Special Guests

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an award-winning playwright, comic book and screenwriter. He was brought in to overhaul Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and his adaption of American Psycho began its Broadway run in March 2016. Television credits include Big Love, Looking, Glee, and Supergirl. For Marvel Comics, he wrote the monthly adventures of the Fantastic Four (Harvey Award, Best New Talent), Sensational Spider-Man, Nightcrawler, and an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand. As chief creative officer for Archie Comics Publications, he scripts Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and is producing Riverdale, a television pilot based on the Archie characters for the CW.

Derf Backderf is the writer/artist of three graphic novels: Trashed, My Friend Dahmer, and Punk Rock & Trailer Parks .His comic strip The City appeared in over 140 weekly newspapers during its 24-year run. He won an Angoulême Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Award and has been nominated for Eisner, Harvey, Ignatz, and Rueben Awards. He lives in Cleveland, for reasons he can no longer remember.

Michael Barrier founded and edited Funnyworld, the first magazine devoted to serious examination of comic art and animated cartoons. He is the author of Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books (University of California Press, 2014), The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney (University of California Press, 2007), and Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age (Oxford University Press, 1999). He is co-author, with Harvey Kurtzman, of From Aargh! to Zap!: Harvey Kurtzman’s Visual History of the Comics (Prentice Hall, 1991) and co-editor, with Martin Williams, of A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics (Smithsonian/Abrams, 1981).

Cece Bell is an author and illustrator of books for children. She lives in an old church and she works right next door in a newish barn. Her graphic novel memoir, El Deafo, which chronicles her childhood experiences with hearing loss, received a Newbery Honor and an Eisner Award in 2015. Cece's other books include the Geisel Honor book Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover, Bee-Wigged, and the Sock Monkey series. She has also illustrated books written by her husband, Tom Angleberger, including the picture book Crankee Doodle, as well as the Inspector Flytrap chapter book series (August 2016). Check out www.cecebell.com for more info.

Berkeley Breathed began his art career in high school when he drew a headless spaceman outside a spaceship and then spat red paint where the head should have been, causing the illusion of an explosion, naming it “Gesundheit.”

In the early 1980s Breathed began drawing Bloom County, a political satire, for college newspapers. Nationwide recognition came with his creation of Opus, an insecure penguin who reflected the political conscience of America. He furthered his fame with his creation of Bill the Cat, who was the exact opposite of Opus in that he represented the scum of America. The combination of Opus and Bill was a huge success and saved Breathed from the near demise of his strip.  

When Bloom County ended, Breathed next created Outland, a strip in which Opus, Bill, and several other characters resurfaced in a utopia-like world. After Outland ended he then started Opus, a new comic strip featuring Opus, Bill, and other characters.

In 2015, Breathed pioneered a new paradigm for newspaper comic strips by bringing back Bloom County without the paper. Bloom County now appears exclusively on Facebook, with a new collection due to be published by IDW in 2016.