Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Favorite Comic Zine for Team Cul de Sac

Craig Fischer here. I'm a full-time teacher and part-time comics blogger who's friends with all the reprobates behind Team Cul de Sac.

When I first visited this blog, I drooled over the terrific submissions that Chris and Richard have been collecting for the art book, but I was annoyed too. Why should artists get to have all the fun? Why can't comics critics and bloggers play for Team Cul de Sac?

To that end, I'm cobbling together a big, fat, old-school zine to raise money for the Team. I've asked an armada of bloggers, critics and fans (and maybe a cartoonist or two) to each write a short essay answering the following questions: what is your favorite comic (comic book, comic strip, graphic novel, whatever), and why? The Team zine will be a compilation of these essays, an explosion of wildly divergent opinions, and an ideal shopping list to take with you as you plunge into an unfamiliar longbox or used book store.

The contributors are an all-star line-up: Derik Badman, Noah Berlatsky, Alex Boney, David Bordwell, Matthew J. Brady, Scott Bukatman, Johanna Draper Carlson, Isaac Cates, Rob Clough, Corey Creekmur, Andrew Farago, Shaenon Garrity, Dustin Harbin, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Gene Kannenberg Jr., Abhay Khosla, Susan Kirtley, Sean Kleefeld, Costa Koutsoutis, Andrew Mansell, Robert Stanley Martin, Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Ana Merino, Chris Pitzer, Mike Rhode, Jim Rugg, Frank Santoro, Chris Schweizer, Caroline Small, Tom Spurgeon, Ben Towle and Matthias Wivel.

The zine will be a word-packed 40 pages, topped off by a cover by some fledgling artist named Richard Thompson.

How can you get your copy of this collectors' item?

The World Premiere of the zine will be at this year's Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina on June 3-5. Richard and the Team (including myself) will be selling copies there. The price? Five bucks, with every cent going straight to Team Cul de Sac and research into a cure for Parkinson's Disease.

After Heroes, we'll make the zine available through the mail, and sell it at other cons too. (If you want a copy, we'll make sure you get one!) Watch this space for more information about the zine--including its title, which is still in flux--as we rapidly approach Heroes Con.

4 comments:

  1. This is a grand idea, Craig! I hope there will be copies left for those of us who won't be able to attend HeroesCon!

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  2. There will be, Mike! We're just premiering the zine at Heroes--after that, we'll make it available through the mail, at other cons, etc.

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  3. This is so cool! I am thrilled to hear that you are doing this Craig!

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