Happy 2015! There's not a lot of information out there yet about Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), but here's what I've been able to glean from CBR and their own Tumblr:
CXC will be a four-day festival of comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons and animation -- pretty much everything you can describe with the word "cartoons." The organizers are Tom Spurgeon, Jeff Smith, Lucy Caswell and Vijaya Iyer. Smith is the president and artistic director, and Spurgeon is the festival director. Spurgeon is moving to Columbus to help organize the event.
Although the festival starts in 2016, they're having a two-day "launch event" this fall, on October 2nd and 3rd. The first day will be hosted at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and the second day will be at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center. The second day is a comics expo, with up to 35 exhibitors. Sounds pretty small to me! (Comics creators, I can only imagine that those 35 slots will go pretty fast.)
When Smith spoke about the festival at ICAF, he talked about how most comics conventions happen in a windowless room in a hotel, which the attendees and exhibitors never leave, and how it could be in pretty much any city in the world. He contrasted that with the Angoulême Comics Festival, where the city gets involved and kind of makes it a civic event. He said he'd like Columbus to have something like what Angoulême has. That's a high bar, but the four people behind this know how to get stuff done.
In the initial CXC press release, Smith says he wants to "bring a first-class comics festival to Columbus." There's certainly that the city has to offer, including the Billy, the film theater at the Wexner Center, the Cultural Arts Center, CCAD, and all the comics creators we know and love.
