EMBARGOED RELEASE for JUNE 4, 2025 at 5 pm
Contact: Ben Towle, cxcfestival@gmail.com
CARTOON CROSSROADS COLUMBUS ANNOUNCES SPECIAL GUESTS
Eleventh edition of citywide festival takes place September 18 – 21
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), the international
showcase for cartoon art, is pleased to announce its featured guests for the 2025 festival running September 18th – 21st. For our eleventh festival, CXC brings cartoon storytellers, comic makers, animators and readers together in Columbus, Ohio.
“This is a special year for our festival, with a compelling mix of creators of graphic novels, political cartoons, comics and animation,” said Jeff Smith, co-founder of the festival and creator of the graphic novel series Bone. “To say we’re excited would be an understatement. Whatever your taste in comics and cartoon art, there’s something for you here, and lots of room to discover something new.”
The 11th festival will feature:
- Charles Burns is the prolific cartoonist known for his graphic novel Black Hole, covers for Time and The New Yorker, as well as his newest release, Final Cut. He gained prominence in Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman’s RAW magazine in the 1980s.
- Ann Telnaes is an editorial cartoonist in various mediums, including animation, visual essays and traditional print. She won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons in 2021 and 2025. She resigned from The Washington Post after one of the cartoons she submitted was rejected for criticizing tech and media billionaires.
- Ray Billingsley is the longtime creator of Curtis, a daily comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate that is notable for showing the dynamics of a Black family in the big city with humor and insight.
- Michel Fiffe is the creator of the action series Copra and the one-man anthology Zegas, which he self-publishes. He also writes about comics, including in The Comics Journal.
- John Musker is an accomplished animator, director and producer. He was co-director, along with Ron Clements, of Walt Disney films such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, The Princess and the Frog and Moana.
- And so many more! (See page two for a complete listing of special guests.)
“This year’s show is on track to be one of our best yet!” said Ben Towle, CXC programming co-chair and five-time Eisner-nominated cartoonist. “We always strive to represent the best of comics and cartooning across its many formats, genres, and places-of-origin, and the 2025 show is no exception. We’re featuring guests based everywhere from right here in Columbus to Tokyo and our guests are renowned creators working in daily newspaper comics, editorial cartoons, kids’ comics, feature animation, graphic novels, digital comics—and pretty much everything in between.”
Festival organizers will have more information about programming in the coming months. Follow CXC on social media (Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram) or check www.cartooncrossroadscolumbus.org for the latest.
CXC 2025 Programming will occur at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus Metropolitan Library, the Columbus Museum of Art, GFC: Gateway Film Center and the Wexner Center for the Arts.
CXC 2025 Special Guests include:
*Ray Billingsley (Curtis) *Charles Burns (Black Hole, Final Cut), *John Canemaker (The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, animation historian), *Katie Cook (Nothing Special, Gronk: A Monster’s Story), *Jerzy Drozd (The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue), *Kayla E. (Precious Rubbish, They Never Loved You), *Michel Fiffe (Copra), *Keita Katsushika (Higashi Tokyo, MachiMachi), *Lucy Knisley (Sugar Shack, Relish), *Marco Kohinata (My Lost Things, Light), *Patrick Lay (Death Strikes, Multi), *Matt Madden (99 Ways to Tell a Story, Ex Libris), *Lonnie Milsap (My Nib Is Cold!, My Mother Was Human!), *Tony Moore (The Walking Dead, Venom), *John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Moana), *Dan Nadel (Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life), *Mimi Pond (Over Easy, The Customer Is Always Wrong), *Ann Telnaes (editorial cartoonist), *Raúl the Third (Vamos!, Stuntboy), *Carol Tyler (Soldier’s Heart, Late Bloomer)
About Cartoon Crossroads Columbus
CXC is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that draws together Columbus educational and arts organizations including the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum; the Wexner Center for the Arts; Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD); the Columbus Museum of Art; the Columbus Metropolitan Library; The Laughing Ogre; GFC: Gateway Film Center. The festival is generously supported by the Greater Columbus Arts Council, White Castle, UBS, Columbus Dispatch / Dispatch.com, Ohio Arts Council, Orange Barrel Media, WCBE and Seventh Son Brewing Co. Special Guests underwritten with support from Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture (JPIC) and The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
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