Spotlight On Guests At Lakes International Comics Festival

Five Years of Celebrating Comics Up In The Lakes

♦The Lakes International Comics Festival or LICAF celebrates its fifth anniversary this year and here’s a few details about its guests and the show itself…

Tickets for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival are on sale now – and the guest list is attracting plenty of attention from fans across the UK – and abroad.

This year, the Lakes Festival is moving to a pass system for the festival. The main events programme will be exclusive to pass-holders, there will be exclusive guest-related goodies and a fancy wristband identifying you as a festival supporter!

The Festival’s Gala Opening Night this year will be ‘Quick on the Draw’ – a spectacular evening of live draw featuring some of the fastest, funniest and most talented cartoonists on the planet. On his first appearance in the UK the legendary Sergio Aragonés will demonstrate his quick-fire genius together with superstars from the United States’ cartooning scene.

Other events include an appearance by Tony Husband, best-known for his “Yobs” strip in Private Eye, who co-founded and co-edited Oink! comic and has more than 40 books published. He received critical acclaim for his telling of the story of his father’s dementia, Take Care Son, and has recently launched From A Dark Place, a comic book about his son’s journey through drug addiction

The full programme of events will be announced on 15th May, but alongside already-highlighted guests such as Jason Latour, Stan Sakai, Charlie Adlard, Hannah Berry, Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan there is plenty that has already seen comics fans reaching for their mouse and booking early for the weekend of 13th – 15th October 2017.

Melinda Gebbie’s trail of imagery is littered with low-brow characters gleaned from her own career as an underground cartoonist and self-taught painter. Discover more about her kaleidoscopic world of style and texture at the festival this year.

Then there’s caricaturist, cartoonist and humorous illustrator,Tom Richmond – the current superstar of the ultimate satirical magazine, MAD, and recipient of the highest honour in cartooning, Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, Reuben Awards, USA – a tour de force in every sense.

Rick Stromoski is one of the United States most popular and prolific cartoonists, drawing and painting anything and everything from superheroes to urban landscapes with great style, humour and originality.

Tom and Rick are appearing at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2017 courtesy of the National Cartoonists Society and Wacom.

The Festival will also have a special delegation of creative talent from Finland, in partnership with the Finnish Institute, along with many Moomin-themed celebrations. The line-up includes Johanna Rojola, the equivalent of our Comics Laureate in Finland – and one of Finland’s leading comic artists; and comics art rock star, Petteri Tikkanen.

The Festival will also be celebrating the work of the late Leo Baxendale, one of Britain’s most influential comic creators, who, sadly, died last month. A special one-off print of Leo’s work, donated by the artist himself, is to be put on permanent display in the Brewery Arts Centre.

The Comics Clock Tower will also be packed with comic creators from across the UK and beyond, who will also  be announced this month.

There will also be book launches aplenty, including Grandville: Force Majeure, Festival patron Bryan Talbot’s fifth and final Grandville book.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is the only one of its kind in the UK, taking place in one of the UK’s most beautiful areas – the English Lake District in the North West of the country, in the market town of Kendal. Modelled on European-style festivals, such as Angoulême in France, it takes over the whole town for a weekend of comic art. Its aim is to celebrate the whole spectrum of comic art, inspiring existing comic art fans and creators and, it hopes, generating new audiences and creators too. It invests in creators through a commissioning programme and has an emphasis on developing international collaborations.

• Buy your tickets for the fifth Lakes International Comic Art Festival here

Melinda Gebbie

Melinda Gebbie’s trail of imagery is littered with low-brow characters gleaned from her own career as an underground cartoonist and self-taught painter. Discover more about her kaleidoscopic world of style and texture at the festival this year!

Melinda Gebbie’s comics are different from the Underground background she shared with other San Fransisco cartoonists from the 1970s. While Robert Crumb was fixating on big-legged ‘gurls’, and Gilbert Shelton was plucking his Furry Freak Brothers from out of one marijuana-related catastrophe after another, Melinda was drawing the other cartoonists around her, capturing their visages and words on paper and including them as characters in her own world.

Her female characters are as odd in their political and social environments as she is herself. She uses comix storytelling to underline cultural movements which drift like her characters, clothed in a Surrealist tale in one instance, featuring Federico Garcia Lorca playing a guitar in her own kitchen, while Andre Breton and Benjamin Peret entertain her house guests, to a pastiche of Dante and Milton’s circles of Heaven and Hell, peopled by her own contemporary cartooning comrades-in-art.

MELINDA GEBBIE ONLINE
Web: www.melindagebbie.com

Tom Richmond

MAD Magazine cover by Tom Richmond
Caricaturist, cartoonist and humorous illustrator, Tom is the current superstar of the ultimate satirical magazine, MAD, and recipient of the highest honour in cartooning, Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, Reuben Awards, USA – a tour de force in every sense!

Tom Richmond began his career at age 18 as a caricaturist at a theme park in 1985. Now one of the most highly respected and successful freelance humorous illustrators working today, he does his award-winning art for a great variety of clients including Scholastic, Sports Illustrated for Kids, National Geographic World, Time Digital, Penthouse, GQ, Marvel Comics, The Cartoon Network, Warner Bros Animation, Simon and Schuster Publishing, Jeff Dunham Enterprises, and many more.

He is best known as one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” at MAD Magazine, where his caricatures and illustrations have been featured in film and TV parodies and articles regularly since 2000. He is the author of the best-selling caricature instruction book The Mad Art of Caricature, which has become the standard in the industry. His many awards include being twice honored as “Caricaturist of the Year” from the International Society of Caricature Artists, and the Reuben award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” from the National Cartoonists Society, arguably cartooning’s highest honour. He works from a studio in his home in Burnsville, MN.

TOM RICHMOND ONLINE
Web: www.tomrichmond.com
Twitter: @art4mad
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Tom Richmond appears at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2017 courtesy of the National Cartoonists Society and Wacom

Rick Stromoski

Soup to Nutz by Rick Stromski

Rick Stromoski is one of the USA’s most popular and prolific cartoonists, drawing and painting anything and everything from superheroes to urban landscapes with great style, humour and originality.

Rick’s work appears in magazines, children’s and humour books, national advertising, licensed products and network television. His nationally synidicated newspaper comic strip, Soup to Nuts, appears in over 150 newspapers.

He has been nominated for his illustration work by the National Cartoonists Society twelve times and has been awarded the Reuben Division Award for Best Artist on three occasions.

Rick has illustrated children’s books for Macmillan, Harcourt Brace, Candlewick Press, McGraw-Hill, Random House, Scholastic, Golden Books, Contemporary Books, Irena Chalmers Publishing, Workman and Andrews McMeel.

Rick lives in the historic district of Suffield with his wife Danna, daughter Molly, along with their dog Lucy and fighting cats, Sox and Shoes.

RICK STROMOSKI ONLINE
Web: www.rickstromoski.com
Twitter: @souptonutz1
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Rick Stromoski appears at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2017 courtesy of the National Cartoonists Society and Wacom

Lakes International Comic Art Festival