William Erwin Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
Jordan Mechner is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer. A major figure in the development of cinematic video games and a pioneer in video game animation, he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.
First Second Books is an American publisher of graphic novels. An imprint of Roaring Brook Press, part of Holtzbrinck Publishers, First Second publishes fiction, biographies, personal memoirs, history, visual essays, and comics journalism. It also publishes graphic non-fiction for young readers, including the Science Comics and History Comics collections, and for adults, including the World Citizen Comics, a line of civics graphic books, and biographical works such as The Accidental Czar.
Boom! Studios, is an American comic book and graphic novel publisher. They are headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. The company is a subsidiary of Random House division of Penguin Random House since September 2024.
Jess David Spurlock is an American author, illustrator, editor, and artist's-rights advocate best known as the founder of Vanguard Productions, a publisher of art books, graphic novels, and prints.
Melina Sydney Padua is a graphic artist and animator based in the United Kingdom. She is the author of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage steampunk comic, and her animation work appears in several popular Hollywood films.
Dean Mullaney is an American editor, publisher, and designer whose Eclipse Enterprises, founded in 1977, was one of the earliest independent comic-book companies. Eclipse published some of the first graphic novels and was one of the first comics publishers to champion creators' rights. In the 2000s, he established the imprint The Library of American Comics of IDW Publishing to publish hardcover collections of comic strips. Mullaney and his work have received seven Eisner Awards.
Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer. 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.
Nate Diana "Indy" Stevenson, known professionally as ND Stevenson, is an American cartoonist and animation producer. He is the creator, showrunner, and executive producer of the animated television series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which ran from 2018 to 2020. He is also known for the science fantasy graphic novel Nimona, as co-writer of the comic series Lumberjanes, and The Fire Never Goes Out, his autobiographical collection.
Anya's Ghost is a coming-of-age ghost story in graphic novel format. The first book by cartoonist Vera Brosgol, Anya's Ghost was published on June 7, 2011.
Lumberjanes is a comic book series created by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Gus Allen, and ND Stevenson and published via the Boom Box! imprint of Boom! Studios. The story follows a group of girls spending summer at a scout camp, and the strange creatures and supernatural phenomena they encounter there. Originally planned as an eight-part series, the comic was made an ongoing series following strong sales and critical acclaim. The comic series came to a close after 75 issues with a one-shot finale in December 2020, ending its six-year-run.
Kerascoët is the joint pen name of the French illustrators, comics and animation artists Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset.
Rosemary Valero-O'Connell is an American illustrator and cartoonist. She is known for her work with DC Comics and BOOM! Studios.
Ronald Wimberly is an American cartoonist. He has published several graphic novels, as well as shorter works for The New Yorker, DC/Vertigo, Nike, Marvel, Hill and Wang, and Dark Horse Comics. Wimberly was the 2016 Columbus Museum of Art comics resident, and was a two-time resident cartoonist at Angoulême's Maison des Auteurs. He is the recipient of the 2008 Glyph Comics Award, and has been nominated for two Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.
Jen Bartel is an American illustrator and comic artist, best known for her work for Marvel Comics and Image Comics. She co-created the comic Blackbird for Image with Sam Humphries. She won two Eisner Awards for her work as a cover artist in 2019 and 2022.
Kay O'Neill is an illustrator and writer from New Zealand.
The Prince and the Dressmaker is a fairy tale graphic novel written and illustrated by Jen Wang and released in 2018 by First Second Books. Wang's second graphic novel, The Prince and the Dressmaker tells the story of a Prince Sebastian, who dresses as the glamorous Lady Crystallia by night, and his seamstress Frances, who befriends the prince and hopes to make her mark on the world of fashion.
Vault Comics is an American publisher of comic books. The company is known for its horror, fantasy, and science fiction titles, with a focus on diversity and cross-media properties.
