Phil Yeh, 52, founder of Cartoonists Across America, is featured in a brand-new HarperCollins book called Hometown Heroes: Real Stories of Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things all across America. Yeh's grassroots tour, promoting literacy and the arts using cartoons and humor, started its 22nd year in Beijing, China in February, 2007. Yeh has teamed up with The Simpsons cartoonist Phil Ortiz on a new tour that includes presentations at the 3rd Annual China Cartoon & Animation Festival in Hangzhou, China in April & May 2007, as well as a special guest appearance at the BookExpoAmerica convention in New York City June 1-3, 2007. "The Two Phils Tour" includes mural events in communities throughout the world.
Los Angeles, CA (PRWeb) April 13, 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 (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 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 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.
At this year's BookExpoAmerica, booth #101, the two cartoonists Phil Yeh and Phil Ortiz will debut the 14th issue of Yeh's Winged Tiger magazine which also features brand-new character creations from Ortiz, and an interview with Academy Award winning animator John Canemaker about Winsor McCay, the genius behind Little Nemo in Slumberland. The magazine is filled with new cartoon features and articles about their global tour. Phil Yeh, Phil Ortiz, and Alex Niño were invited as special guests for for the 3rd annual China Cartoon and Animation Festival in Hangzhou, China, held April 28 through May 4, 2007 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 of Phil's bestselling comic book. 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. Yeh will sign copies at BEA 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. This is a film on paper, an epic graphic novel, that serves as a tribute to the beat generation and the baby boomers. The full-color, 200-plus page graphic novel will be completed in the fall of 2007 and be published in 2008.
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.
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.
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 San Francisco to lend his brilliant artistic talents with the spray can. Bode just signed with the "300" film director Zack Snyder for a live-action film based on "Colbalt 60".
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 the company's website at: www.wingedtiger.com, where a full length version of this press release can be downloaded.
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