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Contact LINDA ADAMS: 909-725-7337

GODFATHER OF THE AMERICAN GRAPHIC NOVEL PHIL YEH TEAMS UP WITH

SIMPSONS CARTOONIST PHIL ORTIZ TO PROMOTE LITERACY ON BOTH COASTS IN

SEPTEMBER

Phil Yeh, often called the Godfather of the modern American Graphic Novel, will paint a new mural promoting literacy and the arts at the Baltimore Book Festival, September 28 to 30.

Yeh will be painting the new mural inside the Children's Bookstore Tent and will also speak at the Comics Conversation panel on Saturday, September 29 from 5:30-7:00 pm. He will sign copies of his books after the discussion. The Baltimore Book Festival is located at Mount

Vernon Place on the 600 block of North Charles Street in Baltimore. Yeh will also be appearing in Baltimore area libraries from the 25th to the 29th of September and in the Arlington Central

Library In Virginia on Saturday, September 22.

Yeh, who founded Cartoonists Across America & The World in 1985, is on his 22nd year of his world tour promoting literacy and the arts with humor and cartoons. He is featured in the new book Hometown Heroes (HarperCollins) just released this spring. The book collects articles that originally ran in American Profile magazine and documents how 50 Americans are changing the world. Yeh's partner on the new "Two Phils Tour" is five time Emmy award-winning cartoonist

Phil Ortiz who joined the Cartoonists Across America tour last summer at a big library event in

San Bernardino, California. Ortiz designed more than 100 characters for The Simpsons, the longest running comedy series in television history, during the first two seasons of the show. He then went on to draw The Simpsons for various comic book titles published by Bongo Comics to the present day. Ortiz and members of Cartoonists Across America will be painting another mural on the west coast at the annual Orange County Children's Book Festival In Costa Mesa,

California on September 29 and 30. Ortiz and Yeh will then team up as "the two Phil's tour" in October at mural painting events at Silicon, a science fiction convention in San Jose on October 5-7, the San Bernardino

Main Public Library on October 13, and at the Edward James Olmos Book and Family Festival at the Arclight Theater In Hollywood in conjunction with the Latino Film Festival on October 14.

Yeh will debut his new Dinosaurs Across Route 66 comic book at the San Bernardino and

Hollywood events and Ortiz will be showing new designs for his animated TV series called

Pachuko Boy the same weekend.

Yeh's best-selling comic book Dinosaurs Across America has just been published this fall by NBM publishing in New York City. This new full color hardcover edition suitable for all ages is perfect for home, school, and public libraries. Yeh's longtime colorist and art director Lieve Jerger spent many weeks making sure that the colors in this new edition are perfect.

Dinosaurs Across America has been reprinted eight times as a black and white comic book with over 180,000 copies sold throughout the country since 1990. Yeh will sign copies of his new hardcover book at all his fall events throughout the country to introduce the concept of how cartoons can make learning U.S. history and geography fun and easy for all ages.

Yeh will also introduce a full color preview this fall of his forthcoming graphic novel,

Cazco: What a Long Strange Trip It's Been that covers the struggles of his half Tibetan, half Irish cartoonist character trying to find a publisher for the last 35 years. 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of Yeh's 1977 landmark graphic album, Even Cazco Gets the Blues, which was one of the very first all new-material modern American graphic novels. Yeh pioneered the graphic novel form along with NBM in the U.S. and encouraged his fellow artists in North America to embrace the new format and consider the bookstore and library market well before the majority of publishers in his field. Even Cazco Gets The Blues featured introductions by MAD magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones and the late Golden Age comic book creator and was a real departure from the normal superhero storytelling in the comic book field. Cazco made his debut in Yeh's college newspaper at California State University Long Beach in the fall of 1972 as a daily comic strip, and 2007 also marks the 35th anniversary of the character's first appearance. What makes this character appeal to all generations is the universal story told of a struggling artist against all odds. Cazco travels all around the world and often touches on the lives of real people that Yeh has met personally in his own artistic journey from the creator of the

Beats, Herbert Huncke, to noted people around the world such as , Jean Moebius Giraud,

Rick Griffin, Flavia, Charles Schulz, Steven Spielberg, and hundreds of others.

