Fantagraphics is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint. Many notable cartoonists have published their work through Fantagraphics, including Jessica Abel, Peter Bagge, Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Mary Fleener, Roberta Gregory, Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, and the Hernandez brothers.
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.
Eric James Shanower is an American cartoonist, best known for his Oz novels and comics, and for the ongoing retelling of the Trojan War as Age of Bronze.
The Ignatz Awards recognize outstanding achievements in comics and cartooning by small press creators or creator-owned projects published by larger publishers. They have been awarded each year at the Small Press Expo since 1997, only skipping a year in 2001 due to the show's cancellation after the September 11 attacks. As of 2014 SPX has been held in either Bethesda, North Bethesda, or Silver Spring, Maryland.
Craig Matthew Thompson is an American graphic novelist best known for his books Good-bye, Chunky Rice (1999), Blankets (2003), Carnet de Voyage (2004), Habibi (2011), and Space Dumplins (2015). Thompson has received four Harvey Awards, three Eisner Awards, and two Ignatz Awards. In 2007, his cover design for the Menomena album Friend and Foe received a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package.
Dylan Horrocks is a cartoonist best known for his graphic novel Hicksville and his scripts for the Batgirl comic book series.
Robert Kirby is an American cartoonist, known for his long-running syndicated comic Curbside – which ran in the gay and alternative presses from 1991 to 2008 – and other works focusing on queer characters and community, including Strange Looking Exile, Boy Trouble, THREE, and QU33R.
Bob Fingerman is an American comic book writer/artist born in Queens, New York, who is best known for his comic series Minimum Wage.
Palookaville is a comic book written and drawn by cartoonist Gregory Gallant, better known as Seth, and published by Drawn & Quarterly. The first issue appeared in April 1991 and it has been irregularly published ever since. The comics are generally portrayals filled with lost, lonely characters searching for meaning, often reaching back into the past.
Noah Van Sciver is an independent American cartoonist. He currently resides in Columbia, South Carolina.
Robert Triptow is an American writer and artist. He is known primarily for creating gay- and bisexual-themed comics and for editing Gay Comix in the 1980s, and he was identified by underground comix pioneer Lee Marrs as "the last of the underground cartoonists."
Minimum Wage is the name of a number of comic book series and original graphic novels by Bob Fingerman. The stories follow the life of Rob Hoffman, a young comics artist in New York City in the mid-1990s.
Marguerite Van Cook is an English artist, writer, musician/singer and filmmaker. She was born in Portsmouth, England and now resides in New York City on the Lower East Side, in the East Village. She attended Portsmouth College of Art and Design, Northumbria University Graphic and Fine Arts programs, BMCC, and Columbia University for English (BA) and Modern European Studies (MA). She currently attends the CUNY Graduate Center in the French PhD program.
Wuvable Oaf is an indie comic book series by American artist and writer Ed Luce, under his Goteblüd Comics imprint. The central story follows the title character, Oaf Jadwiga, as he searches for love in a city that is never explicitly named, but is based on San Francisco. A number of subplots include Oaf's bizarre relationship with his cats and obsession with disco grindcore band Eja©uloid, whose lead singer Eiffel is Oaf's primary love interest. The comic also presents an extensive supporting cast of characters, many of whom have starred in their own spin-off stories and mini-comics.
Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer, and for several prose works of fiction and non-fiction. In 2016 she began writing for both Marvel and DC Comics. She has twice been named a runner-up for the Michael L. Printz Award.
The Fifth Beatle is a graphic novel by writer Vivek Tiwary, artist Andrew Robinson, and cartoonist Kyle Baker. It debuted in Italy as part as the tenth anniversary of the country's Rolling Stone magazine and was published by Dark Horse Comics in November 2013.
Northwest Press is an American publisher specializing in LGBT-themed comic books and graphic novels. It was founded in 2010 by Charles "Zan" Christensen. The company publishes in print, as well as through digital channels such as ComiXology and Apple's iBooks, and also retails some similarly-themed books published independently.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the debut graphic novel of Emil Ferris. It portrays a young girl named Karen Reyes investigating the death of her neighbor in 1960s Chicago. Ferris started working on the graphic novel after contracting West Nile virus and becoming paralyzed at age 40. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for writing and began the graphic novel to help her recover in 2010, taking six years to create 700 pages. The graphic novel draws on Ferris's childhood growing up in Chicago, and her love of monsters and horror media. The process of creating the work was difficult, with Ferris working long hours, living frugally, and encountering publishing setbacks, the cancelation of the book by one publisher, and the temporary seizure of the first volume's printing at the Panama Canal.
Julia Gfrörer is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and author. Her work is often transgressive, invoking occult themes within an ambience of subtly observed historicist concerns, in narratives generally characterized by "mumblecore dialogue, persistent overtones of horror and suffering, and unapologetic sexuality." She's been hailed as "one of the most promising artists of her generation" by Phoebe Gloeckner.
The Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Graphic Novel is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a graphic novel with LGBT themes. As the award is presented based on themes in the work, not the sexuality or gender of the writer, non-LGBT individuals may be nominated for or win the award.
