Attendance was small for the February 3, 2009 meeting of the WNC group of the SECNCS at Frank's Roman Pizza in Asheville. Still some were willing to take on the falling snow and come out anyway--not casting aspersions on anyone who didn't make it, we'd rather everyone both feel safe and be safe.

However, our group last night consisted of:

Bill LaRocque Steve Haynie Phil Hawkins Matt Mulder MIchael Cole Gregory Barone and James E. Lyle

A small but hearty crew. We were able to spread out "man style" and get a little elbow room at the table this time around. But we're hoping for more crowding next time.

The big news this meeting was the debut of Michael Cole's "Dragin" in Rapid River Magazine. We now have TWO of our regulars on the comics page of the area Arts and Culture publication, with Michael's strip joining Phil Hawkins' "Corgi Tales". Frankly, I'm impressed that Rapid River is making such an effort to support locally produced comic strips at a time when so many papers have such little interest in the art even going so far as to drop local editorial cartoons in favor of taking nationally syndicated material or even dropping all comics from their papers. Good for Rapid River for bucking the trend! And here's to more work from our guys in more markets in 2009!