Cazco; What a Long Strange Trip It's Been will cover the period of 1972 to 2007 and shows the last 35 years in context to the times that we live, and hopefully, helps explain the world a bit better for both

Yeh's baby boomer generation and the current generation which include Yeh's own three sons now in their 20s. The full 200 plus page graphic novel will be completed in the summer of 2008. It is designed to be a G-rated version of the last 35 years so that it can easily reach all ages and cultures as Yeh continues his 25-year campaign to promote literacy and the arts all around the world. The tour ends in 2010 when Yeh plans to finish his feature length documentary about his journey for a quarter century spent on the road trying to get people to see the importance of the written word and especially his own comic art form. The film is called Planet Literacy: The Cartoonists Across

America Story and features artists from all fields as Yeh and his band of artists have painted more than 1600 murals around the world. Yeh recently signed a deal with Little Star magazine in Beijing, China to create a brand new feature for the Chinese market called The Winged Tiger in China. The first installment was created in February 2007, when Yeh was in Beijing for an environmental poster contest awards ceremony sponsored by Little Star magazine. He had not been back to his father's home country since 1995, when he was invited to paint a mural for the 2nd annual International

Children's Book Fair in Beijing. The changes in the country were amazing in the last 12 years and Yeh has captured that in the second installment of his new comic strip feature about

Shanghai. The third episode of the comic strip was colored by Lieve Jerger and is in the current edition of Little Star magazine. The two artists plan to release a full color Winged Tiger in China graphic novel in time for the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing.

Cartoonists Across America's "Two Phils Tour" kicked into high gear in the fall of 2006 when the artists painted a mural in Berlin, Germany with noted underground cartoonist Mark

Bode, son of the legendary artist Vaughn Bode, creator of Cheech Wizard. Bode recently signed a film deal with Zack Snyder, director of the successful film the 300 which was adapted from

Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name. Bode has worked with Cartoonists Across

America & The World on a number of mural projects including a recycling truck painted in 1992 in Northampton, Massachusetts with many of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles artists. Yeh had major support for his best-selling Theo the Dinosaur book from Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin

Eastman, who has long supported the idea of comics as a real force for getting people to read.

Bode later joined Yeh and Elfquest's creator Wendi Pini to paint a 54-foot truck trailer in the

Philadelphia Convention Center in 1993. The truck was owned by Jones Express in

Pennsylvania and was on the road for many years as one of the biggest moving billboards for literacy and the arts in the world. Yeh and his band of artists finished painting the historic truck in front of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1994, which is the officially International Literacy Day.

After the successful event on old Route 66 at the main San Bernardino Public Library last July where the two Phils helped paint both the library van and truck before a crowd of 1500 people on the hottest weekend of the year, the artists started a working relationship with San

Bernardino's mayor Pat Morris to create as many mural events and as much awareness for literacy and the arts as possible. Ortiz, who grew up in East , is a resident of the

San Bernardino mountain area near Lake Arrowhead and wants to give back to his local community while continuing his travels around the world. On May 20, the Two Phils Tour painted a giant metal storage container at San Bernardino's Operation Phoenix, a family oriented community center. Special guest artist Mark Bode flew down from to lend his brilliant artistic talents with the spray can. The Bode style is legendary in the graffiti art world with Puma introducing a new line of limited edition shoes and clothes this year that immediately sold out. Tony Hawk artist Matt Lorentz also joined the crew as well as artists from all over

Southern California. In addition to all his mural and book projects, Yeh continues to speak at schools, libraries and conventions all over the world about the importance of art and literacy. For more information about Cartoonists Across America & The World's ongoing campaign to promote literacy please check out our website at: http://wingedtiger.com

Contact Linda Adams: 909-725-7337 email: [email protected]

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