Reminder: NY Comic Con this weekend

New York Comic Con
Feb 23-25, 2007
Jacob Javitz Convention Center on 11th Avenue and 33rd Street, NYC

I'll be tabling all day Sunday with Prism comics to promote my cartoon series for Lambda Legal, Life Without Fair Courts, and the cartooning contest that goes along with it. I may also be around the NBM table with Ted Rall. And I'll have some booklets and whatnot to sell.

I'll also be on a panel:
• Sunday, Feb. 25 @ 1 p.m. "Attitude"-themed panel moderated by cartoonist extraordinaire Ted Rall, featuring Attitude cartoonists Neil Swaab ("Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles"), Mikhaela B. Reid ("The Boiling Point"), David Rees ("Get Your War On"), and Ward Sutton ("Sutton Impact").

Masheka won't be on a panel but he'll be around and about.

The Ormes Society

Speaking of the Glyph Awards...

The Ormes Society, named after the legendary pioneering cartoonist of color Jackie Ormes, is a new organization dedicated to supporting black female comic creators and promoting the inclusion of black women in the comics industry as creators, characters and consumers.

The Ormes Society just launched last week, and Society founder Cheryl Lynn will be on The African-American Panel at NY Comic Con this Saturday Febuary 24.

Masheka Wood nominated for a Glyph award!

The 2007 Glyph Awards Nominees have just been announced, and my fiancé and fellow Cartoonist With Attitude Masheka Wood has been nominated for the Rising Star Award.

The second annual Glyph Comics Awards (GCAs), honoring the best in black comics and creators, will once again take place at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) in Philadelphia, May 18-19 2007.

In case you're not familiar with his work, here are some classic Masheka cartoons:

In other awesome Glyph Awards news, Cartoonist With Attitude Keith Knight has two Glpyh nominations for best comic strip for "th(ink)" and "The K Chronicles".

Here's the full release.

New Toon: Ted Haggard's Ex-Gay Revolution

Have you heard? The Rev. Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was "cured" of his gay ways in just three weeks of intensive therapy!

By the way, this cartoon is the first I've done entirely digitally on the computer, so I'm playing around a lot with the inking style.

P.S. Join my weekly mailing list by sending a blank message to newtoons-subscribe@mikhaela.net!

Read Minimum Security on Comics.com!

Fellow Cartoonist With Attitude Stephanie McMillan's strip "Minimum Security" is now available 5 days a week on United Feature Syndicate's comics.com. Stephanie isn't syndicated to print newspapers right now, but the more people who read and visit her cartoons on comics.com, the more likely that is to become a reality at some point. So visit Stephanie's comics.com page and show some love!

New Illustration: Bringing Down Rumsfeld

Here's an illustration I did recently for the cover of the Metro Times (Detroit) last month, for a story called "Bringing Down Rumsfeld": You can't really see this small (click to enlarge) but those textures in the sky are from a shiny piece of dress fabric I scanned, and the ground texture is from a tweed wool skirt I sewed a while back (I scanned it, didn't actually cut it up since I still wear it). And here's how it looked with the logo:

Enter the Life Without Fair Courts Cartoon Contest!

Please pass this around far and wide, especially to any cartoonists trying to get more exposure and recognition for their work. Aspiring, professional and college cartoonists 18 or older all welcome.

Lambda Legal’s Life Without Fair Courts
Editorial cartoon series and illustration contest

Deadline: March 15, 2007
Cartoons required: One 6" x 9" cartoon or illustration, in black & white or color, at least 300 dpi. Can be single-panel or multi-panel.
Send to: faircourtscontest@lambdalegal.org
Prizes: 1st prize is nationwide exposure in The Advocate; 2nd prize is a $150 gift certificate to the comic book store of your choice and 3rd prize is a $50 gift certificate to the comic book store of your choice.
Judges: Mikhaela Reid, Joan Hilty, Phil Jimenez, George Stoll

Details:
Without fair courts unmarried people might not be able to buy condoms.
Without fair courts gay and lesbian people could be prosecuted for having sex in their own homes.
Without fair courts America's schools could still be segregated by law.

Lambda Legal’s “Life Without Fair Courts” alternate reality editorial cartoon series by artist Mikhaela Reid depicts what life would be like if courts had not upheld the Constitution in past landmark cases. Check out the first four in the series on our site and in The Advocate.

Get involved by showing us what this country might be like without fair courts and landmark civil rights cases, or by depicting discrimination still going on today against LGBT people or other groups.

Lambda Legal has teamed up with Prism Comics and media sponsor, The Advocate, to present the Life Without Fair Courts Illustration Contest. Submit your entry between January 16 and March 15, 2007 to faircourtscontest@lambdalegal.org for a chance to win nationwide exposure of your work or gift certificates to the comic book store of your choice.

New Toon: Personal Anti-Immigration Wall

Wouldn't it be awesome if all the nativist nutjobs like long-shot Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo were trapped in these things? They'd be too busy watching their own perimeters to waste our time with their racist claptrap.

By the way, have you heard that the KKK is making a big comeback? They still hate black people, but immigrants are their new #1 target.

P.S. I didn't need to draw a cartoon about Rudy running this week, cause I did it already (see "President Giuliani: The Early Years").

P.P.S. Next target: Ted "I'm 100% Straight After Just Three Weeks of Therapy" Haggard.

P.P.S. Join my weekly mailing list by sending a blank message to newtoons-subscribe@mikhaela.net!

New Toon: "Dick Cheney's Magic Universe"

Dick Cheney's bizarre insistence that the war is going well makes even less sense than the weird stories I used to tell my extensive collection of My Little Ponies as a child.

P.S. Join my weekly mailing list by sending a blank message to newtoons-subscribe@mikhaela.net!

Mary Cheney's baby shower, part 2

A few weeks ago I did a one-panel cartoon, "Mary Cheney's Baby Shower," imagining President Bush showing up to Mary Cheney's baby shower with the "gift" of a husband, with her partner Heather Poe sitting right there, quite annoyed. Since then:

• Prominent social conservative James Dobson publicly attacked Mary Cheney in a piece in Time magazine ("Two Mommies is One Too Many").
• In a post-SOTU interview, Wolf Blitzer asked Dick Cheney what he thought of Dobson's remarks, to which Cheney growled that Blitzer was "out of line."
• Mary Cheney spoke at Barnard, claiming the whole thing was a "non-political" issue. She vehemently defended same-sex parenting, and attacked Dobson's fake science claims about what is best for children. But she also attacked Wolf Blitzer for asking her father about the same thing. And she failed to mention that the president she so vigorously campaigned for feels pretty much the same way as Dobson about gay families.

All of which events inspired Ward Sutton to draw the following awesome cartoon, "Mary Cheney's Non-Political Baby Shower".

Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

Progressive political columnist Molly Ivins died of breast cancer last night. This is so incredibly sad. The Texas Observer has an obituary and tribute page.