New venue: Bridge Hotel

After a couple of great years in Bar Loco's gallery space, the time has come for the Paper Jam Comics Collective to move on once more.

Our provisional new home: The Bridge Hotel (which is primarily a pub not a hotel, situated just beside the High Level Bridge and Newcastle Castle).

Our February meeting (on 13th February evening) will be there. We'll assemble from 6.00 to 6.30ish in the main bar downstairs then at around 6.30 head upstairs to the room we've booked (note: there's two rooms, ours is the one where there ISN'T a band practicing).

If all goes well, we'll make it our regular meeting place.

Anyone in Newcastle interested in making comics, whatever your previous experience, just come along. We chat, we draw, we try and help each other make better comics. Any queries beforehand, do fee free to email us.

We've also started a monthly, themed comic-drawing challenge. Sort of like mini anthologies without the hassle of printing. Our first theme was 'new' - check out the results here https://papercomicjams.blogspot.com/2020/01/monthly-comic-challenge-new.html.

You Need A Holiday ...And That

Life, eh? Been getting you down? Same old thing day after day? You know what you need? A SELF-PUBLISHED COMIC ANTHOLOGY FROM NEWCASTLE'S FINEST COMIC-MAKING ART COLLECTIVE!

The Paper Jam Comics Collective's latest masterpiece has arrived, just in time for summer. You Need A Holiday ...And That is an anthology that features insightful experiments in sequential art on the theme of needing a holiday from: K. Ben Clarke, Brittany Coxon, Michael Dodsworth, Mike Duckett, Daniel Fitzgerald, Steve Flanagan, Emma Friel, Michael Gonson, Lauren Matthews,  Oscillating Brow, Sara Qaed, Paul Thompson, and James Wilkinson.

The very first opportunity to obtain this wondrous tome will be at the Make & Print Market at the Grainger Market this Saturday (29th June, 9am-5pm). There'll be loads of other cool and interesting self-produced art of various types, so come and check it out.

Then! 13th July, in honour of Small Press Day, we'll be having our 'official launch' at the Canny Comic Con Summer Comics Jam event at Tyne Bank Brewery. There'll be ALL the finest locally made comics, collaborative drawing games, street food, beer, DJs - everything you could want from a laid back Saturday afternoon/evening. (13th July, 12pm-12am).

Make & Print Market and Baltic Self Publishing Artists' Market

We're going to have tables at two exciting events in the next few weeks.

MUCH PAPERY EXCITEMENT!

First up, the inaugural Make & Print Market: Saturday 30th March, 9am-5pm, within Newcastle's Grainger Market. It's a spin-off of the successful long-running 'first Saturday of the month' Make & Mend Market, which is always full of interesting art and craft works, and this special event (set to run quarterly) is focused more specifically on print media, so is sure to be full of all kinds of quality gear.

Then in April, it's the Baltic Self-Publishing Artists' Market 2019: 27th April,11am-6pm, in the BALTIC gallery just on the Gateshead side of the Tyne. We had a great day at this last year and are again expecting excellent varied work from a wide range of creators.

Pretty cool and highbrow eh? Come to both events, they're free entry and they'll be class. And come and say 'hi' to us (we'll be the ones bringing the tone down).

Paper Jam: some stuff we did, 2018

2018! A bit of a stupid year in many ways but Paper Jam did some good stuff.

We released two anthologies! Weird Romance ...And That and Super Spooky Scary Stories ...And That. Full of quality!

  

Sadly, long time Paperjammer and general small press comics legend Terry Wiley died this year. Weird Romance was the last of our anthologies to benefit from a contribution from him.

Terry enriched the group and our comics over the years, and if you'd like to read some of our older anthologies, featuring work from Terry and many many other Paperjammers past and present, we've made several of our out-of-print anthologies available to read free on t'internet. Now including our all-time bestseller, Newcastle ...And That.

In other 2018 news...

Paul invented a Lego robot that draws randomised comics page panel layouts (became an instant favourite with young 'uns at events it was exhibited at).


Connected to that, we won an award! Us! An award! It was a prestigious 'Maker of Merit' ribbon at the Maker Faire:

Mike ran an arts residency in the Grainger Market for most of the latter half of the year, organising all kinds of exciting projects - including a 12-hour comic challenge that several of us took part in.

We attended many varied events in 2018, including: the Baltic Small Press Artists Market, Maker Faire, Glenrothes Comic Con, Bensham Grove's Midsummer Magic and Night Market, the Make & Mend Market (on Small Press Day), the Great Exhibition of the North Family Expo, Tynemouth Market Book Fair, Kommunity Night Market, our own Halloween party comic launch, Grainger Market Night Market, and the Verbal Remedy Festival of the Zine.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat, do some drawing, buy some of our dumb comics; you're fabulous.


2018 was also the first full year that Paper Jam has been based at Bar Loco. It has proved to be just the home we were looking for when we moved from Travelling Man.

Illustration by Steven

If you're interested in getting involved, meeting artists, contributing to anthologies (artistic finesse non-essential) then come and say hi: every second Thursday of each month, Bar Loco, top floor, from 6.30. First meeting: 10th January!