Bio:
William Shatner is an actor, musician, singer, author, film director, spokesman and comedian. He gained worldwide fame and became a cultural icon for his portrayal of Captain James Tiberius Kirk, commander of the Federation starship USS Enterprise, in the science fiction television series STAR TREK, from 1966 to 1969; Star Trek STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES from 1973 to 1974, and in seven of the subsequent STAR TREK feature films from 1979 to 1994. Shatner also played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T. J. HOOKER from 1982 to 1986. Afterwards, he hosted the reality-based television series RESCUE 911 from 1989 to 1996, which won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Dramatic Series.  He is currently the host of SHATNER’S RAW NERVE on The Biography Channel.

Bio:
Sean Chen is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University where he received a Bachelor’s degree in industrial design. He started his comics career after being discovered by Barry Windsor-Smith. He began his career at Valiant Comics, penciling their flagship title, X-O MANOWAR, as well as BLOODSHOT, HARBINGER and RAI and the FUTURE FORCE. His debut book, RFF #9, sold over 900,000 copies. After Valiant, he then moved on to Marvel Comics, where he drew IRON MAN for over three years. His other works include WOLVERINE, ELEKTRA, NOVA, and the maxi-series X-MEN: THE END. Chen also lends his talents to Marvel’s Creative Services Division where he contributes to style guides and licensing art, including box cover illustrations for the Iron Man video game and various promotional items such as lunchboxes, t-shirts and posters.

Bio:
Tony Isabella is the creator/writer of BLACK LIGHTNING, DC’s first prominent African-American super-hero and now a weekly, live-action series on the CW, drawing much of its inspiration from his work. Tony also co-created Misty Knight and Tigra. He was an editor/writer at Marvel, including: BLACK GOLIATH, CAPTAIN AMERICA, DAREDEVIL, GHOST RIDER, IRON FIST, LUKE CAGE, SPIDER-MAN, STAR TREK, etc. He’s the author of: 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU MUST READ, JULY 1963: A PIVOTAL MONTH IN THE COMIC-BOOK LIFE OF TONY ISABELLA, the daily “Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing”, and the weekly “Tony’s Tips” review column. He’s received an Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International, a Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award from the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, was inducted into the Hall of Heroes Museum Hall of Fame, and was named one of CLEVELAND MAGAZINE’s most interesting people of  2018. He lectures on comics history, writing, and diversity. Tony’s most recent comics work is the six-issue BLACK LIGHTNING: COLD DEAD HANDS, marking his return to his creation.

Bio:
Mike Diana was born in Geneva, New York in ’69, and moved with his family to Florida in ’78. As a teen, his art got more warped in the Southern surroundings, so at age 17 he started making zines of his comics. In ’89 he started BOILED ANGEL, a zine that would get him charged with obscenity for issues #7 and #8. He ended up world famous, in jail, and then on probation, so he escaped to NYC in ’96 to pursue his art free of the Florida law. His comix have also been published in many titles including: SUPERFLY, FIREBRAT, and SLAUGHTERHOUSE COMIX. You can find his art via: http://mikedianacomix.com/boiledangel.html

Bio:
World-famous, award-winning author David Gerrold has been translated into over a dozen languages and his TV scripts seen by over a billion viewers. His output comprises teleplays, film scripts, stage plays, comic books, over 50 novels and anthologies, and hundreds of articles, columns, and short stories. TV credits include: STAR TREK (the most popular episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”), LAND OF THE LOST, TWILIGHT ZONE, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, BABYLON 5, and SLIDERS. His classic Science Fiction novels include: THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF, WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE, and the   series THE WAR AGAINST THE CHTORR (currently writing the 5^th) and STAR WOLF (in TV development). Gerrold shared the adventure of how he adopted his son in THE MARTIAN CHILD, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the Locus Poll, and was the basis for the 2007 film starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet.

Bio:
Diane Noomin was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947 and attended the High School of Music and Art, Brooklyn College and Pratt Institute.
She is the creator of DiDi Glitz and editor of the TWISTED SISTERS anthologies of women cartoonists. One of the early contributors to WIMMEN’S COMIX, Noomin created the first issue of TWISTED SISTERS COMICS with Aline Kominsky-Crumb in 1976. In 1981, she collaborated on the musical comedy I’D RATHER BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE: THE DIDI GLITZ STORY with the San Francisco-based women’s theater group, Les Nickelettes. In 2013 Fantagraphics published GLITZ-2-GO, an anthology of her collected DiDi Glitz stories and other work. Noomin has been published in a number of books, including: TRUE GLITZ, WEIRDO, YOUNG LUST, ARCADE: THE COMICS REVIEW, LEMME OUTTA HERE!, DANGEROUS DRAWINGS, MIND RIOT, and more.

