Special Guests


A co-founder of Milestone Media, which sold over 10 million copies of groundbreaking comic books, Denys Cowan has numerous credits to his name, including Black Racer, Deathstroke, Black Lightning & Hong Kong Phooey, Batman: Lovers & Madmen, Blind Justice, Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers, The Question, Hardware, and Static. Static became one of the most beloved characters in the Milestone Universe, spawning a hugely successful animated series, Static Shock. Denys directed and produced the series, which was nominated for an Emmy. As senior vice president of animation at BET, Cowan was responsible for the creation, development, and production of animated programming, which included the development and production of the Black Panther animated series. Serving as senior vice president of Motown Animation and Filmworks, he created and developed a number of shows with Fox, ABC, Disney and Nickelodeon. More recently, Denys illustrated the Django Unchained graphic novel, which was inspired by the Oscar-winning film by Quentin Tarantino.


David Dastmalchian’s feature film debut was as the Joker’s deranged henchman Thomas Schiff in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. In 2014 he wrote and starred in the feature film Animals, directed by Collin Schiffli. In 2018, David wrote and starred in All Creatures Here Below opposite Karen Gillan, also directed by Collin Schiffli. David returned to the comics-film universe in Marvel Studio’s Ant-Man opposite Paul Rudd as tech wizard Kurt. In 2018, he reprised his role as Kurt in the sequel, Ant-Man & The Wasp. Other feature film appearances include The Belko Experiment, Blade Runner 2049, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, The Suicide, Dune, The Boogeyman, Oppenheimer, Boston Strangler, The Last Voyage of Demeter, and Late Night with the Devil. In 2020, David realized a lifelong dream as creator and writer of the Dark Horse horror comic series Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter followed by the 2022 continuation of the series with Count Crowley: Amateur Midnight Monster Hunter followed in 2023 with volume 3 – Count Crowley: Mediocre Midnight Monster Hunter.


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 over 40 years on Groo the Wanderer, and many more. He is also a historian of comic books and animation.


Danny Fingeroth is a cultural historian and commentator. His books include Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society and Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero. His 2019 biography of Stan Lee, A Marvelous Life, tackles the many controversies surrounding the Marvel co-creator. Fingeroth’s most recent book, 2023’s Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin, chronicles the history-shattering Ruby’s bizarre life. Danny spent 18 years as a writer and group editor at Marvel and has lectured and taught at institutions including the Smithsonian and Columbia University. He created and edited Write Now magazine for TwoMorrows, has consulted on comics exhibitions, and is chair of Will Eisner Week, an annual series of worldwide events celebrating the legacy of the comics innovator.  


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Jessica Fong is a Bay Area–based illustrator known for her stunning cover art in DC Comics’ GLAAD Award–winning Poison Ivy series. Her artwork blends surrealism with nature, often featuring dark yet beautiful imagery. Fong’s work captures the “terribly sublime,” a theme that is both haunting and aesthetically captivating. She contributes a range of covers for DC, Marvel, Mad Cave Studios, IDW Publishing, Image Comics, Heroic Signatures, and more. Her work can also be found in Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, Critical Role’s Midst series, Fandom Inc, and Marvel Snap.


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Matt Forbeck is an award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author and game designer of over 35 novels and countless other books and games. His projects have won a Peabody Award, a Scribe Award, and numerous ENnies and Origins awards. He is also the president of the Diana Jones Award Foundation, which celebrates excellence in gaming. His latest work includes the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Core Rulebook, The Cataclysm of Kang campaign, and the X-Men Expansion and the Spider-Verse Expansion, plus Hard West 2, Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, and the Shotguns & Sorcery 5E Sourcebook based on his novels. This summer, look for his latest game book Minecraft: Roll for Adventure: The Temple of the Charged Creeper, written with his son Marty.


Mitch Gerads is a comics artist who has made a career out of bringing humanity and realism to the superhuman and unreal. Best known for his much-lauded work at DC Comics with writer Tom King on Mister Miracle, Batman, Strange Adventures, and The Sheriff of Babylon, he lives and draws in Phoenix, Arizona, with his Catwoman, Lauren, and his Robin, West.


