Megatokyo (メガトーキョー) is an English-language webcomic created by Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston. Megatokyo debuted on August 14, 2000, and has been written and illustrated solely by Gallagher since June 17, 2002. Gallagher's style of writing and illustration is heavily influenced by Japanese manga. Megatokyo is freely available on its official website. The intended schedule for updates was for postings twice a week, but new comics are typically posted just once or twice a quarter on non-specific days. In 2011, updates began being delayed further due to the health issues of Sarah Gallagher (Seraphim), Gallagher's wife. Megatokyo was published in book-format by CMX, although the first three volumes were published by Dark Horse. For February 2005, sales of the comic's third printed volume were ranked third on BookScan's list of graphic novels sold in bookstores, then the best showing for an original English-language manga.
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.
Streaky the Supercat is a fictional superhero cat that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Action Comics #261 and was created by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney.
Linda Jean Barry, known professionally as Lynda Barry, is an American cartoonist. Barry is best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. She garnered attention with her 1988 illustrated novel The Good Times are Killing Me, about an interracial friendship between two young girls, which was adapted into a play. Her second illustrated novel, Cruddy, first appeared in 1999. Three years later she published One! Hundred! Demons!, a graphic novel she terms "autobifictionalography". What It Is (2008) is a graphic novel that is part memoir, part collage and part workbook, in which Barry instructs her readers in methods to open up their own creativity; it won the comics industry's 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.
Questionable Content is a slice-of-life webcomic written and illustrated by Jeph Jacques. It was launched in August 2003 and reached its 5,000th comic in March 2023. The plot originally centered on Marten Reed, an indie rock fan; his anthropomorphized personal computer Pintsize; and his roommate, Faye Whitaker. However, over time Jacques has added a supporting cast of characters that includes employees of the local coffee shop, neighbors, and androids. QC's storytelling style combines romantic melodrama, situational comedy, and sexual humor, while considering questions of relationships, sexuality, dealing with emotional trauma, and artificial intelligence and futurism.
Mary Worth is an American newspaper comic strip that has had an eight-decade run from 1938. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, this soap opera-style strip influenced several that followed. It was created by writer Allen Saunders and artist Dale Connor, and initially appeared under the pseudonym "Dale Allen". Ken Ernst succeeded Connor as artist in 1942.
Funky Winkerbean was an American comic strip by Tom Batiuk. Distributed by North America Syndicate, a division of King Features Syndicate, it appeared in more than 400 newspapers worldwide.
Jeff Smith is an American cartoonist. He is best known as the creator of the self-published comic book series Bone.
Scary Go Round is a webcomic by John Allison. Running from 2002 to 2009, it is set in the fictional North Yorkshire town of Tackleford and follows university students battling fantasy and science fiction threats to the town. The comic was a successor to Allison's first comic, Bobbins, and was followed by Bad Machinery, all of which take place in the same general setting.
William Morgan DeBeck, better known as Billy DeBeck, was an American cartoonist. He is most famous as the creator of the comic strip Barney Google, later retitled Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. The strip was especially popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and featured a number of well-known characters, including the title character, Bunky, Snuffy Smith, and Spark Plug the race horse. Spark Plug was a merchandising phenomenon, and has been called the Snoopy of the 1920s.
Dylan Horrocks is a New Zealand cartoonist best known for his graphic novel Hicksville and his scripts for the Batgirl comic book series.
Little Annie Fanny is a comics series by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder. It appeared in 107 two- to seven-page episodes in Playboy magazine from October 1962 to September 1988. Little Annie Fanny is a humorous satire of contemporary American society and its sexual mores. Annie Fanny, the title character, is a statuesque, buxom young blonde woman who innocently finds herself nude in every episode. The series is notable for its painted, luminous color artwork and for being the first full-scale, multi-page comics feature in a major American publication.
Jorge Gabriel Cham is an engineer-turned cartoonist, writer and producer, who writes the web comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper. Cham was born in Panama and lives in the United States, where he started drawing PhD Comics as a graduate student at Stanford University. He has since been syndicated in several university newspapers and in six published book collections. He was featured on NPR on December 20, 2010. With physicist Daniel Whiteson, he is the coauthor of We Have No Idea (2017), a book about unsolved problems in physics. In September 2018, Cham and Whiteson debuted the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, produced by iHeartMedia, in which the hosts aim to explain popular questions and complex topics about science, technology, and the universe, in the simplest way possible. Cham co-creatored the PBS Kids animated series Elinor Wonders Why, which premiered in September 2020.
Bill Ritchie was a Scottish cartoonist. He is known for work on comics published by D. C. Thomson.
Jay Hosler is the author and illustrator of science-oriented comics. He is best known for his graphic novels Clan Apis, The Sandwalk Adventures, and Optical Allusions. Clan Apis, a Xeric Foundation Award winner, follows the life of a honey bee named Nyuki; the story conveys factual information about honey bees in a humorous fashion as Nyuki learns about each new stage of her life. The Sandwalk Adventures, an Eisner Award nominee, follows a conversation about evolution between Charles Darwin and a follicle mite living in his left eyebrow. Optical Allusions, funded in part by a National Science Foundation grant, explains the evolution of the eye and vision by following the story of Wrinkles the Wonderbrain. Hosler is also an entomologist and associate professor of biology at Juniata College.
Black people have been portrayed in comics since the medium's beginning, with their portrayals often the subject of controversy. Mainstream comic publishing companies have had a historical trend of being predominantly white and male, reflecting the lack of representation and inaccurate depictions of Black people in comics. The integration of black characters in mainstream and superhero comics has endured various obstacles and challenges. Critics have noted that black men and women have historically often been portrayed as jungle or ghetto stereotypes, and as sidekicks as opposed to primary characters. Occiasionally, comic book creators would lampshade stereotypes, lack of representation and emphasize social injustices. In recent years, with the integration of more Black people in mainstream comic writing rooms as well as the creation of comics on digital platforms has changed the representation and portrayals of Black people in comics and has started to reflect the complexities of Black people across the diaspora.
Stormwatch: Post Human Division is an American comic book published by Wildstorm comics. It is the fourth volume to bear the name Stormwatch. It was first published in November 2006 and was written by Christos Gage with art by Doug Mahnke.
The Create a Comic Project (CCP) is a youth literacy program and webcomic created by John Baird. The program uses comics, many taken from the Internet, to encourage children to write their own narratives. The program began in November 2006 at the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library as an after-school program. The project has since worked with several other groups, including the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Braddock Carnegie Library, and the Pittsburgh YMCA. Baird has presented the results of his work on the project at several conventions and conferences, including South by Southwest Interactive and SXSWedu. The project has been praised for its work in engaging children in learning by Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson, Professor Mirta Ojito of Columbia University, and Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education.
Sheena C. Howard is an African-American academic, author and producer. She is a professor of communication at Rider University. She is also the past chair of the Black Caucus and the founder of Power Your Research, and academic branding company. Howard is the recipient of the 2014 Eisner Award for her first book Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation (2013).
Elinor Wonders Why is an animated television series created by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson. The show premiered on September 7, 2020, on PBS Kids. The series is produced using 2D software.
