for immediate release
Cartoonists Across America's founder and president Phil Yeh (AKA: Godfather of the American Graphic Novel) will be presenting a series of workshops on November 24, 2006, at the Newark Museum in New Jersey.
On November 25, Phil will paint a mural at the downtown Newark Public Library, which is one of our really great historical libraries, while The Newark Museum will be showing the comic strip part of the nationally acclaimed Masters of American Comics exhibition at this time.

The show features original art from such notable artists as Charles Schulz (Peanuts), George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland). Mr. Schulz was the first cartoonist to contact Phil Yeh in 1985 to declare his endorsement of the Cartoonists Across America campaign for promoting literacy and the arts. Schulz remained a supporter and Yeh painted a tribute mural in Santa Rosa, CA, with the Peanuts characters after Mr. Schulz passed away. Yeh also interviewed John Canemaker, the biographer of Winsor McCay who NOT ONLY created one of the real masterpieces of comic art but also invented animation in 1909. Yeh pays tribute to George Herriman's genius in the new issue of his Dinosaurs Across America - Route 66 edition, which will be at the museum Nov. 24.

Newark was one of the main sites in Phil's 13th issue of his Winged Tiger Comics & Stories published in the fall of 2005. Over the years, Phil has worked with the Newark Literacy Campaign and visited schools and libraries in the area. Phil Yeh is, after all, a New Jersey kid himself, having spent his first six years in Wayne, New Jersey, before moving to Los Angeles.

In 1977, Yeh became one of the first artists to create an all-new-material graphic novel in the United States. Will Eisner would only publish his landmark book a year later and was called the Father of the Graphic Novel. In 2005, Yeh decided to add to the real history of this medium he helped to pioneer and began a series of Graphic Novel Workshops throughout the country as the Godfather of the American Graphic Novel.

In 2007, Yeh will release two new important graphic novels. The first gathers past material and includes brand new art for a collection called Dinosaurs Across America and is set for the summer of 2007. The second celebrates Yeh's underground sixties artist character, Cazco, which began in 1972 as a comic strip at Cal State University Long Beach. This graphic novel will be published in the fall of 2007 as a tribute to 35 years of this unique character, who travels throughout the world in search of a publisher. The tentative title for the Cazco book is: Cazco -What a Long Strange Trip. Included along with this all-new story is an extensive background of Yeh's own worldwide travels of the past 35 years, and his adventures with people like Herbert Huncke, who influenced the work of Jack Kerouac, and many other notable people.

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