Visiting Artist Jamboree!

This Spring semester at The Center for Cartoon Studies is chock full of amazing cartoonists, spellbinding story-tellers and groundbreaking designers. In a town where you know everyone on the street, it is quite a blast to turn around one afternoon and see Jules Feiffer or Carol Tyler buying a coffee.

January starts off with a BANG as Paul Pope and Sam Hiti head up north. Pope’s comic, Battling Boy, is to be serialized by First Second. Hiti’s works are numerous like the beautiful Death-Day and many educational ancient civilization history books by Lerner.

In almost a complete 180 degrees, the next week will feature children’s book authors and illustrators, DB Johnson and John Stadler. Now that The Cats of Mrs. Calamari is out, we are definitely wondering what Stadler is up to meow.

The emperor of Wimpy Kids everywhere, Jeff Kinney, will show up and wow the students with his expertise on series as well as writing his most recent edition: Cabin Fever. If there is anyone who could possibly understand this mindset, it is the hard-working CCS students drawing with their five hours of winter sunlight. The illustrious Albert Ohams, editor of the comics section of the Nigerian newspaper The Sun, is also due to visit.

Local CCS alum and constant creator, Joe Lambert, will bring down the house just in time for Peter Burr, cartoonist and performance artist of Hooliganship, to whip the town back into shape. Burr visited the school back in 2008 with his Cartun Exprez tour featuring interactive animation and manic musicianship.

Later in the semester is the battle of the creative couples. Marc Bell and Amy Lockhart boast a variety of skills and fantastic stories. Lockhart is currently working on a new animated film called “Dizzler in: Maskheraid.”

Babysitter’s Club cartoonist Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman will discuss everything from comics creation to teaching comics. One of the many wonders of the Schulz Library is having several of their self-published mini-comics in our zine collection before publishers picked them up. Raina’s most recent book, Smile, is about her battle within her own mouth while Dave’s Astronaut Academy is a series of short stories about school in space build upon each other; and it tastes a bit like Sideway Stories from Wayside School but with a panda!

Cartoonist and journalist Josh Neufeld will touch on his many works: New Orleans, A.D.; The Influencing Machine and A Few Perfect Hours (a Xeric winner!).

Lewis Hyde’s name might not be as well known as these other to the students but his works on creativity and vision are famous: The Gift and Common As Air. As a cultural critic and essayist, Hyde’s lecture will be a bit different but just as anticipated.

The Visiting Artist lineup is fantastic and one of the best ever! Don’t recognize one? Well, the time has come to visit your local bookstore, comic book shop or library!

-Jen Vaughn

CCS Librarian