Reminder: "Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela" and "Deep Doodle"

Mikhaela and Masheka's Books:

Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela! Cartoons by Mikhaela Reid (Foreword by Ted Rall).
Bushies are bum-rushing Cheney’s secret bunker! Ex-gays are quaking in their closets! Abstinence educators are shivering in their shiny silver purity rings! Greedy CEOs are heading for the hills and Minutemen are bolting for the border! Cartoonist Mikhaela Reid is on the rampage—and no hypocrite is safe! Attack features 150 of Reid's greatest cartoon hits, plus rarities, odds, ends and behind-the-scenes commentary! Available June 4 at Lulu.com!

Deep Doodle: Cartoons by Masheka Wood.
Masheka Wood takes you deep into the warped, candy-colored recesses of his brain as he tackles a variety of social, political and just plain grody targets. Here are Wood’s “Not Just Knee Deep” cartoons, assorted illustrations and a delicious dose of old-school comics. Prepare to lose your mind—or your lunch! Wood's work has appeared on MTV, The New Standard and Jackson State University’s art exhibit, “Other Heroes: African American comics creators, characters, and archetypes.” He is a 2007 Glyph Comics Award nominee for ‘Rising Star.' Available now at Lulu.com!

Mikhaela and Masheka's Book Tour:
Click on any of these events for more details or view the calendar here.

Read more after the jump...

Attention NYC: You are Cordially Invited to Our Book Release Party

Your RSVP would be ever so kindly appreciated. And please feel free to steal this image/text/links and help us promote this event! Please!)

• Who: Angry cartoonists Mikhaela Reid & Masheka Wood
• What: Slideshow/signing/book launch bash for Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!: Cartoons by Mikhaela Reid w/ a foreword by Ted Rall and Deep Doodle: Cartoons by Masheka Wood!
• When: Tuesday June 12, 7 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
• Where: Bluestockings Bookstore & Café, 172 Allen Street between Stanton & Rivington.
• Why: You'll be sorry if you don't!
• No, really, why? Because:

"Mikhaela Reid's cartoons are right *$%@ing on."
-- Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

"Masheka Wood has powers way beyond mortal cartoonists. Get on his bandwagon now before there's no room left!"
-- Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles and th(ink)

Bushies are bum-rushing Cheney's secret bunker! "Ex-gays" are quaking in their closets! Abstinence educators are shivering in their shiny silver purity rings! Greedy CEOs are heading for the hills! Brooklyn-based cartoonists Mikhaela Reid and Masheka Wood are on a rampage—and no hypocrite is safe! Slideshow, discussion, signing & party. Tasty treats available for purchase from the Bluestockings Cafe!

ABOUT THE CARTOONISTS
• Mikhaela Reid's cartoons have appeared in The Guardian, The Villager, Chelsea Now, The Phoenix, Bay Windows, Metro Times, In These Times, Women's eNews, Ms., Funny Times, Campus Progress and Bitch. In 2006, Reid was named one of the Girls in Government/Feministing "Real Hot 100" and was featured in the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art exhibit "She Draws Comics: A Century of Women Cartoonists." Ted Rall calls Reid "an insurgent cartoonist: smart, irrepressible and unpredictable." (www.mikhaela.net)
• Masheka Wood grew up in Boston where he was warped by MAD, Night Flights, Garbage Pail Kids and Tex Avery cartoons. His lettering, cartoon and illustration work has appeared on MTV and in The New Standard. Wood's cartoons were featured in a recent exhibit in Jackson State University, "Other Heroes: African American comics creators, characters, and archetypes." He is also a Glyph Award nominee for black cartoonist "rising star". (www.whatmashekadid.com)

Non-NYCers, here are the other dates/locales planned: May 19: Philly @ Temple U. ; June 9: Detroit @ Green Brain Comics; June 12: NYC @ Bluestockings. Soon to come: Boston, DC and more!

Read more after the jump...

Possible stops along the Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela book mini-tour route...

Too many hats! In addition to being a cartoonist, I'm currently trying to be my own publisher and publicist. Here are some locations that I'm going to try to get to--I don't have definite spaces or dates for any of these events yet, but I'm working on it! I'll announce final dates soon. If you live in any of these cities, I'm going to need help getting publicity, media, attendees to these events once I have firm dates/locations!

May
• May 19: Philly: Not an official Mikhaela booksigning/show, but I will be signing and selling books at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention at Masheka's table.

June
• Detroit: going to try to set something up the weekend of June 8 if possible.
• New York: Not sure when this would be yet... probably a weeknight sometime. This would most likely be a joint event with Masheka.
• Portland, OR: This is EXTREMELY tentative!

July
• Washington, DC: Not sure of date, but there will likely be a joint event with Cartoonists With Attitude at which I will have books for sale.
• Boston or Cambridge, MA: Haven't set a firm date or location yet, but this would be a weekend slideshow/signing event of some type.

