Cartoonists With Attitude

Ethan Jacobs has a cool piece in Bay Windows this week about the Life Without Fair Courts contest, with a good dabble of quotes from me. Here’s one segment:

Reid said the five finalists took very different approaches to tackling the subject of fair courts. Rall, Fox and Bors all painted nightmarish visions of a world without a fair judicial system, with gay couples exiled to Antarctica and people thrown in jail for either engaging in or facilitating sodomy. By contrast, Johannsen and Cruté used a more personal perspective, showing how a lack of legal protections would impact their own lives as an M-to-F lesbian transwoman and a bisexual woman respectively. Reid said the contest is a great way to acquaint people with cartoonists like Johannsen and Cruté who do not yet have a large following.

And

Reid said that Lambda Legal selected her in part because much of her own work focused on similar themes as the Life Without Fair Courts campaign.

“I have a somewhat dystopian view in a lot of my cartoons of what the future looks like when we have people in charge who do not care about equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,� said Reid.

Don’t forget to cast YOUR vote!

In Thursday’s cartoon, Kranti trusts her experience. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:

The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com during 2007, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers in 2008. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!

The road to opera in San Diego…. bit of a roller coaster…

We had a stage in San Diego to put on the Too Much Coffee Man opera. Then we didn’t have a stage. We had no money, then we had the money, then maybe, then yes. Just today we found a place to stage it. We have the money. Looks like we’re doing it. I think….

This eve I went to the Scott McCloud panel which wasn’t really a Scott McCloud panel at all. Douglas Wolk moderated a panel with Scott McCloud, Colleen Coover, Dylan Meconis, Gail Simone and Jenn Manley Lee. I was pleasantly surprised at how well done the whole thing was. Everyone had something to say. No one went on too long. People shared the stage and referenced each other’s work. The question period was long enough that most people who had questions got them answered. The moderator kept things moving but wasn’t intrusive. I was a bit of a jerk and asked the panel why single panel comics aren’t recognized as comics (this was a jab at Scott since he seems to have little respect for that manifestation of the art form). Colleen stepped up with a great answer about the narrative created by paintings and how paintings can be comics (in a way). She was more eloquent than I’m being here. I confessed to Scott as we all were walking to dinner. It was pretty funny. Yes. He and Ivy thought it was funny too. I really hope I can catch his talk this weekend. I promise I won’t ask about single panels again.

My little Postage Stamp Funnies books keep selling out at Powell’s.

Forget Yankees vs. Red Sox: let’s fight over who’s more pro-gay!

Whenever New Yorkers ask me where I’m from, and I say “Massachusetts,” many say something like “Oh, so you’re a RED SOX fan” in the tone reserved for statements like “Oh, SO YOU’VE GOT A TERMINAL ILLNESS.” Thing is, I’m not an anything fan. The only sports news items that even tangentially impinged on my world in recent memory were the homophobic comments of basketball player Tim Hardaway, the awesome activisim of newly out gay basketball player John Amaechi, and the coming out story of openly transsexual sportswriter Christine Daniels.

Still, this cartoon has been rattling around in my head for a while and finally decided to rattle its way out.

Come on, New York, step up your pro-LGBT game! Don’t let jerks like New York Republican State Senate leader Joe Bruno squash marriage equality! It is Pride month, after all.

MOCCA festival pix: Cartoonists With Attitude, Alison Bechdel and more!
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

No good comics convention is complete without Ted Rall; still, we muddled through while Ted continued his Stan-Trek:

Ayo + Cartoonists With Attitude Masheka Wood, Brian McFadden and Mikhaela Reid

Legendary Fun Home author and Dyke to Watch Out For Alison Bechdel and Mikhaela Reid; Mikhaela Reid and Barry “Ampersand” Deutsch drawing each other faces

Muckraking filmmaker Morgan Spurlock with his copy of Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!; Masheka Wood and Frank Reynoso; cover of on-the-spot commissioned birthday card for a George-Bush-averse one-year-old

Masheka Wood and Ayo; Brian McFadden and Keith Knight with free booze and food at the Top Shelf 10th Anniversary Party

Last year, the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art’s Art Festival was a low point for many of us alternative political cartoonists–we felt so alienated, disconnected and unloved and sold so few books that we decided to form the group Cartoonists With Attitude to help get more attention at conventions.

Apparently it worked. I’m happy to report that MOCCA this year was a whole other comics convention beast. All kinds of great comics readers, cool sales, and awe-inspiring cartoonists to hang out with, plus some cool comics discoveries. The tough part was keeping any of the money we earned and not immediately spending it on other comics.

