Jack Kirby was an American comic book artist, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.
Fantagraphics is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
The Comics Journal, often abbreviated TCJ, is an American magazine of news and criticism pertaining to comic books, comic strips and graphic novels. Known for its lengthy interviews with comic creators, pointed editorials and scathing reviews of the products of the mainstream comics industry, the magazine promotes the view that comics are a fine art, meriting broader cultural respect, and thus should be evaluated with higher critical standards.
Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist whose best-known work includes the comics Hate and Neat Stuff. His stories often use black humor and exaggerated cartooning to dramatize the reduced expectations of middle-class American youth. He won two Harvey Awards in 1991, one for best cartoonist and one for his work on Hate. In recent decades Bagge has done more fact-based comics, everything from biographies to history to comics journalism. Publishers of Bagge's articles, illustrations, and comics include suck.com, MAD Magazine, toonlet, Discover, and the Weekly World News, with the comic strip Adventures of Batboy. He has expressed his libertarian views in features for Reason.
James William Woodring is an American cartoonist, fine artist, writer and toy designer. He is best known for the dream-based comics he published in his magazine Jim, and as the creator of the anthropomorphic cartoon character Frank, who has appeared in a number of short comics and graphic novels.
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.
The Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards were a set of awards for achievement in comic books, presented from 1985-1987. Voted on by comic-book professionals, the Kirby awards were the first such awards since the Shazam Awards ceased in 1975. Sponsored by Amazing Heroes magazine, and managed by Amazing Heroes managing editor Dave Olbrich, the Kirby Awards were named after the pioneering writer and artist Jack Kirby.
The Harvey Awards are given for achievement in comic books. Named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards were founded by Gary Groth in 1988, president of the publisher Fantagraphics, to be the successor to the Kirby Awards that were discontinued in 1987.
Benjamin Franklin Thorne was an American comic book artist-writer, best known for the Marvel Comics character Red Sonja.
Amazing Heroes was a magazine about the comic book medium published by American company Fantagraphics Books from 1981 to 1992. Unlike its companion title, The Comics Journal, Amazing Heroes was a hobbyist magazine rather than an analytical journal.
Mary Fleener is an American alternative comics artist, writer and musician from Los Angeles. Fleener's drawing style, which she calls cubismo, derives from the cubist aesthetic and other artistic traditions. Her first publication was a work about Zora Neale Hurston, called Hoodoo (1988), followed by the semi-autobiographical comics series Slutburger, and the anthology Life of the Party (1996). She is a member of the rock band called The Wigbillies.
Jessica Abel is an American comic book writer and artist, known as the creator of such works as Life Sucks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Soundtrack, La Perdida, Mirror, Window, Radio: An Illustrated Guide, and the omnibus series Artbabe.
Gary Panter is an American cartoonist, illustrator, painter, designer and part-time musician. Panter's work is representative of the post-underground, new wave comics movement that began with the end of Arcade: The Comics Revue and the initiation of RAW, one of the second generation in American underground comix.
The Cartoon Art Museum (CAM) is a California art museum that specializes in the art of comics and cartoons. It is the only museum in the Western United States dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of all forms of cartoon art. The permanent collection features some 7,000 pieces as of 2015, including original animation cels, comic book pages and sculptures.
John Powers Severin was an American comics artist noted for his distinctive work with EC Comics, primarily on the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat; for Marvel Comics, especially its war and Western comics; and for his 45-year stint with the satiric magazine Cracked. He was one of the founding cartoonists of Mad in 1952.
Kitchen Sink Press was a comic book publishing company founded by Denis Kitchen in 1970. Kitchen Sink Press was a pioneering publisher of underground comics, and was also responsible for numerous republications of classic comic strips in hardcover and softcover volumes. One of their best-known products was the first full reprint of Will Eisner's The Spirit—first in magazine format, then in standard comic book format. The company closed in 1999.
Cat-Head Comics was an American alternative/underground comics publisher that operated from 1980 to 1998. Founded by cartoonist Steve Lafler as a vehicle for his own work, Cat-Head was later joined by writer/poet/editor Stephen Beaupre. Cat-Head's longest-running title was the anthology Buzzard, which lasted 20 issues.
Twisted Sisters is an all-female underground comics anthology put together by Aline Kominsky and Diane Noomin, and published in various iterations. In addition to Kominsky and Noomin, contributors to Twisted Sisters included M. K. Brown, Dame Darcy, Julie Doucet, Debbie Drechsler, Mary Fleener, Phoebe Gloeckner, Krystine Kryttre, Carol Lay, Dori Seda, and Carol Tyler.
The UK Comic Art Award was a series of British awards for achievement in comic books. Winners were selected by an open vote among British comic book professionals ; the awards were given out on an annual basis from 1990 to 1997 for comics published in the United Kingdom the previous year. Award presentations were generally held at the Glasgow Comic Art Convention, usually in the spring.
Acme Press Ltd., later known as Acme Comics, was a British comic book publisher active from 1986 to 1995. The company's initial publication was Speakeasy, a monthly fanzine of comics news and criticism. Acme published a number of licensed comics featuring the British espionage properties James Bond and The Avengers. The company also published early work by popular British creators like Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, and Warren Pleece, and it published English translations of some European comics. In the latter half of its existence, Acme formed relationships with American independent publishers Eclipse Comics and Dark Horse Comics, enabling Acme's comics to be distributed in the United States.
