Our ninth official meet-and-greet was da bomb. We were at
the J again, and we had 16 cartoonist-types in attendance! I'm pretty sure that's more than ever. Let's see, there was
Richard Haigler,
Ben Faucher,
Frank Cummings,
Garth Potts,
Ed Abernathy,
Tim Rocks,
Chris Adkins,
Christopher Davis,
Lorenzo Kirkpatrick,
Nolen Otts,
Russell Quick,
Tim Spinosi, and
Sam McDavid were there. And we welcomed first-timer
Perry Sessions. Plus special guest (and prospective new member) Kevin Van Hyning. And me,
Chris Garrison. Crazy!
On the way in, the guys ogled a nearby roomful of nubile stretching women. Once the guys made it into our secret lair, they ogled
Perry Sessions' binder full of
girlie sci-fi drawings. So there was plenty of ogling to go around.

(left to right) --
Richard Haigler and
Frank Cummings trade adventure stories from their years tracking Bigfoot. Why these two have never teamed up to nab the monster, I don't know.
Tim Rocks looks on. Meanwhile,
Ben Faucher (that's fo-SHAY) tells
Lorenzo Kirkpatrick a few things he's learned about computers. "This is the
return key." Way to start with the basics, Ben. Taking it back to 1981.
Somehow I didn't get
Garth Potts or
Ed Abernathy in any of my photos. Maybe I snapped these before those guys showed up, or else they just somehow eluded my lens without my realizing it. Sorry, guys.
Oh, some lovable moppets snuck in and stole our cookies! It was hilarious. I tried to run them off with old-fashioned phrases, like, "Shoo!" and "23 Skidoo!" But that only seemed to encourage them.
Lorenzo Kirkpatrick showed us some work from his web-comic, Alien Gladiators. He was planning to wait a while before telling the general public, but I'm leaking it to you guys here, because the work is SUPERB. So go check out
Alien Gladiators.
We all went downstairs to see a bunch of work by
Garth Potts, which filled two rooms, close to the main doors of the
LJCC. Some sports caricatures, and some serious sports-related illustrations. Garth is so prolific, the work spills out into the halls and basically fills up the whole complex. If you missed it, drop by and have a look. I think it'll be up throughout the month of October.
Tim Spinosi brought this:

He said it was the first thing he's drawn with colored pencils in twelve years! Good job getting back on that horse, Spin Man. Let's see some more!
With all the camaraderie and discussion of tools and techniques, we barely had time to draw. But Kevin Van Hyning doodled this in my sketchbook:

And we added a few panels to some comic jams that we've started in the past, but we still didn't resolve the stories on them. Maybe I can get together with a few cartooneestas in the next few weeks to try and wrap up those stories, before posting them in their entirety.
Here's a brief comic jam we managed to do this time:

Unlucky Leprechaun credits:
panel 1 by
Chris Garrison; panel 2 by
Richard Haigler; panel 3 by
Russell Quick, with story suggestion by
Sam McDavid. Time was running short, and I thought that last panel about summed it up, so I put a cap on it by writing "End" at the bottom. It was either that or begin a long and complicated action-adventure, a la Tin Tin, in which our chubby heroine sets out to solve The Mystery of the Dead Leprechaun.
All tolled, everybody had fun at the slam, and many hands were shaken. So join us, won't you, for the NEXT Salty 'Ham Slam! (as yet unscheduled) (official members and invited guests only, please)
And you can look back at previous slams, here: