Special Guests

Comic-Con 2022 will be held July 21-24 (with Preview Night on July 20) at the San Diego Convention Center. The following special guests are confirmed for this year's event.

Tomi Adeyemi

Tomi
Adeyemi

Named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, Tomi Champion-Adeyemi is a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Nigerian-American writer and storyteller based in Los Angeles. Her first novel, Children of Blood and Bone, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and is being developed into a movie by Paramount Pictures with Champion-Adeyemi writing and executive producing. Its highly anticipated sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, was also a New York Times bestseller. When she’s not working on her novels or watching BTS music videos, she can be found teaching creative writing at the thewritersroadmap.net.

Lorena Alvarez

Lorena Alvarez
Lorena
Alvarez

Lorena Alvarez Gómez was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, and studied Graphic Design and Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She alternates her work as a freelance illustrator with writing and drawing her own stories, combining her interest in the interaction between arts and science, color language, graphic storytelling, and its formal qualities. Lorena’s first comic, Nightlights, was nominated for two Eisner Awards in 2017. In 2019 she won the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award with her second book, Hicotea. She’s currently working in the third book of the Nightlights series, which has already translated to five languages.

Jane Baer

Comic-Con 2022 Special Guest: Jane Shattuck-Takamoto-Baer
Jane
Baer

Jane Shattuck-Takamoto-Baer began her career as an assistant animator on Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. She later animated on The Rescuers, The Fox & The Hound, and The Black Cauldron. Jane established Baer Animation Studios with her husband, Dale, where she redesigned/supervised animation on “Bennie-the-Cab” and produced the Toontown sequences for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  Later, as sole owner of Baer Animation, Jane produced for Sesame Street, animated the Freemont Street Experience in Las Vegas, and supervised animation on such films as Fletch Lives, Rover Dangerfield; Last Action Hero, and The Beautician and the Beast and was writer/executive producer on Annabelle’s Wish.

Henry Barajas

Henry Barajas
Henry
Barajas

Henry Barajas is a Latinx author based in Los Angeles. He is best known for his graphic memoir about his great-grandfather Ramon Jaurigue, titled La Voz De M.A.Y.O. Tata Rambo, and for the Latinx fantasy Helm Greycastle. Recently, Barajas wrote the Marvel/SOMOS Healthcare Avengers #1 issue aimed to inspire the people of New York City to get vaccinated, particularly the Latinx community that was disproportionately impacted by COVID.

Tom Batiuk

Tom Batiuk
Tom
Batiuk

Tom Batiuk was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1947 and graduated from Kent State University in 1969 with a BFA and a certificate in education. In 1970, while he was teaching, he began drawing a panel for the Teen Page of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram. Those strips led to the creation of Funky Winkerbean in 1972. In 1979, he launched John Darling into syndication with Tom Armstrong. Another character from Funky, Ed Crankshaft, soloed in his own strip in 1987. Tom’s collaborator on Crankshaft was Chuck Ayers and is now Dan Davis. Batiuk was honored with an Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International in 1999, and in 2008, the Lisa’s Story arc from Funky was a Pulitzer finalist.

Pierce Brown

Comic-Con 2022 Special Guest: Pierce Brown

Photo: Joan Allen

Pierce
Brown

Pierce Brown is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Red Rising series. Pierce’s work has been published in 33 languages and 35 territories. He lives in Los Angeles.

Cecil Castellucci

Comic-Con 2022 Special Guest: Cecil Castellucci

Photo: Rachel Warecki

Cecil
Castellucci

Cecil Castellucci is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of books and graphic novels for young adults, including Shade, The Changing Girl, Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, Soupy Leaves Home, The Year of the Beasts, Female Furies, Batgirl, and Odd Duck. Her newest graphic novel is Shifting Earth. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Tor.com, and other anthologies. She spends her time between Los Angeles and Montreal.

Soman Chainani

Comic-Con 2022 Special Guest: Soman Chainani
Soman
Chainani

Soman Chainani's debut series, The School for Good & Evil, has sold more than 3 million copies, has been translated into more than 30 languages across six continents, and will be a major motion picture from Netflix in 2022, starring Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington. His anthology of retold fairytales, Beasts & Beauty, was an instant New York Times bestseller, his seventh in a row. His next novel, Rise of the School For Good & Evil, will go on sale May 31, kickstarting a new series in his EverNever World universe.

Amy Chu

Amy Chu
Amy
Chu

Amy Chu is a writer for comics and TV and is a member of the faculty at the Kubert School and the School of Visual Arts. Her most recent work is the Netflix anime series DOTA: Dragon’s Blood, along with writing for Rick & Morty and Archie comics. For DC and Marvel she has written popular characters such as Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy, Deadpool, Ant-Man, and Iron Man. She is also known for her KISS, DMC, Red Sonja, and Green Hornet series and the children's graphic novels Sea Sirens and Sky Island with Eisner winner Janet Lee.

Ezra Claytan Daniels

Comic-Con 2022 Special Guest: Ezra Claytan Daniels
Ezra
Claytan Daniels

Ezra Claytan Daniels is a biracial (Black/white) American multidisciplinary artist and creator of the Eisner-nominated graphic novels Upgrade Soul and BTTM FDRS (with artist Ben Passmore). Ezra’s work has been featured on the Criterion Channel and at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum. He currently resides in Los Angeles, where he writes for film and television, including Doom Patrol for HBO Max, Horror Noire for Shudder, and Amazon Prime’s Night Sky.

Mark Evanier

Mark
Evanier

Mark Evanier attended his first San Diego Comic-Con in 1970 and has been to every one of these annual events ever since. He was then an assistant to the great Jack Kirby, whom he wrote about in his book Kirby, King of Comics. Mark has also written for live-action TV shows, animated TV shows (including various Garfield cartoons) and tons of comic books. The comics include working with Sergio Aragonés for 40 years on Groo the Wanderer, and many more.  He is also a historian of comic books and animation and hosts a mess of panels at every Comic-Con.

Danny Fingeroth

Comic-Con 2022 Special Guest: Danny Fingeroth

Photo Credit: Peter Nelson

Danny
Fingeroth

Danny Fingeroth was a writer and Group Editor at Marvel from 1977 to 1995. A consultant to Will Eisner Studios, Danny’s prose books include Superman on the Couch and Disguised as Clark Kent, of which audiobooks, read by him, will be released this year. His most recent book is A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee (St. Martin’s, 2019), an entertainment Book of the Year for The Times of London. Currently, he’s working on Wild Card! Jack Ruby’s Assault on History, to be published by Chicago Review Press.