Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is coming to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to celebrate the art of comics with legendary cartoonists and hands-on events. Credit: Ashley Kimmel | Lantern File Photo
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is coming to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to celebrate the art of comics with legendary cartoonists and hands-on events.
Columbus’s comics, art and animation festival, Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, will include in-person events beginning Thursday and running through Sunday. Virtual events will take place on Discord, and recordings of the in-person events will be posted on the festival’s YouTube channel, Jerzy Drozd, interim director for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, said.
Drozd said the festival introduces new ways to appreciate comics and cartoons through talks from established cartoonists and events that will teach visitors the layouts of different comics and character design. Whether people are extremely knowledgeable about the art form, or it’s their first time seeing art in this medium, there will be something for everyone.
“Whatever your engagement with comics is, there is something at [Cartoon Crossroads Columbus] for you to celebrate,” Drozd said. “Maybe you can’t name every X-Men, or maybe you have read Raina Telgemeier’s ‘Smile,’ but you don’t know anything about Brian Michael Bendis’ Spider-Man comics. You still have a place to be there. So, it’s very inclusive.”
Due to the pandemic, Drozd said organizers have implemented several ways for people to enjoy art from the comfort of their homes, including livestreams of the events and recordings posted to their YouTube channel.
Newspapers and movies do not fully represent the scope of what comics can bring to the art world, Drozd said. In an effort to help remedy this, the festival brings in cartoonists who can fully explain the way their art can speak deeply to viewers through pictures and a few selective words.
“It is profoundly exciting to me, as a cartoonist, that just changing a few lines can communicate so much, and it happens so intuitively and instantly in the head of the reader,” Drozd said.
Jeff Smith, artistic director for the festival, New York Times bestselling author of the “Bone” series, professional cartoonist and Ohio State alumnus, said he would discuss his new project, “Tuki: Fight for Fire” at the festival.
Smith said he first began his career in 1982 when he wrote comic strips for The Lantern at Ohio State called “Thorn,” which gave him ideas that led to the “Bone” series.
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus was originally known as the Festival of Cartoon Art and occurred triennially from 1983 until 2013 before Lucy Casewell, the former curator, retired, Smith said.
In 2015, he and his wife, Vijaya Iyer, had the idea to bring all of the art institutes near Columbus and their cartoon guests together on the same weekend for an event that would be open to the public, Smith said.
“When I started in comic books, comic books were only sold in hobby shops, in comic book shops, and that was the only place you could get comics,” Smith said. “We’ve always tried to expand our audience because there’s just not a lot of women or even kids in comic book shops.”
Smith said the changes to the festival mirror the changes in the comic world in the sense that although there have been many changes to both, they still place the same emphasis on the art of cartooning.
“The big difference between us and any other comic show is that we are not celebrating Spider-Man or the X-Men, we’re celebrating the art form and the creators,” Smith said.
More information on when events will be held and this year’s guests is available on the festival’s website.
This story has been updated to include the correct spelling of Brian Michael Bendis’ name.
