Pictured above: two of my BIG FUNNY co-editors, Danno Klonowski and Bjorn Rolvaag in full newsie garb… image purloined from Danno’s blog.

The BIG FUNNY opening was a full house on Friday night… BIG FUNNY again is an oversized all-comics newspaper I recently co-edited with my collaborators from the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic and Altered Esthetics gallery. I forgot to bring my camera, but fortunately other folks took some great pictures…

Danno Klonowski (Staplegenius)

Tom Kaczynski

Terry Beatty (you old comics fans out there will want to give Terry’s blog a good look for all the old comics scans he has posted over the last number of weeks as well)

Also, here is a photo gallery of the issues of little funny, an ongoing series of mini-comics that premiered at the show. They are only sold out of the little funny vending machine, a cigarette vending machine that has been re-purposed to sell mini-comics. Each box contains six different mini-comics. There are 29 issues so far by an international group of cartoonists… I’ve drawn three of them so far. If you are interested in participating in this project, watch the Cartoonist Conspiracy blog for information on getting in on the next round.

Note that if you missed the opening, the show is up all month! If you saw the opening, the numerous antique pages that were up on the walls have been taken down… so you can now browse both sides of them in the gallery. You can also still buy copies of BIG FUNNY online here… or for five bucks each in the gallery if you don’t want to pay shipping.

If you enjoy this site and you live near the Twin Cities, you won’t want to miss the BIG FUNNY show my friends and I have been putting together over the last number of months. It opens this weekend, and it is going to be spectacular.

The show premieres BIG FUNNY, an oversized 48-page newspaper of comics by 45 different artists, inspired by the funnies sections of yesteryear. The gallery show features original art from the publication, numerous antique comic strips (some over 100 years old… many which have been featured on this site… they all look better in person), a retrospective of unknown cartoonist William Ede, and an old cigarette vending machine rigged up to sell small boxes of little funny mini-comics. Hope to see you there!

THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY IS COUGHING blood and gasping on its deathbed. Newspapers lost their relevance a long time ago, and with internet media blossoming they can no longer compete. Readers and advertisers have moved on.

Unfortunately, newspapers are taking their beautiful bastard child, the newspaper comic strip, with them.

Today’s newspaper comics are much-maligned… and deservedly so. Today’s small strips, with mostly predictable, safe themes and bland characters are a pale shadow of what newspaper comics were in their wild and colorful youth.

110-or-so years from their birth, it’s been a good run. Let us not mourn the death of the

newspaper comics… rather, let us have a wake to celebrate what they once were, and to build something new.

The International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic, and Altered Esthetics gallery are collaborating to produce an oversized newspaper comics section like they would do it today if they still did it like they did it in the old days.

It will be called BIG FUNNY, and it will be both.

The paper will premiere at a show at Altered Esthetics in August, featuring some of the original art from the paper, along with historical comics pages from the dawn of the last century.

BIG FUNNY Website.

City Pages A-List Review

Optical Sloth review

Poopsheet Foundation review

Newsarama review

Drawn Review

Amy Crehore’s Little Hokum Rag review

Photo gallery of the little funny sideshow

Can’t make the gallery show? You can buy copies of BIG FUNNY here.

Opening Reception
August 7, 2009 7pm-11pm
ALTERED ESTHETICS
1224 Quincy St NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413

SHOW RUNS AUGUST 7-29, 2009

GALLERY HOURS:
TUESDAY & THURSDAY 1pm-7pm, SATURDAY 1pm-5pm