Yaya Han is a cosplayer, designer, and author with more than 20 years of activity in the fandom world. Yaya has made over 400 costumes and has been featured in two U.S. network TV shows, countless magazines, books, newspapers, and online media. Yaya’s work has impacted cosplay profoundly and has helped shape it into a commercial industry. She is the first cosplayer to bring branded cosplay-focused sewing/crafting products to mass retail, and she chronicled the evolution of modern cosplay in the book Yaya Han’s World of Cosplay.


Derek Kirk Kim is an award-winning writer, artist, and director. He is the creator of The Last Mermaid from Image Comics and the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Award–winning graphic novel Same Difference and Other Stories. He garnered his second Eisner Award with The Eternal Smile, a collaboration with Gene Luen Yang. In television, Kim has worked as a director, storyboard artist, and character designer for numerous shows, including Amphibia, Adventure Time, and Green Eggs and Ham on Netflix. He eats chips with chopsticks.


Jim Lee, the world-renowned comic book artist, writer, editor, and publisher, is currently president, publisher, and chief creative officer of DC. He leads creative efforts to integrate DC’s publishing portfolio of characters and stories across all media, supporting Warner Bros. Discovery’s family of brands and studios. Jim joined DC in 1998 and has overseen many of the company’s highly successful publishing programs, including the Rebirth line of comics and The New 52 initiative that relaunched the entire line of monthly superhero comic books. As part of the revamp, Lee designed and reimagined the new, more contemporary costumes for some of the DC Universe’s most iconic characters, including Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Jim holds a BA in psychology from Princeton University and started his professional career at Marvel Comics, where his work on the X-Men continues to hold the all-time sales record for single-issue sales.

Saturday only


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Todd McFarlane is the Emmy and Grammy Award–winning director/producer and creator of one of the world’s best-selling comics, Spawn. He is known for his work on Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man, where he co-created Venom. Todd is co-founder and President of Image Comics and is CEO of McFarlane Toys (which revolutionized the action figure industry), as well as Todd McFarlane Productions and McFarlane Films. Spawn earned a Guinness World Record for “longest-running creator-owned superhero comic book series.” McFarlane’s latest Kickstarter, Medieval Spawn, was fully funded in under two minutes and became the fastest toys campaign to surpass $1M. In 2025, McFarlane is launching nine new comic titles.


Sam Maggs is a New York Times bestselling author of books, comics, and video games. Her novels include Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars and The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope. She’s written for games like Call of Duty: Vanguard, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and Marvel’s Spider-Man, and her comics and graphic novels include Marvel Action: Captain Marvel, Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins, and Tell No Tales: Pirates of the Southern Seas. She is also an on-air host for networks like Nerdist. A Canadian in Los Angeles, she misses Coffee Crisp and bagged milk.


Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was a New York Times bestseller for 40 weeks and won the British Gold Dagger award for crime fiction. His screenplay for the film was nominated for an Academy Award. Six other Sherlock Holmes novels followed. Meyer made his directing debut from his own screenplay, Time After Time (1979). He wrote and/or directed Star Treks II, IV, and VI and directed The Day After (1983), the most-watched movie ever made for television, with 100 million viewers in a single night. His memoir, The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, was published by Viking in 2009. His miniseries Houdini (2014) was based on the Houdini biography written by his father, Bernard C. Meyer. His seventh Holmes novel, Sherlock Holmes and The Real Thing, will be published this summer by the Mysterious Press.


Sean Murphy is a comic book creator known for work on such books as Joe the Barbarian with Grant Morrison, Chrononauts with Mark Millar, American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest and The Wake with Scott Snyder, Tokyo Ghost with Rick Remender, and the miniseries Punk Rock Jesus. In 2024 he successfully licensed Zorro to create a new book titled Zorro: Man of the Dead, which became a big success on Kickstarter as well in stores. He is also the creator of the Murphyverse, a subcontinuity that serves as the setting for stories featuring Batman that is separate from the main DC Universe continuity. These titles include Batman: White Knight and its sequels, Curse of the White Knight and Beyond the White Knight, which Murphy wrote and illustrated. He’s planning more expansions for his Batman titles in the next few years, one which will feature Batman teaming up with Superman, as well as other JLA members.


