In spring 2007, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Phil Yeh's first American graphic novel, he now introduces a special, full-color, limited-edition first chapter from his brand-new graphic novel:
Cazco: What a Long Strange Trip It's Been, by Phil Yeh.
Cazco
made his debut in
Phil Yeh
's college newspaper in the fall of 1972. From the start, he was an instant hit with the students at California State Long Beach University and Phil later continued the Cazco adventures in a series of comic albums and graphic novels over the next few decades. The Cazco character is a half-Irish-half-Tibetan student who eventually decides that he wants to be a world-famous artist, writing and drawing books about his own life and travels.
Unfortunately, Cazco always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in terms of the big bucks and movie deals. But this also gives Cazco a unique perspective on what it is like for ANY artist of ANY generation to stick to his own values and to pursue his dreams .
One thing that Cazco is very good at on his journey is meeting the most interesting characters from the worlds of literature, music, art and politics over the last half century, all over the world.
In 1977, Phil Yeh wrote, illustrated and published one of the very first, all-new-material, original, American graphic novels. "Even Cazco Gets The Blues” was a breakthrough book for its time and helped pioneer a new way of appreciating cartoon material in the United States. In 1980, Yeh produced a second Cazco graphic novel, based on his first trip back to his father's homeland of China. That landmark book, "Cazco in China", continued the character's quest to find a publisher and commercial success for his art work. Over the last 27 years since Cazco's second graphic novel, the Cazco character has continued to appear in many of Yeh's more than 80 self-published books.
The full graphic novel is colorized by Lieve Jerger and will be published in the fall of 2007 as Cazco celebrates the 35th anniversary of his first appearance at CSULB in 1977.