SANTA CRUZ — Walk into any bookstore or library, and you will be guaranteed to find a plethora of graphic novels, maybe even entire sections dedicated to them. The combination of text and vivid imagery to tell long-form stories is a very popular format for both telling original stories and adapting comics and pre-existing books. Marvel and DC had early success with the medium in the ’80s with series such as “Marvel Graphic Novel” and “Watchmen,” and cartoonist Will Eisner is considered the father of the graphic novel with the publication of “A Contract with God” in 1978.
However, a year before that, artist Phil Yeh published “Even Cazco Gets the Blues,” kicking off a long and successful career and giving him the title of “Godfather of the Modern American Graphic Novel.” He will be stopping in the Santa Cruz area for an appearance at Atlantis Fantasyworld May 29 and a pair of workshops at the Felton and Downtown Santa Cruz libraries June 1. Yeh said he was going to be in the area anyway as he was planning to see folk singer Natalie Merchant at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga for a show that had been rescheduled from September.
He was recommended to appear at Atlantis Fantasyworld by a friend. “I don’t like to travel unless I’m doing something,” he said. “We’re doing a signing, and then I’m doing a couple of library events.
” Yeh has been drawing and painting since he was 2, a hobby encouraged by his engineer father who would frequently br.