2007 Festival of Cartoon Art Adds to List of Distinguished Guests

The Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University announced this week the addition of Paul Pope, Arnold Roth and David Saylor to its list of speakers for the 2007 Festival of Cartoon Art.

Paul Pope's career highlights include work in alternative comics, manga, superhero comics,and graphic design. He worked for Japan's leading manga publisher Kodansha for five years and has published several of his own graphic novels including Heavy Liquid and The One Trick Rip-Off,. He is also the creator of the comic book series THB.

Arnold Roth is an award-winning freelance cartoonist and humorous illustrator whose work has been seen in a wide variety of publications including The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and the New York Times.

David Saylor is the Vice-President and Creative Director for Scholastic Books. In addition to designing the U.S. editions of the Harry Potter series of books, he also serves as creative director for Scholastic's graphic novel imprint, Graphix. Mr. Saylor will be speaking on the panel of graphic novel publishers.

In addition, The Festival announced that scheduled speakers Jules Feiffer, Guy Delisle and Mark Siegel have had to cancel their appearances.

The theme for this year's festival, held every three years in Columbus, Ohio, is Graphic Story Telling. This will be the ninth Comic Art Festival where attendees are afforded the opportunity to enjoy presentations by top cartoonists, comics professionals and cartoon art scholars on the art of graphic story telling. One of the highlights of this year's festival will be the exhibit of Milton Caniff's body of work, most notably the legendary adventure comic strips SteveCanyon and Terry and the Pirates.

The Festival, which is sponsored by the Cartoon Research Library of Ohio State University, with support from The National Cartoonists Society Foundation and others, will be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Downtown Columbus. Registration is $150 and includes admission to all Festival of Cartoon Art Forum presentations and special pre-conference events, the exhibit catalog for Milton Caniff: American Master and School of Caniff, morning refreshments, and lunch at the Renaissance Hotel both Forum, days, a special exhibit reception at Ohio State University and a souvenir tote bag.

Students and seniors 65 and over can register for just $25. Spaces are still currently available but hotel reservations must be made by October 14^th to receive the discounted rate of $109 per night. Registration forms are available at http://cartoons.osu.edu/FCA2007/site/registration.php

For an updated schedule of events, visit the Cartoon Research Library's website at http://cartoons.osu.edu