August (or maybe July or late September, who knows)
• Philly An actual booksigning/show event.
• Northampton, MA: Thought this might be a good place to hit, what with all the LGBT comics I do. I'll see what I can do.
• Lowell, MA: Hometown! Don't even know if I should try this, but I'll be around Lowell in August quite a bit anyway.

Read more after the jump...

Review copies of Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela now available! + tentative release date

So the tentative official release date for Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela: Cartoons By Mikhaela Reid (i.e. the day you'll be able to start ordering it on this here fine web site) is May 11. It may be sooner, it may be later! But I'm going to need some serious help promoting this thing, for several reasons:

• Although it will have a real ISBN and all that, it's self-published, and I'll primarily be selling it through Lulu.com and this website.
• I'm not sure yet if I can actually afford to sell it on Amazon.com, since they charge a whopping 55% commission fee, which would basically mean I was paying them several dollars per copy.
• HOWEVER, if there's enough interest in the book, I can print enough copies to sell it through Amazon and still make a tiny bit of $$ per book. So we'll see!
• I don't have a distributor, and I'm quite nervous about trying to distribute it to actual stores, since that could mean returned and unsold copies I have to refund.
• But I do have tons of postcards I printed up, and I do plan to see if I can get the book into niche/specialty stores--queer/feminist/leftwing and suchlike bookstores would be good. If you know of any good ones, drop me a line! (cartoons@mikhaela.net)

Anyway, if you could do any of the following, my eternal gratitude is yours:

• Since I'm primarily selling it through the web, I'm particularly interested in sending review copies to blogs with lots of devoted readers who would be amenable to its contents. If you believe you fit this category, please drop me an e-mail (cartoons@mikhaela.net).
• But of course I would still love to be reviewed in print! So the above applies to print journalists/outlets as well!
• I would also LOVE love LOVE to do interviews with any blogs or online outlets (and print or radio outlets, of course). So let your writer/blogger/radio friends know!
• I'm nervous about trying to set up any solo events or signings, but I may try to set up some type of joint events or slideshows of some kind with Masheka and maybe other CWA members. Events at nearbyish colleges, bookstores, etc. I'd love to speak to any Gay/Straight Alliances in high schools (or colleges), too. I'm also happy to do entertaining digital cartoon slideshows in the New York/Massachusetts/Connecticut/Philadelphia type area (basically, anywhere I can reach by bus).

So yes... please help an angry cartoonist out! I'll have postcards, web ads, promo materials and emails and other tools that should make it reasonably easy for anyone who wants to help!

Read more after the jump...

Reminder: Cartoonists With Attitude at APE in San Francisco this weekend!

The Cartoonists With Attitude gang will be out in full force in San Francisco this April 21-22 for the Alternative Press Expo (APE). Confirmed CWAers:

• Matt Bors ("Idiot Box")
• Keith Knight ("The K Chronicles")
• Stephanie McMillan ("Minimum Security")
• Steve Notley ("Bob the Angry Flower")
• August Pollak ("Some Guy With a Website")
• Ted Rall(Silk Road to Ruin)
• Mikhaela Reid ("The Boiling Point")
• Shannon Wheeler ("How to be Happy")
• Masheka Wood ("Not Just Knee Deep")

And in case you weren't aware, you should really read our group blog (also available as an RSS feed or LiveJournal feed) if you want to get all our blogs and most of our cartoons in one convenient place. We also have a not-so-frequently updated Cartoonists With Attitude MySpace page if you want to be our friend.

Also, Masheka and I will be debuting our new, real, color-cover book collections this week:

Read more after the jump...

Masheka's book cover: Deep Doodle

Shhhhh, I'm on Masheka's computer so I can give you a sneak preview of his book cover! Click to enlarge and see if you can find the tiny Masheka, Mikhaela and Riley (our cat) doodles.

Read more after the jump...

Book covers, nearly done now!

Sorry I haven't posted my new cartoons lately, but putting together a collection of cartoons like this in less than a week is no joke. When it's all done I'm going to sleep for about two days then post all my cartoons for your viewing pleasure. Meantime, here are the front and back cover + spine of my soon-to-be-released book (click to enlarge, of course).

Read more after the jump...

Quasi-final book cover design...

This is my last post for the night. I need some sleep! (See previous posts for sketch and earlier version of the drawing).

Read more after the jump...

Book cover sketch in progress

So after years of selling little black & white mini-comics xeroxed booklets of my cartoons, I'm finally graduating to a Real (albeit self=published) Book Collection. It'll have a full-cover cover, perfect binding and nice interior grayscale printing. Content-wise, it will feature over 100 of my best cartoons, plus extra bonus cartoons, drawings and historical Mikhaela material never reproduced on this website or in my previous booklets. And an introduction by Ted Rall!

I decided to stick with the Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela concept I've been using for my website, but completely redrawing and retooling the image (still using the pretty hilarious photos my friend Stephanie took where I pretended a Beanie Babie alligator was a tiny George W.)

Read more after the jump...