The convention was also packed with alums from the Attitudeseries of books Ted edited for NBM: myself, Brian, Alison Bechdel, Barry Deutsch, Neil Swaab, R Stevens, Scott Bateman and others. Clearly, it’s all about the Attitude.

If you scroll through my whole MOCCA photoset, you’ll see I also got to chat with Hilary Price of “Rhymes With Orange” fame, who was attending her first comics convention to promote her book Reigning Cats and Dogs. Hilary is syndicated and popular for good reason.

More later on some of the cool comics I picked up at the event!

Ayo + Cartoonists With Attitude Masheka Wood, Brian McFadden and Mikhaela Reid

Legendary Fun Home author and Dyke to Watch Out For Alison Bechdel and Mikhaela Reid; Mikhaela Reid and Barry “Ampersand” Deutsch drawing each other faces

Muckraking filmmaker Morgan Spurlock with his copy of Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!; Masheka Wood and Frank Reynoso; cover of on-the-spot commissioned birthday card for a George-Bush-averse one-year-old

Masheka Wood and Ayo; Brian McFadden and Keith Knight with free booze and food at the Top Shelf 10th Anniversary Party

Last year, the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art’s Art Festival was a low point for many of us alternative political cartoonists–we felt so alienated, disconnected and unloved and sold so few books that we decided to form the group Cartoonists With Attitude to help get more attention at conventions.

Apparently it worked. I’m happy to report that MOCCA this year was a whole other comics convention beast. All kinds of great comics readers, cool sales, and awe-inspiring cartoonists to hang out with, plus some cool comics discoveries. The tough part was keeping any of the money we earned and not immediately spending it on other comics.

The convention was also packed with alums from the Attitudeseries of books Ted edited for NBM: myself, Brian, Alison Bechdel, Barry Deutsch, Neil Swaab, R Stevens, Scott Bateman and others. Clearly, it’s all about the Attitude.

If you scroll through my whole MOCCA photoset, you’ll see I also got to chat with Hilary Price of “Rhymes With Orange” fame, who was attending her first comics convention to promote her book Reigning Cats and Dogs. Hilary is syndicated and popular for good reason.

More later on some of the cool comics I picked up at the event!

Planned Parenthood "Let’s Talk About Sex" Book Event: Jessica Valenti and Mikhaela Reid
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

The signing at Think Coffee with Feministing’s Jessica Valenti (Full Frontal Feminism) and Amber Madison (Hooking Up) was fantastic. There were plenty of seats but it was standing room only, and the hysterical laughter I got in response to my slideshow made me feel like a stand-up comedian on a good night.

Poor Amber’s bus broke down on her way to the signing, but we held off the crowd with an extended Q&A until a very long cab ride from Connecticut finally got her to the signing.

Note: I apologize for blurring out the close-up photos of naked women’s crotches that we did the reading in front of–I like to consider this blog safe for school and work, or I’d have left them! I am such a censor, it’s embarassing.

So an acquaintance of mine sent me an email from some ridiculous site called Tagged, which I will not link to. It seemed to be a legit MySpace/Flickr-type social networking site, so innocently enough I decided to use the feature of checking my gmail address book on the site to see if any friends had profiles.

Well, the site AUTOMATICALLY EMAILED AN OBNOXIOUS “Mikhaela has tagged you ;)” email to EVERYONE I HAVE EVER EMAILED EVER via Gmail, including important editors of magazines and newspapers, journalists, my bank, my website host, all my friends and relatives, coworkers, ex-coworkers, managers, you name it. I feel embarassed, gauche, spam-tastic, awful, and worried that important journalistic and editorial contacts will now find me incredibly obnoxious and add me to their spam blockers.

This SUCKS. If you receive emails from this site IGNORE THEM or FACE THE PERIL.

Senators Coleman and Domenici- both up for re-election next year, hint hint- introduce the Deport Women By Beating the Hell Out of Them Act.

Because, you know, they’re assholes.

“As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial,” the graphic novel I did with the brilliant (and funny) writer Derrick Jensen, is already listed on Amazon, available for pre-ordering. It was originally going to come out in January 2008, but now it’s been moved up to November 2007.

Here’s the summary posted by the publisher, Seven Stories Press:

“Two of America’s most talented activists team up to deliver a bold and hilarious satire of modern environmental policy in this fully illustrated graphic novel. The US government gives robot machines from space permission to eat the earth in exchange for bricks of gold. A one-eyed bunny rescues his friends from a corporate animal testing laboratory. And two little girls figure out the secret to saving the world from both of its enemies (and it isn’t by using energy-efficient light bulbs or biodiesel fuel). As the World Burns will inspire you to do whatever it takes to stop ecocide before it’s too late.”

I posted earlier versions of the cover before, and this is the final one: