gabrielle Bell is releasing her San Diego Diary mini, and Lizz Hickey is releasing SUCK IT. Both are JUST IN TIME. more info

For those of you happily staying home in NYC instead of braving nerd prom, you are being rewarded by an amazing event: The Fine Art of Comics, with Gary Panter, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware at the Whitney Museum on July 20th. Held in conjunction with a show on Lyonel Feininger, this trio of masters will talk about comics and fine art.

A super hero pub crawl, a StarTrek-themed dive, the Zombie Walk, Wil Wheaton's Wootstock, Geek Girl Network's Geek Out, Kevin Smith's SMODcast, entitled "Jay and Silent Bob get Old" -- dear gold, if you can't find something fun to do instead of standing in line for Hall H, you have a problem.

This monthly Brooklyn comics reading event returns with Bob Fingerman reading from his horror-themed works, and Keith Meyerson reading from a reissue of his pioneering work HORROR HOSPITAL.

Toronto Comics Art Festival Director Chris Butcher has a big round-up, thank you post that reveals that this years events drew a total of 15,000 people to the various venues. He also reveals that next year's show will be held May 5-6:

Cousin Corinne's LIVE COMIX BLOCK launches w/a presentation of Nick Bertozzi's LEWIS&  CLARK and Jason Little's MOTEL ART IMPROVEMENT SERVICE, MC'd by Jah Furry aka Jeff Newelt, on Friday, May 27th @7pm at BookCourt, 163 Court street [between Pacific&  Dean], Brooklyn / 718.875.3677. ... + Nick Bertozzi will be showing images (first time anywhere) of his upcoming graphic novel JERUSALEM written by Boaz (REMEMBER THE TITANS) Yakin http://nickbertozzi.com/ http://beecomix.com/ http://nickbertozzi.com/ http://beecomix.com/ John Hodgman re LEWIS&  CLARK "Nick Bertozzi's comics do more than bring history to life: they reanimate these long dead souls and make them human again.

It's getting very green around here. SF's Cartoon Art Museum has a gala opening for a Green Lantern exhibit on Thursday, June 9th -- it's a "green tie" event we're told. We want in on that!

For several years, those who feel that the San Diego Comic-Con has lost the comics part of the equation (even though it isn't true at all ) have been wondering if an alternative event -- a "Slamdance*" to CCI:SD's Sundance -- would spring up. And artist/animators Scott Morse and Ted Mathot (who both have Pixar as a day job) are making this "Slamcomic" come true with TR!CKSTER, an alternative venue for comics events that will be open to the public and located right across the tracks from the SD Convention Center.

It's a busy week for cartooning events here in NYC, with so many you can't even get to them all. One we didn't want to miss took place last night, DRAWING THE LINE at the Society of Illustrators, a group chat about the cartooning craft by Joe Quesada, Walt Simonson and Jim Steranko. The panel was organized and moderated by artist Dennis Calero (X-MEN NOIR) as part of a move for the SI to get more involved in covering the graphic literature world. In the regard it was a total success, allowing three important artists talk about their work and approaches devoid of the promotional efforts that color most convention and bookstore appearances. Calero did a great job moderating as well, keeping the talk circling various aspects of the cartoonist's life, including dealing with "shortcuts", deadlines and the rewards of artwork, and showing a great knowledge of the trio's careers.

La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles is having quite an opening show tonight: Pop-Sequentialism: Comic Art of the Modern Age, with original comics art by Steve Dillon, Brendan McCarthy, Frank Quitely and many more. Above, a page of PUNISHER art from the Garth Ennis run by Tim Bradstreet. All the art previewed in the link. Below, a page from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip's CRIMINAL.

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival kicks off tonight and runs tomorrow and Sunday at the Toronto Reference Library. Admission is free. For that priceless amount you get access to perhaps the greatest pound for pound assemblage of cartoonists in the history of the world. Mattotti! Brown! Seth! Ware! Ono! Brecht Evens! You can see the guest list here, and everyone exhibiting here. Truly stupendous.

Free Comic Book Day is Saturday, May 7th, 2011! And there are very likely some comics-related festivities happening in your area, or at the very least some free comic books. There are way too many happenings to cover here. Diamond has a master list of events, including interviews by Darwyn Cooke and Humberto Ramos and the FCBD site has a monster list of signings organized alphabetically by state!