Fantagraphics is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and (formerly) the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
Kim Deitch is an American cartoonist who was an important figure in the underground comix movement of the 1960s, remaining active in the decades that followed with a variety of books and comics, sometimes using the pseudonym Fowlton Means.
Charles Burns is an American cartoonist and illustrator. His early work was published in a Sub Pop fanzine, and he achieved prominence in the early issues of RAW. His graphic novel Black Hole won the Harvey Award.
Ivan Brunetti is an Italian and American cartoonist and comics scholar based in Chicago.
Al Columbia is an American artist known for his horror and black humor-themed alternative comics. His published works include the comic book series The Biologic Show, the graphic novel/art book Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days, and short stories such as "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool" and "The Trumpets They Play!". He also works in other media including painting, illustration, printmaking, photography, music, and film.
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.
John Arne Sæterøy, better known by the pen name Jason, is a Norwegian cartoonist, known for his sparse drawing style and silent, anthropomorphic animal characters.
Bob Fingerman is an American comic book writer/artist born in Queens, New York, who is best known for his comic series Minimum Wage.
Megan Kelso is an American comic book artist and writer.
Anders Nilsen is an American cartoonist who lives in Los Angeles, California.
The Biologic Show is a comic book series written and drawn by Al Columbia. The first issue, #0, was released in October 1994 by Fantagraphics Books, and a second issue, #1, was released the following January. A third issue (#2) was announced in the pages of other Fantagraphics publications and solicited in Previews but was never published. "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool", a color short story with a markedly different art style originally intended for issue #2, appeared instead in the anthology Zero Zero. In a 2010 interview, Columbia recalled that the unfinished issue "looked so different that it just didn’t look right, it didn’t look consistent, and it didn’t feel right to keep putting out that same comic book, to try to tell a story where the style is mutating." The series' title is taken from a passage in the William S. Burroughs book Exterminator!. The passage in question is quoted briefly in a story from issue #0, itself also titled "The Biologic Show".
Noah Van Sciver is an independent American cartoonist who resides in Columbia, South Carolina.
Melissa Lasko-Gross is an American comics creator, known for her semi-autobiographical graphic novels Escape from "Special" and A Mess of Everything.
Eleanor McCutcheon Davis is an American cartoonist and illustrator.
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.
Edward R. Piskor Jr. was an American alternative comics cartoonist. Piskor was known primarily for his work on Hip Hop Family Tree, X-Men: Grand Design, and the Red Room trilogy. Piskor also co-hosted the YouTube channel Cartoonist Kayfabe with fellow Pittsburgh native cartoonist Jim Rugg. In March 2024, Piskor was accused via social media of sexual misconduct. Piskor died on April 1, 2024, at the age of 41, hours after posting a suicide note via social media, defending himself against the allegations leveled against him.
Ed Luce is an American cartoonist, best known for his indie comics series Wuvable Oaf. The series focuses on Oaf Jadwiga, a bearish gay ex-wrestler looking for love. Originally funded by a grant from Prism Comics, it was self-published in five standalone chapters until being compiled in graphic novel form by Fantagraphics Books in 2015.
Amnesia: The Lost Films of Francis D. Longfellow Supplementary Newsletter No. 1 is a 2018 comic book by Al Columbia. Printed in an oversize 11" x 13" format, it is a 24-page collection of posters allegedly created for animated cartoons by the (fictional) titular director/producer and his company, Podsnap Studios. Some of the "lost films" feature Columbia's recurring protagonists Seymour Sunshine and Knishkebibble the Monkey-Boy, who are depicted here as cartoon characters performed by voice actors. The posters also contain references to earlier Columbia stories such as "The Trumpets They Play!" and "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool", presenting them as Longfellow's creations and tying them into Amnesia's fictional universe.
Reid Kikuo Johnson is an American illustrator and cartoonist. He is known for illustrating several covers of The New Yorker in addition to the graphic novels Night Fisher, The Shark King, and No One Else. In 2023 he became the first graphic novelist to receive the Whiting Award for fiction.
