As you have undoubtedly heard if you’ve come within 100 yards of me for the last couple months, we are getting ready to do something really exciting.  On August 6 we will launch 52ComicChallenges.com -  weekly exercises and short challenges for artists and writers and anyone who makes comics.  Ok, not letterers.  Sorry, letterers, we can’t think of any challenges for you.  (Um, why don’t you go transcribe Moby Dick.   In Times New Roman.  6 pt.  We’ll wait.) 

It is completely free to participate, although if you like, you can purchase the book that will contain the whole year’s worth of Challenges, in case you want to work ahead or keep them for posterity.  You don’t have to do every week, but we hope you will!  We will also be launching new forums, including a spot for people participating in 52ComicChallenges to post their work and get feedback from others.

We hope you will also post the challenges that you complete in your blog or journal, meme style, and encourage others to participate as well.  One of the main focuses of 52ComicChallenges will be to build some much-needed community in the Small Press Comics arena.  We always see the same awesome people at the conventions in the Small Press Ghetto, but then we say good bye and don’t see them again until the following year.  Come on, people, it’s 2007 and most of our phones can get online at this point.

Our other focus is to encourage people to push their limits and work outside of their comfort levels.  Some of these challenges will be hard.  You’re assuredly familiar with our stuff enough to know that we tend to do weird experimental comics anyhow.  But these smaller challenges will hopefully be just that — a challenge!  As we received the entries for small town/BIG CITY this year, we realized that some of our contributors have been participating in our group projects for the last four or five years!  When you compare their recent work to their older work, it’s jaw-droppingly-awesome to see how much everyone has improved over the years. (Which is not to say any of them were less than amazing to begin with.)  We hope that by offering weekly exercises, we’ll encourage people to try new things and tone their comic-making muscles.  And we’ll be right there beside you, doing cool challenges and getting buff.

To kick off 52 Comic Challenges and get you excited about this year’s Large Scale Open Invite Group Anthology (to be announced  July 26, 2007!),  we have put together two mini group projects:  Lost Lunches and Crash!Boom!Bang!

Click here to download the invite flyer for these two projects, or visit us at San Diego Comic Con or Wizard World Chicago!  We encourage you to print this flyer, steal some copies at your school or job (we won’t tell) and distribute to your artist & writer friends, bring to your local sketch night, pass out at school, or leave at your comic shop.

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Hey dudes and ladies! We’ve been putting together some cool new digs for ourselves here on the web, and we’re pretty pleased with them if we say so ourselves. (and we do.)

You’ll see a couple placeholders for some new sections that will be coming soon, including a wealth of resources for Small Press-ers and a brand new forum. While we don’t expect a ton of traffic in the forums, we know there are a lot of writers out there who would like to participate in a group project, but don’t have any artists friends (and vice versa.) So hopefully that’ll give those of you who are looking to meet your soul mate new partner-in-crime a place to do so, and we’ll get even MORE entries for next year’s group project…

…you didn’t think I was going to tell you what it is yet, did you? Tsk tsk. That, oh impatient reader, will be announced at San Diego Comic Con this year, or maybe - just maybe - a week or so early. (If you’re on your best behavior.)

Speaking of group projects, we are putting the final touches on small town/BIG CITY before we send it off to the printer. I should have a preview of the cover for you, hopefully soon.

By the way, all pre-orders for Snakepit Quarterly #16 have been sent out, and you can get your very own copy in the YAC Store.