2019

Floyd Norman has been working in the entertainment business a very long time. He began his professional career while still in high school working as an assistant on Archie Comics. Enrolling in Art Center College of Design in the early fifties he dropped out of school when offered a position at Walt Disney Studios. Floyd learned his animation ropes doing the tedious, grunt work of an apprentice inbetweener. By the sixties, he suddenly found himself in Walt’s prestigious story department working on The Jungle Book and life has never been the same.

Audrey Niffenegger is an artist and a writer. Her novels The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry were both international bestsellers. She recently collaborated with Wayne McGregor on a ballet, Raven Girl, for the Royal Opera House Ballet, and on Bizarre Romance, a collection of comics, with her husband, the artist Eddie Campbell. The Time Traveler’s Wife is being adapted into a television series for HBO by Steven Moffat. Ms. Niffenegger is writing a sequel, The Other Husband.

2019 marks the year that legendary artist Todd McFarlane makes history with the release of the historic Spawn #300 and record-breaking Spawn #301. These milestones make Spawn the longest-running independent comic in North America.

The road to McFarlane’s history-making comic run began in 1992 with the formation of Image Comics and the release of Spawn #1 the top-selling independent comic of all-time, and one of the most popular comic heroes in the world.

Ulli Lust was born in Vienna in 1967. In 1995 she moved to Berlin to study graphic design. Her work ranges from comics journalism, to erotic-mythological poetry, to graphic autobiography. She runs the online publishing company Electrocomics, which publishes e-books and online comics by a growing group of international cartoonists.

Joseph Michael Linsner is most well-known for writing and painting the adventures of his creation Dawn, his personal Pin-Up Goddess. Since her debut appearance on the cover of Cry for Dawn #1 in 1989, Dawn has struck a chord with thousands of fans on an international level. She is currently published in six languages and has come to life in the form of statues, action figures, and lithographs.

Mark Evanier has been writing comic books since he was 17, having started reading them when he was about that many minutes old. He apprenticed with the great Jack Kirby and has written much about Jack and comic book history. He's written countless comics including many with the superstars of Disney, Warner Brothers, and Hanna-Barbera, as well as Blackhawk and others for DC, his own co-creations including The DNAgents, Crossfire, and Magnor, plus he does something (God knows what) on Groo the Wanderer with Sergio Aragonés.

Wendy Pini has been drawing literally since the age of two, and has worked for Marvel, DC, First Comics, Comico, Berkley, Tor Books, and many other publishers.

Richard Pini is the co-creator, sometimes-writer, editor, and publisher for the long-running fantasy graphic novel series Elfquest. He is the author of the Eisner Award-nominated art book Line of Beauty—The Art of Wendy Pini, as well as co-author and editor of The Art of Elfquest, and Elfquest—The Art of the Story. A graduate of MIT in astronomy as well as planetarium writer, lecturer, and teacher, he has contributed articles to magazines on the wonders of the heavens.

Paul Levitz is a comic fan (The Comic Reader), editor (Batman), writer (Legion of Super-Heroes, executive (30 years at DC, ending as president and publisher), historian (75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Myth-Making (Taschen, 2010)), and educator (including the American Graphic Novel at Columbia).

Willie Ito hails from San Francisco, California. At the age of five, he realized that cartooning and animation were in his future.