Thinking about cake might conjure up images of something sweet, delicious, filling and special—and those are the types of feelings a group of Valley artists wants readers to have with their new art anthology, Cake, Volume One ($12.95). The nearly 200-page collection of graphic stories contains work by 10 artists, with vignettes ranging from a squid who finds love with a ship to a story about tolerance told through mutts at a dog park.

The book’s release party is July 11 at Phoenix’s Red Hot Robot, one of several Valley bookstores carrying the anthology. Others include Atomic Comics, but the book release party features a signing by all the artists, who will also be selling other visual art and handing out poster prints from the book.

It’s been less than a year since Cake coordinator and artist Mark Geyer first envisioned Cake, back when the collaborators, who all work at Pearson Education in Chandler, were attending the San Diego Comic-Con.

“We kept on seeing all this amazing art and so many books, and so many crappy books, too, so we just had this thought that, ‘Hey, we could do this ourselves,” Geyer, 27, said.

Besides all working together, the artists are also all a part of Art Jumble (www.artjumble.blogspot.com), an online community that creates works based on rotating weekly themes. To have a story in Cake, artists must be Art Jumble members, and the collaborators on Cake see the book as a way of bringing together local artists.

“The phoenix art scene has a lot of talent, but it's not a very unified art scene,” said Cake artist David Jackson, 23. “I think there's a lot of scattered artists, scattered clumps of talent, but we don't collaborate with each other all that often.”

Like the art on Art Jumble, the works in Cake are very diverse, but Cake doesn’t have a singular theme—the artists had free range to draw whatever they wanted.

“I wanted to create a story that was very personal to me, but also something that was broad enough that anyone could relate to,” Jackson, whose There is an Anchor story was partially inspired by a romantic relationship, said.

Some stories in the book drawn straight comic book style, while others are more abstract and don’t even follow a narrative style. This makes it marketable to an all-ages audience with wide-ranging tastes.

“With the stories, nothing is consistent, which is really the beauty of having an anthology,” Geyer said. “You have different artists, different styles and different likings.”

Cake was self-published by the artists through Regent Publishing, with 1,500 copies printed.

Some of the artists had previously already made their own comic books, so doing something on a larger scale seemed logical.

“I love comics and I have a huge collection, plus I had already self-published a couple of my own comics as well,” said artist Tom Columbus, 30. “The idea of doing a comic in an anthology sounded like the right next step.”

In addition to the copies in bookstores, each artist has prints to sell, and the books can also be purchased at www.the-cake-anthology.com.

A second volume of Cake is also already in the works, this time with artists from all over the world, including Malaysia and Philippines.

While putting together Cake was time-consuming and challenging, the group of artists hopes to bring more exposure to Art Jumble and the Phoenix art scene in general.

“I think (Cake) shows that a small group of creative people can get together and publish a quality book,” Columbus said. “There's something in there for everybody.”

Cake release party
July 11- 7-10 p.m.
Free
Red Hot Robot
14 W. Camelback Road, Phoenix, 85013
(602) 264-8560
www.the-cake-anthology.com; book available at Atomic Comics and various Valley bookstores