Comic-Con International: San Diego 2013 featured an amazing roster of special guests. Here's the list.
Comic-Con 2013 Special Guests
Jose Delbo
Artist, Superman, Wonder Woman
The Argentinean-born artist Jose Delbo has illustrated comic books for the past 50 years for fans across the world. He published his first works at the age of only 16. He moved to the United States in the 1960s and began working on classics such as Billy the Kid, Judge Colt, and the Lone Ranger, as well as illustrating The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. His numerous works include The Twilight Zone, The Brady Bunch, Hogan’s Heroes, The Monkees, The Mod Squad, Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Transformers, ThunderCats, 101 Dalmatians, The Little Mermaid, The Mighty Ducks, Raggedy Ann, Little Lulu, Barbie, Wonder Woman, and many more.
Derek T. Dingle
Co-founder, Milestone Media, co-creator, Static Shock
Derek T. Dingle is senior VP/editor-in-chief of Black Enterprise magazine. He is responsible for the strategic planning and editorial direction of the magazine and has executive oversight of both Black Enterprise television shows: Black Enterprise Business Report and Our World with Black Enterprise. Dingle founded and served as president and CEO of Milestone Media Inc., the nation’s largest black-owned comic book company. Distributed by DC Comics, Milestone produced an average of eight monthly titles and sold more than 10 million copies from 1993 to 1998. One of the characters he co-created, Static Shock, was developed into an animated series that ran on the WB Network and Cartoon Network.
Paul Dini
Writer/producer, Batman: The Animated Series
Paul Dini realized his future lay in the worlds of cartoons, comics, and television when he attended his first Comic-Con in 1975. Since that time he has co-produced Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, Batman Beyond, and scripted episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Justice League Unlimited. Dini story-edited the first season of Lost and created Tower Prep. A winner of Emmy, Eisner, and Harvey awards, Dini has written a number of series for DC Comics (Detective, Zatanna, Gotham City Sirens) and wrote the stories for the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City video games. Dini also writes his own characters Jingle Belle and Madame Mirage and somehow finds a free weekend each year to travel back to San Diego where it all began.
Mark Evanier
Writer, producer, comics historian
Mark Evanier has worked with Jack Kirby; written hundreds of comic books, including Blackhawk, New Gods, Bugs Bunny, The DNAgents, Crossfire, Scooby Doo, and Tarzan; and written dozens of TV shows, both live-action and animated, the latter including most of the animated Garfield shows for the last 20 years. He is the author of several books on comics, including Kirby: King of Comics, which won two Harvey Awards and one Eisner. He has several other Eisners for his work with Sergio Aragonés on Groo the Wanderer and other silly comics. And he's hosted countless panels at both Comic-Con and WonderCon.
Christine Feehan
Photo by Cassandra Young
Author, Dark Prince, Dark Hunger
Number-one New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan has over 40 novels published, including four series. Her debut novel, Dark Prince, received three of the nine Paranormal Excellence Awards in Romantic Literature (PEARL) for 1999. Since then she has been published by Leisure Books and Pocket Books and is currently writing for Berkley/Jove. Her first manga, Dark Hunger, was released in 2007. She also has earned seven more PEARL awards and numerous honors throughout her career, including being a nominee for the RWA’s RITA.Feehan has received a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times and the Borders 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ellen Forney
Writer/artist, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me
Ellen Forney’s New York Times bestselling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, was named a Best Graphic Memoir of 2012 by The Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, and Publishers Weekly and it has been nominated for a 2013 Eisner Award. She created the Eisner-nominated comic books I Love Led Zeppelin and Monkey Food and collaborated with Sherman Alexie on National Book Award–winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. She is the 2012 Stranger Genius Award winner in Literature, teaches comics at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts, swims and does yoga, and fixes things with rubber bands and paper clips.
Gary Frank
Artist, Superman: Secret Origin, Batman Earth One
Gary Frank was born in Bristol, UK, and began working for Marvel UK in the 1990s on Motormouth and Killpower. From there he moved to The Incredible Hulk for Marvel. Then came Supergirl and Gen13 at DC, before trying his hand at creator-owned work with Kin for Top Cow, where he also worked on Midnight Nation with J. Michael Straczynski. Returning to Marvel with JMS, he worked on Supreme Power and Squadron Supreme, as well as some more Hulk stuff and a couple of issues of Avengers with Geoff Johns. Gary then followed Geoff to DC, where they worked together on Action Comics, Superman: Secret Origin, Batman Earth One, and Shazam!
Charlotte Fullerton
Photo by Eugene Son
Writer, Ben 10: Omniverse, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
Two-time Emmy nominee (Outstanding Original Song—Children’s and Animation, 2012: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Outstanding Writing in Animation, 2010: Fairly Oddparents) Charlotte Fullerton is currently co-story editing Ben 10: Omniverse. She's written a wide variety of animation scripts for such shows as Kim Possible, Super Hero Squad, Care Bears, and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, as well as videogames, comics, and children's books. Charlotte and her friends' comedy short Troops was named the #1 Star Wars fan film ever by Time magazine. On a personal note, Charlotte is the widow of renowned writer/producer Dwayne McDuffie, one of the co-founders of Milestone Comics.
Neil Gaiman
Photo by Kimberly Butler
Writer, Sandman, American Gods, Coraline
Neil Gaiman is a bestselling author of award-winning novels for adults (American Gods, Neverwhere) and novels for younger readers (including the Newbery Medal-winning The Graveyard Book and Coraline, on which the Academy Award-nominated film Coraline was based). He has written award-winning short stories. He wrote comics before it was cool to write comics, including Sandman (which the LA Times called "the greatest epic in the history of comic books"). He writes songs and poems, does radio broadcasts, and even writes for TV, most recently winning the Hugo award for an episode of Doctor Who. He is not actually sure how many books he will have coming out in 2013, but he is intensely proud of his forthcoming novel The Ocean At the End of the Lane. 1.8 million people follow him on Twitter. Born in the UK, he currently lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife, the blogger and rock star Amanda Palmer. He has somehow managed to reach middle age without necessarily ever being able to find his keys.
Tom Gauld
Illustrator/cartoonist, Goliath, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack
Tom Gauld was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1976. He works as an illustrator and cartoonist and has contributed work to the Guardian, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Tom has created a number of short comic books, including Hunter and Painter and The Gigantic Robot. His graphic novel Goliath retells the story of David and Goliath from the giant's point of view. Tom makes a weekly cartoon for the Guardian newspaper; many of these are collected in his new book, You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
Russ Heath
Artist, The Haunted Tank, Sea Devils
Legendary artist Russ Heath is best known for his work in war and Western comics. His career started in the late 1940s in some of Timely’s westerns. He also worked in the suspense, crime, horror, and superhero genres while at Timely/Atlas. His work in DC’s “Big 5” war titles (All-American Men of War, GI Combat, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories) was known for its authenticity and attention to detail. His 1960s series Sea Devils was a fan favorite. Heath was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2009 and is an Inkpot Award winner.
Faith Erin Hicks
Writer/artist, Friends With Boys, The Adventures of Superhero Girl
Faith Erin Hicks writes and draws too many comics. Previous works include Zombies Calling, The War at Ellsmere, Brain Camp (with Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan), Bigfoot Boy (with J. Torres), Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (with Prudence Shen), and The Adventures of Superhero Girl. She is also the artist and co-writer (with Neil Druckmann) of The Last of Us: American Dreams, the comic book prequel to Naughty Dog's Playstation 3 game The Last of Us. She lives in the mysterious Canadian province of Nova Scotia.