Comic-Con 2015 Special Guests

Jeff Smith is known best as the creator of Bone. Smith spearheaded a new era of independent comics publishing in the early 1990s when he joined the self-publishing movement. Now published in 23 languages, Bone has won awards around the world, including 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harveys. In 2005, Bone, in full color for the first time, was chosen to launch Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic Books, putting comics back into the hands of millions of children.

In 2008, Smith began the Tesla-inspired science fiction series RASL. It was published as a single New York Times bestselling hardcover in 2013 by Smith’s own Cartoon Books and won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel–Reprint in 2014.

Smith’s webcomic about the first human to leave Africa 2,000,000 years ago, Tuki Save the Humans (at Boneville.com), won the 2014 National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for Best Online Comic.

Richard Starkings is the Eisner and Eagle award–winning creator and writer of Image Comics’ Hip Flask (with Ladrönn) and Elephantmen (with Moritat,  Boo Cook, and Axel Medellin), now in development as a major motion picture. He has also written comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, The Real Ghostbusters, and Transformers. He is perhaps best known for founding the Comicraft studio and providing lettering for books such as Batman: The Killing Joke, Generation X, Marvels, Danger Girl, Marineman, and Battle Chasers. Comicraft fonts are now the mainstay of the comic book lettering industry, and over 300 font families are available at Comicraft's online store. Richard lives in Los Angeles.

Jim Steranko is one of the most controversial figures in pop culture, with a dozen successful careers to his credit: author, illustrator, magician, designer, musician, escape artist, historian. He is cited as one of the prime architects of Marvel Comics.Wizard magazine credited Steranko as the 5th Most Influential Artist in Comics’ History. He has painted a multitude of movie posters, record albums, and book covers; and in 1975, created Red Tide, the first modern graphic novel. As the editor-publisher of the international newsstand entertainment magazine Prevue, he conducted hundreds of superstar interviews and penned more than three million words. His two volumes of The History of Comics have sold more than 100,000 copies each. As a filmmaker, he collaborated with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas—for whom he created the look of Indiana Jones—and Francis Ford Coppola on some of their most popular films. His Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV reviews for The Hollywood Reporter occasionally elicited more hits than any other feature; he shook up Twitter with his innovative TNT technique; and is currently prepping “An Evening with Steranko” for live theatrical venues across the country. And he's still the best-dressed man in comics.

J. Michael Straczynski co-wrote/co-created the upcoming Sense8, which will debut on Netflix in June and which he executive produced alongside the Wachowskis (Matrix films). He is currently writing and producing Titans, a new feature film for Peter Chernin (Planet of the Apes) in association with Graphic India, is developing an anthology series for SyFy, is working on a spy series for the British network ITV, and is adapting Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars books for Spike TV. His Superman: Earth One, volume 3 has, at the time of this writing, been sitting on the New York Times bestseller list for six weeks. On the theory that the only good writer is a dead writer, he attributes his success to having been killed in an avalanche in Bolivia in 1978.

Jillian Tamaki is a Canadian illustrator and comics artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the creator of two books of personal works (including Skim, with cousin Mariko Tamaki), and the ongoing webcomic, Super Mutant Magic Academy. Her most recent graphic novel is This One Summer, with Mariko Tamaki.