Hello from the founders of the Comics Advocacy Group, and welcome to the third installment in our series highlighting the thirty recipients of our inaugural CAG Mini Grant! You can find previous posts here. Please look forward to the rest, and thank you again for your support!
Mewniverse
I am a 36 year old gay cartoonist based in New England, and run a small business surrounding projects that matter to me! I am working to get my dreams of being self published and sharing comics with stories that queer people can truly enjoy as much as I love creating them!
For more information, and to follow Mewniverse, visit https://daddytrash.com (18+).
Jonathan Todd
Jonathan Todd strives to capture the nuances and anxieties of everyday life through comics for the encouragement of children, teens and the adults they become. In addition to writing and drawing comics, he teaches cartooning to all ages and enjoys his family, writing snail-mail letters and digging bebop jazz.
For more information, and to follow Jonathan, visit https://www.jtstories.com.
Joy Alicia Raines
Joy is an artist, writer, and designer based in Marietta, Georgia. Her illustrated poetry, comics, and hybrid works have been published by The New York Times, The Offing, and 7×7 among others. She is currently working on her debut literary fiction novel.
For more information, and to follow Joy’s work, visit joyaliciaraines.com.
Julia Mata
I am a comics writer and illustrator from Southern California with familial roots in Central America and the Eastern European Jewish Pale of Settlement. In the illustrations and comics I create, I center equity, representation of women of color, and nuanced narratives with space for joy, beauty, and emotional growth. I work predominantly in comics, books, and DIY publications as both an art form and an ethos, aiming for easily distributable access to my work as print media in non-art spaces.
For more information, and to follow Julia, visit www.instagram.com/cipota666.
Julie Cardenas
Julie Cardenas is a San Jose, California based artist. She is a first generation Mexican-Peruvian-American who uses her lived experience to inform her paintings and storytelling. Currently, she is working on a 12 part serialized food comic featuring all of her childhood favorite foods.
For more information, and to follow Julie, visit comidaycomicsycafe.squarespace.com.
More About the CAG Mini Grant
The CAG Mini Grant provides small, unrestricted funding to comic creators who reside within the United States and are in need of additional resources. As the cost of food and rent are growing prohibitive, many creators find themselves taking on additional work with time they do not have in order to make ends meet. Our goal in offering this $500 mutual aid grant is to give cartoonists some time and space to work on the projects most important to them.
This launch effort was made possible by many wonderful donors. If you would like to contribute to our future grants and other initiatives, please consider making a tax-deductible donation (or setting up a recurring donation) – or let us know if you’d be interested in sharing your expertise as an in-kind contribution!
If you would like to receive updates from the Comics Advocacy Group, please follow us on social media (twitter, bluesky) and we’ll let you know the moment we have our newsletter up and running. We are a young nonprofit, and your support makes all the difference. Thank you!!
