Usagi Yojimbo is a comic book series created by Stan Sakai. It is set primarily at the beginning of the Edo period of Japanese history and features anthropomorphic animals replacing humans. The main character is a rabbit rōnin, Miyamoto Usagi, whom Sakai based partially on the famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. Usagi wanders the land on a musha shugyō, occasionally selling his services as a bodyguard.
Gilberto Hernández, usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also by the nickname Beto, is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his Palomar/Heartbreak Soup stories in Love and Rockets, an alternative comic book he shared with his brothers Jaime and Mario.
Fantagraphics is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and (formerly) the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist whose best-known work includes the comics Neat Stuff and Hate. 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.
Doofus is an American alternative comic book character created by Rick Altergott. In the low-brow, scatological strip, Doofus and his sidekick/pal Henry Hotchkiss are two foolish creeps who have adventures in the fictional Flowertown, USA. Fantagraphics Books published two issues of the series from 1994 to 1997.
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.
Crime SuspenStories was a bi-monthly anthology crime comic published by EC Comics in the early 1950s. The title first arrived on newsstands with its October/November 1950 issue and ceased publication with its February/March 1955 issue, producing a total of 27 issues. Years after its demise, the title was reprinted in its entirety, and four stories were adapted for television in the HBO's Tales From The Crypt.
Weird Science-Fantasy was an American science fiction-fantasy anthology comic, that was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. Over a 14-month span, the comic ran for seven issues, starting in March 1954 with issue #23 and ending with issue #29 in May/June 1955.
Neat Stuff is an American alternative comic book series created by Peter Bagge and published by Fantagraphics. It ran from 1985 to 1989 for fifteen issues. Most takes the form of a series of short stories featuring different sets of characters, although some issues feature full-length stories relating to just one set of characters. The series was Bagge's first one-man comics anthology. Described by Dez Skinn in Comix: The Underground Revolution as the work which "threw Peter Bagge into the limelight", Bagge soon retired the title in preference of continuing the Bradley characters' story in Hate.
Harold "Buddy" William Bradley Jr., generally referred to as Buddy Bradley, is a comic book character created by Peter Bagge and the main protagonist in several of his comic books, most notably Hate and Neat Stuff. The character first appeared in Bagge's self-published Comical Funnies in 1981. In the 1990s Buddy became an iconic symbol of Seattle underground culture, with the character being associated with slackerdom and the grunge movement, something which his creator sees as fairly unintentional on his part. Bagge created Buddy as a fairly unlikeable character as a commentary on shallow hipster culture, but the character was immensely popular, with members of Generation X strongly identifying with Buddy and his problems. In this way he may have been seen as an antihero and archetype of 1990s underground culture. Bagge had the character enact storylines based on events from his past, such as his family life, adolescence and his move to Seattle in the 1980s. Buddy is a disaffected adolescent who is a self-proclaimed outsider. He is directionless and unmotivated, drifting through life without goals and commonly has a cynical attitude to almost everything. By his twenties he has not changed much, although he is rather more comfortable in his hipster persona, fitting into the Seattle grunge scene and listening to obscure rock music as proof of his hip credentials. He has a brittle personality and is quick to anger, often becoming violent and getting into fights, be it with his family, friends, spouses or rivals. He has a ruthless and selfish streak which he uses to his advantage in his business dealings as a music promoter, memorabilia salesman and junkyard dealer.
John F. Ryan IV is an American alternative comics creator, writer, and animator. He created Angry Youth Comix, a comic book published by Fantagraphics, and "Blecky Yuckerella", a comic strip which originated in the alternative newspaper the Portland Mercury and now appears on Ryan's website. He also created Pig Goat Banana Cricket, a TV show made jointly with Dave Cooper that Nickelodeon picked up. He was the story editor for Looney Tunes Cartoons. In a throwback to the days of underground comix, Ryan's oeuvre is generally an attempt to be as shocking and politically incorrect as possible.
Rick Altergott is an American alternative cartoonist and illustrator. Altergott is best known for Doofus, a long-running low-brow, scatological series of strips which chronicle the misadventures of two small-town weirdos, Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss.
Dennis P. Eichhorn was an American writer, best known for his adult-oriented autobiographical comic book series Real Stuff. His stories, often involving, sex, drugs, and alcohol, have been compared to those of Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Charles Bukowski.
Kim Thompson was an American comic book editor, translator, and publisher, best known as vice president and co-publisher of Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books. Along with co-publisher Gary Groth, Thompson used his position to further the cause of alternative comics in the American market. In addition, Thompson made it his business to bring the work of European cartoonists to American readers.
Eric Reynolds is a Seattle-based cartoonist, critic and comics editor who is the Vice-President and Associate Publisher for Fantagraphics Books. His work has appeared in The Stranger, The Comics Journal, The New York Times, The New York Press and other publications. He has edited or co-edited The Complete Crumb Comics, Angry Youth Comics, Dirty Stories and MOME, and has inked some of Peter Bagge's comics.
The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library is a series of books collecting all of the comic book Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories written and drawn by Carl Barks, originally published between 1942 and Barks' retirement in June 1966. The series was launched in late 2011, and will comprise 6,000 plus pages over roughly 30 200- to 240-page volumes when it is finished.
J. R. Williams is an American cartoonist, animator, and fine artist best known for his late 1980s/early 1990s work in alternative comics. Known for his manic, exaggerated cartooning style, Williams brought an underground comix edge to his work during this period. Williams' characters Skinboy and the Bad Boys made recurring appearances in many of his stories.
Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck: The Don Rosa Library is a series of books published by Fantagraphics Books, collecting all of the Scrooge McDuck and Donald Duck comic book stories written and drawn by Don Rosa, originally published between 1987 and 2006. Following up Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson Library and The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library, this series was launched in 2014, and completed with the tenth and last volume in late 2018.
Disney Masters is a series of books collecting anthologies of critically acclaimed Walt Disney Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse international comic artists. Italian artist Romano Scarpa was the first featured creator in the series, in the volume titled The Delta Dimension. The publisher behind the project is Fantagraphics Books. The first book of the series was released in May 2018.
