Sundry

• Brendan Burford posts his photos of the SYNCOPATED COMICS release party that I wrote about here.
  
  
• Tom Spurgeon talks about the challenge facing NBM with its publication of Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips -- The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff.

Syncopated Comics Release Shindig February 20, 2007

SYNCOPATED COMICS #3, which is the brainchild of Brendan Burford, had its celebratory get together at a bar on the Lower East Side last night. Even though I got there late (the free beer had just run out, for which I squarely point the finger of blame at bleary-eyed Ed Steckley), I did manage to shove King Features' editor-in-chief Jay Kennedy aside and get a minty fresh copy of SYNCOPATED.
Brendan Burford hard at work signing books and guarding the coats. Autographs $10!?!? Wha -- ?!

Chatted with Caroline Dworin, Tom Hart & Nick Bertozzi. You can read Caroline's words in the NY Times, and she's sold a cartoon to the New Yorker. It was terrific to finally meet Tom, whose work I admire. Nick's a fan of Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer, and so am I. He drew "The Voyage of the James Caird" for SYNCOPATED. So, of course, we were chatting like a couple of excited schoolgirls about Shack's great open boat journey.

Speaking of excited schoolgirls -- Chari Pere and Marguerite Dabaie, two SVA cartooning majors, joined the well wishers. Neither one of them were drinking, which, of course, meant they were blameless in the Great Sucking Up of Free Beer, but that aroused suspicion. I mean, they are CARTOONISTS, after all ...

Here's Heather with hubby Ed Steckley. Maybe she'll reform Ed. Good luck with that.

Mike Lynch and Marc Bilgrey. Actually, I met Marc later that evening at a raucous Irish pub. It just looks like we're at the party. Marc's a guy who's done it all -- his novel came out last year, he's worked with Woody Allen and written for Mad magazine -- and that's just the tip o' the Bilgrey iceberg. He's a great guy, and not at all raucous.