PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact Linda Adams: 909-725-7337

Arts and Literacy Advocate, PHIL YEH, teams up with Simpsons Phil Ortiz, to create new mural at BookExpoAmerica, June 1-3, 2007.

Phil Yeh, often called the Godfather of the modern American Graphic Novel, will paint a new mural promoting literacy and the arts at the annual BookExpoAmerica convention on June 1-3, 2007 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. Yeh, who founded Cartoonists Across America & The World in 1985, is on the 22nd year of his world tour, promoting literacy and the arts with humor and cartoons. He is featured in the new book Hometown Heroes: Real Stories of Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things All Across America (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 the five time Emmy award-winning Phil Ortiz who joined the Cartoonists Across America tour last summer at a big library event in San Bernardino, California. Ortiz designed more than 200 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.

In addition to painting the mural at the BookExpoAmerica show in the Cartoonists Across America booth #101, the two cartoonists Phil Yeh and Phil Ortiz will debut the 14th issue of Yeh's Winged Tiger magazine which also features a cover story about new creations from Ortiz, and an interview with Academy Award winning animator about Winsor McCay, the genius behind in Slumberland. The magazine is filled with new cartoon features and articles about their global tour. One of the highlights is a new poster image that Yeh, Ortiz, Copper Lace artist and Yeh's longtime colorist Lieve Jerger, and Mulan artist Alex Nino collaborated on for the 3rd annual China Cartoon and Festival in Hangzhou, China, held April

Contact Linda Adams: 909-725-7337 email: [email protected] 28 through May 4, 2007. All four artists were invited as special guests for this festival and have great plans to expand their work throughout Asia in the coming years.

Yeh's best-selling comic book series Dinosaurs Across America will be published this fall by NBM Publishing in New York City. This will be a full-color hardcover edition suitable for all ages. It is perfect for home, school, and public libraries. Lieve Jerger spent many weeks making sure that the colors in this new edition are perfect. Dinosaurs Across America has been reprinted eight times before, as a black and white comic book, with over 180,000 copies sold throughout the country since 1990. Last year, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History hosted a five- month exhibition of Yeh's oil paintings from his classic children's book Theo the Dinosaur and commissioned him to create a special edition of Dinosaurs Across America for the show. Yeh will sign copies of this eighth edition of the comic at the NBM booth #3039 to introduce the concept of how cartoons can make studying U.S. history and geography fun and easy for all ages.

Yeh will also introduce a limited edition full color preview of his forthcoming graphic novel, Cazco; What a Long Strange Trip It's Been which covers the struggles of his half-Tibetan, half-Irish cartoonist character as he tries 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. NBM had previously reprinted material from Europe and is one of the leaders in the field of graphic novels in the United States. Yeh pioneered the graphic novel form 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 did so. Even Cazco Gets The Blues by Phil Yeh featured introductions by MAD magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés and the late Golden Age comic book creator and it 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 . But 2007 also marks the 35th anniversary of

Contact Linda Adams: 909-725-7337 email: [email protected] the character's first appearance. What makes this character appeal to all generations is the universal story of a struggling artist surviving with his soul intact, against all odds. Cazco travels all around the world and often touches the lives of real people that Yeh has met personally in his own artistic journey, from the creator of the Beats, Herbert Huncke to many other noted people around the world such as , Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Rick Griffin, Flavia, Charles Schulz, , 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 in, and hopefully it helps explain the world a bit better for both Yeh's baby boomer generation and the current generation which includes Yeh's own three sons, all in their 20s. The full 200-plus page graphic novel will be completed in the fall of 2007 and be published in 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, touring all around the world. The tour ends in 2010 when Yeh plans to finish his feature length documentary about his journey of a quarter century, spent on the road trying to get people to grasp 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. Phil had not been back to visit his father's homeland since 1995, when he was invited to paint a mural for the 2nd annual International Children's Book Fair in Beijing. The changes in China in the last 12 years were amazing, and Yeh has captured that in the second installment of his new comic strip feature about Shanghai. The second episode of the comic strip was colored by Lieve Jerger and is published 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

Contact Linda Adams: 909-725-7337 email: [email protected] "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 '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 of all ages into reading. 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 will appear at San Bernardino's Operation Phoenix to paint another huge storage trailer on the grounds of this family oriented community center. Special guest artist Mark Bode will fly down from to lend his brilliant artistic talents with the spray can. The Bode style is legendary in the world of graffiti art, with Puma Company introducing a new line of limited edition shoes and clothes this year that was immediately sold out. Tony Hawk artist Matt Lorentz will also join the crew as well as artists from all over Southern California. Plans are underway to paint another huge mural for San Bernardino at the annual Route 66 Rendezvous in September which draws more than 500,000 people to this classic car celebration. 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: www.wingedtiger.com

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