Special Guests

Richard Friend is an American comics illustrator born and raised in San Diego, California. Originally hired by Image Comics/WildStorm, he worked on such titles as Gen 13, Wetworks, WildC.A.T.s (garnering an Eisner Award nomination with penciller Travis Charest), Danger Girl, Steampunk, and The Authority. Richard moved over to Vertigo working on Madame Xanadu; the series was nominated for 4 Eisner Awards in its premiere year. He has gone on to work for DC comics on titles such as Batman: Dark Knight, Detective Comics, Forever Evil, Wonder Woman, and is currently working on Immortal Men. Richard also does fine art and illustration, premiering his original series the "Black Drawings" in Culver City art gallery Century Guild with an Alphonse Mucha exhibit. He is also a "YouTuber" posting daily videos on the creation of comics and working and surviving in the comics field. He is currently writing and illustrating his first original comic book story while documenting the entire process on YouTube.

Elizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of 13 genre-spanning novels and 4 collections of short fiction. Her work has received the World Fantasy Award (4 times), Nebula Award (twice), Shirley Jackson Award (3 times), International Horror Guild Award (3 times), the Mythopoeic Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, among others, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. Her recent, critically acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes” [Katherine Dunn]—Generation Loss, Available Dark, and Hard Light—have been compared to those of Patricia Highsmith. With Paul Witcover, in the early 1990s she created and wrote DC Comics’ groundbreaking Anima, the first comics series to feature gay and bisexual characters, including the eponymous superheroine. She is a longtime reviewer and critic for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Salon, among many others, and writes a regular book review column for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She also teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing. She divides her time between the Maine coast and North London.

A one-time freelance magazine cartoonist who has also published in comic strip, editorial cartoon, and comic book genres, R.C. Harvey is an award-winning comics chronicler who explores the artistry as well as the history of the medium. Among his 13 books are The Art of the Comic Book (an aesthetic history), biographies of Milton Caniff, Gus Arriola, and Murphy Anderson, and the forthcoming enhanced second edition of his autobiographical Not Just Another Pretty Face: The Confessions and Confections of a Girlie Cartoonist. Harvey publishes regularly in The Comics Journal and produces a biweekly online magazine Rants & Raves at www.RCHarvey.com, where he has been reviewing current comics and reporting news and lore about cartooning for 19 years.

Larry F. Houston is the Emmy-nominated producer/director of The X-Men animated show, the phenomenally successful 1990s series that was part of the foundation that helped launch Marvel’s multi-billion-dollar franchises. Hired by Filmation Studios as the first African American Saturday Morning storyboard artist, he storyboarded and directed some of the favorite ’80s and ’90s classic shows such as Thundarr, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe The Movie, Mr. T, Batman, Jonny Quest, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Captain Planet, Fantastic Four, Mighty Orbots, and Bionic Six. Houston pencilled He-Man Mini-Comics and promises new stories for The Vanguards, his creator-owned super-heroines first published through Charlton Bullseye.

Lynn Johnston is the Canadian creator of For Better or For Worse. This family-based comic strip has been syndicated since 1979 and was named Best Syndicated Comic Strip in 1992. At its peak, For Better or For Worse appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers in 23 countries and was translated into 8 languages for a devoted readership of more than 220 million.

Johnston was born in Collingwood, Ontario and grew up in British Columbia. After living in Manitoba and Ontario for many years, she now calls North Vancouver, BC home once again. Johnston is the first woman to receive a Rueben Award for Cartoonist of the Year by the National Cartoonist Society (1985). She has also received the Order of Canada and claims a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. In 2008 Johnston retired from For Better or For Worse, at which time the comic strip was republished from the beginning and is now in its eighth year of reruns. In 2015 she was honored by the Art Gallery of Sudbury in Sudbury, Ontario with a touring exhibit of her work.