On Saturday, April 19, 2025, the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California hosted Cartoon-A-Thon: Celebrate 25 Years of Comics with Paige Braddock and Peanuts, a gathering of Bay Area cartoonists. The event included artist signings, one-on-one conversations with creators, and a featured panel with Braddock and her decades long career in the comic business.
If you’ve never been to the Schulz Museum, it really needs to be on the bucket list for anyone who appreciates comics. In addition to being a beautiful museum honoring the life and work of Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame, they regularly host events with various creators currently working in the business. There are not enough established institutions that celebrate this visual medium as a true art form, so having this museum just minutes from my home is a real blessing. I didn’t get a chance to chat with every creator at the event, but the energy in the room was positive and celebratory of the independent comic creators.
I was excited to talk to folks in an environment less hectic than a convention floor. Compared to the overwhelming mayhem of San Diego Comic-Con, it was easy to browse and chat with the artists present. Santa Rosa’s own Tom Beland, best known for Chicacabra and True Story, Swear to God was showing off a variety of one-of-a kind variant covers he had created. His heartfelt, personal comics have garnered a lot of great critical acclaim, and the sequel to his Chicacabra title is available on his Patreon. It looks amazing, and hopefully we will see it collected in a physical form in the future.
The iconic Brent Eric Anderson, co-creator of Astro City, was on hand to share decades worth of work. He is known for his detailed, character-driven art in superhero comics, and I was lucky enough to get his signature on one of my favorite X-Men stories of all time: “God Loves, Man Kills.” Anderson discussed a slew of books he has finished but remain without a publisher. One of which is a book he wrote with his wife Shirley Johnston titled El Jaguar: Origins, a graphic novel about a nameless shapeshifter from southern Mexico who, after a tragic past and supernatural initiation, escorts three lost children through the land of the dead in hopes of reuniting them with their parents. It looks amazing, and one hopes a major publisher will have the fortitude to get it distributed. Right next door was Eric Martin, known for his beautiful and expressive line work capturing international and local scenes, was there to share his book Travel Sketches.
Thien Pham launched onto the scene and made a huge splash with Family Style, a biographical book that explores food, identity, and memory. In addition to working on an eventual follow-up, he is currently doing the art for a comic re-telling of the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match, where IBM’s computer defeated the renowned master. In addition to all the other challenges that come from creating a historical comic of this nature, Thien noted that he had to take extra care to make sure the physical layout of the chess board represented the actual movements the two competitors used.
I only recently learned of San Francisco’s Eddie Ahn who recently published The Advocate. The book combines his experience as an environmental justice advocate with some great design work and visual storytelling, and we chatted about using the comic medium to show the work that goes into working as an activist. Julia Wertz, known for Impossible People and Drinking at the Movies, is acclaimed for her raw, honest, and often humorous autobiographical comics. She noted that her follow-up book is complete but will likely see publication in 2026.
The day included a panel spotlighting Paige Braddock, honoring her extensive contributions to comics, including her graphic novel series Jane’s World, children’s books like Stinky Cecil, and her tenure as creative director emeritus at Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates. Braddock received the Sparky Award from the Cartoon Art Museum, recognizing her impact on both LGBTQ+ representation in comics and the enduring legacy of Peanuts. When asked about receiving the Sparky, Paige said she was “extremely honored to receive this award. It means a lot to be recognized by The Cartoon Art Museum for my work in comics. I’ve literally been drawing comics since I was a kid and getting this recognition is truly meaningful.”
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