More NCSFest Guests Announced, More News!

The National Cartoonists Society has just announced a 2nd wave of guest creators for the inaugural NCSFest in Huntington Beach, CA May 17-19th, 2019! The current, updated guest list includes:

• Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead)
• Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucharacha),
• Jerry Van Amerongen (Ballard Street)
• Sergio Aragonés (Groo, MAD magazine)
• Pénélope Bagieu (Brazen),
• Ed Brubaker (Criminal, The Fade Out)
• Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World)
• Cathy Guisewite (Cathy)
• Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets)
• Rick Kirkman, Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott (Baby Blues and Zits)
• Patrick McDonnell (Mutts)
• Luke McGarry (Sad Chewie, MAD magazine)
• Bill Morrison (Yellow Submarine, MAD magazine)
• Sean Phillips (Criminal, The Fade Out)
• Tom Richmond (MAD magazine)
• David Silverman (The Simpsons)
• Dana Claire Simpson (Phoebe and Her Unicorn)
• Ann Telnaes (Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist)
• Simon Thorp and Graham Dury (VIZ)

The NCSFest has also extended the deadline for applying for an Artists Alley/Exhibitors tables and the ‘Marketplace” to Jan 31st, 2019. They are starting to fill up, though, so don’t delay if you want to be part of this unique celebration of comics and cartooning! Visit the NCSFest website to apply.

More info:

Based on the comic art festivals that are hugely popular in Europe, NCSFest will be held over the weekend of May 17-19, 2019. Hundreds of the world’s most celebrated creators are expected to attend the three-day event, participating in seminars, exhibitions, workshops, panel discussions and signing sessions, the vast majority of which will be free to the public. Downtown Huntington Beach will be the setting, with all events staged beachside, on the iconic pier, at the city’s Arts Center and library and in local hotels and businesses, all within easy walking distance.

Main Street, adjacent to the city of Huntington Beach’s world famous pier, will have marquees and tents just yards from the beach and the Pacific ocean. The festival will be closing off three blocks of Main Street, at the Pier, to traffic and to showcase its “Artists Alley” and “Marketplace.”

NCSFest will be staging extensive programming aimed at families in the City library, with artists conducting “how to” classes in one room while renowned children’s book creators read excerpts from their books in the other.

Across the street from the library, there will be four world class exhibitions at the huge Arts Center, and local businesses will feature art displays in their windows, creating a cartooning “Window Walk”.

At the beach there will be free seminars and signings open to the public, a comics/creators marketplace and an army of artists will be creating a giant mural along one side of the famous pier.

There are plans to involve local schools and we anticipate that there will be many, many thousands of people congregating at the beach to celebrate all things comics and cartoon related.

To create NCSfest, the Society has partnered with the Lakes International Comic Arts Festival, a much-admired annual festival held in the town of Kendal, in the picturesque Lake District of the UK. Julie Tait, Director of LICAF, will act as Assistant Director of NCSFest.