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Adam Nimoy is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Loyola Law School. He practiced entertainment law for seven years before changing careers to become a television director. He directed over 45 hours of network television, including episodes of Ally McBeal, NYPD Blue, and Gilmore Girls. In 2016, he directed the documentary film For the Love of Spock, the critically acclaimed documentary film about his father, Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, which was an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. He was featured in the New York Times article “To Boldly Explore Jewish Roots of Star Trek,” and he published a Father’s Day piece about his relationship with his father for the Boston Globe. In 2024 Chicago Review Press published his memoir The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father Leonard Nimoy.

Saturday and Sunday only


Neville Page is an Emmy Award–winning designer, concept artist, and educator whose work has shaped some of Hollywood’s most iconic films, including Avatar, Star Trek, Tron: Legacy, and Cloverfield. Originally from England, he studied at the Art Center College of Design before forging a career that blends artistry with evolutionary biology. A former judge on Face Off, his expertise extends to education, inspiring the next generation at Gnomon and ArtCenter. His exhibitions, including The Beauty in the Beast, highlight his passion for creature design. With innovation at his core, Page continues to push the boundaries of film, design, and storytelling.


Photo by Seth Olenick

Brian Posehn is a writer/actor/stand-up comic. His credits include Disney+’s The Mandalorian, Netflix’s Lady Dynamite, and FX’s You’re the Worst, along with recurring roles on The Big Bang Theory and New Girl. He was one of the stars of Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program. He also appeared on such seminal sitcoms as Seinfeld, NewsRadio, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, The Neighborhood, and Just Shoot Me. His voice-acting gigs have included everything from Scooby Doo and The Simpsons to Adventure Time, American Dad, Bob’s Burgers, and Steven Universe. He also produced and hosted the popular D&D comedy podcast Nerd Poker and co-wrote 45 issues of the bestselling Marvel comic book series Deadpool. In 2018 he released his first book, Forever Nerdy.


Darick Robertson is an American comic book artist, writer, creator, and executive producer with a decades-long career in the industry. His notable works include co-creating with Warren Ellis the award-winning Transmetropolitan and co-creating with Garth Ennis the comic that inspired the hit Amazon Prime show The Boys. Darick has illustrated for both Marvel and DC Comics on characters including Batman, The Justice League, Wolverine, The Punisher, Conan The Barbarian and Spider-Man, as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for IDW.


Photo by: Kendall Whitehouse

Dan Slott has worked with Marvel for many years, giving fans an action-packed 10-year run on The Amazing Spider-Man! His writing credits include She-Hulk, Avengers, Batman, and The Silver Surfer. He recently finished working on a run of The Fantastic Four and Iron Man. Currently he can be found tangled back up in New York City with Spider-Man and Spider-Boy.


Dan is an artist with over 30 years of experience working in the worlds of animation, toys, comics, and video games, perhaps most noted for his work with X-Men The Animated Series and X-Men ’97. Starting out as a TV animation storyboard artist on X-Men The Animated Series, he continued to work on many shows throughout the 1990s. Transitioning to licensing, he’s worked with several studios and brands including Star Wars Prequels, Batman Animated, and Lego Marvel and DC video games. Currently he is associated with X-Men–related projects for Marvel, Mondo, and Hasbro, producing artwork for toys and apparel.


Mark Waid is a multiple New York Times bestselling author whose work has appeared in countless languages across the globe. Over the course of his four decades in the comic book industry, Waid has developed characters and written stories for Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The Avengers, X-Men, Archie, Star Wars, The Incredibles, Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Daredevil, Captain America, and almost every other franchise currently enjoying success across all media platforms. Kingdom Come, which he co-created for DC Comics, has become one of the bestselling graphic novels in history.