Bio:
Larry Welz grew up on the streets of Bakersfield, escaped to the Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love (1967), doing comics the whole time. He was first published in YELLOW DOG, an anthology comic by The Print Mint in Berkeley. He achieved some recognition in the San Francisco Bay Area Underground Comix scene with CAPTAIN GUTS (a right-wing straight superhero who beat up hippies), did some experimental comics; AMERICAN FLYER, MONOLITH, BAKERSFIELD KOUNTRY KOMICS, created CHERRY POPTART in San Rafael, California in 1975. Six years later, he finally got a book together & published by Last Gasp of San Francisco. He continued doing more books through the 80s & 90s, to a certain amount of international acclaim. He painted carnival rides; funhouses, mirror mazes, & dark rides, for over 30 years. He lived in Roswell, New Mexico for 16 years. He now resides in Albuquerque.

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Jim is a graphic artist, comic book writer/artist, comics historian, magician, publisher and film production illustrator.  His most famous comic book work was with the 1960s superspy feature “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” in Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales and in the subsequent eponymous series. Steranko earned lasting acclaim for his innovations in sequential artduring the Silver Age of Comic Books, particularly his infusion of surrealism, pop art, and graphic design into the medium. His work has been published in many countries and his influence on the field has remained strong since his comics heyday. He went on to create book covers, become a comics historian who published a pioneering two-volume history of the birth and early years of comic books, and to create conceptual art and character designs for films including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  He was inducted into the comic-book industry’s Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.

Bio:
Brian started his illustration career at Marvel Comics in 1994, working on popular characters such as the X-Men, Captain America and Fantastic Four. From 2001-2005, Brian produced over 25 custom comics for MLB & NBA franchises!

Bio:
ZIPPY THE PINHEAD’s creator Bill Griffith began his comics career in New York City in 1969. He ventured to San Francisco in 1970 to join the burgeoning Underground Comix movement and made his home there until 1998.  In 1986 King Features Syndicate took the daily ZIPPY to a national audience, and today it appears in over 150 newspapers worldwide. There have been many paperback collections of Griffith’s work and numerous comic book and magazine appearances, both here and abroad.  His latest book is his second graphic novel NOBODY’S FOOL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCHLITZIE THE PINHEAD, a graphic biography of the original inspiration for ZIPPY, published by Abrams ComicArts. His previous graphic memoir INVISIBLE INK  won an Eisner Award in 2016. Bill currently teaches comics at the School of Visual Arts in New York and lives and works in East Haddam, Connecticut with his wife, cartoonist Diane Noomin.

Bio:
Frank Cho is a multiple award-winning comic strip and comic book writer/artist, especially beloved for his classic pin-up style renderings of women. Born in Korea and raised in the U.S., Frank graduated from the University of Maryland with a Nursing degree and a successful run of his daily strip UNIVERSITY SQUARED for the student newspaper, which became the syndicated LIBERTY MEADOWS. Frank began collecting and then continuing the strip in comics and graphic novels with Insight Studios and Image Comics. For Marvel he has drawn many covers and interiors and done some scripting and plotting, for several titles each of SPIDER-MAN, AVENGERS, and the HULK, as well as SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL, X-MEN: SCHISM, and SAVAGE WOLVERINE. For DC he has illustrated covers for BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN and HARLEY QUINN. Frank has worked on Dynamite’s JUNGLE GIRL and DEJAH THORIS, SKYBOURNE for Boom! Studios, and has art books published by Flesk.

Bio:
John Orlando’s career began in 1994 as a penciling assistant for Rich Buckler at Visage Studios. His early works include: SYPHONS THE SYGATE STRATAGEM for Now Comics, ZAANAN for Mainstream Comics, and GENE RODDENBERRY’S THE UNIVERSE for Tekno Comics. In 1995 he was promoted to Production Manager for Visage Studios.  In 1996-1998 he released his creator-owned CYBERGEN, THE INTRUDER, JOURNEY INTO MADNESS, and DOC BEHEMOTH with Roy Thomas. In 2012-2013, with Joe Martino he released his creator-owned Underground series, FHA-Q. John now works with his wife Jill and Jonathan Miller at Macrospasm Studios NYC. His earlier works have been collected into the VISAGE STUDIOS ANTHOLOGY and FHA-Q trade paperbacks. Other current and upcoming titles include HUMANS, MONSTERS, MONSTER MEMES STICKERS, and U.S. PRESIDENTS AND OTHER HISTORICAL TYPES trading card set, premiering at BACC 2019. John has also invented the patent-pending Nev-R-Drop Guitar Pick.

Bio:
Adam Air has been in the funny pages for 3 decades and has been published in 100s of Underground Comix and Zines, plus 50 of his own self-titled books from Stale Ink, which was his self-publishing racket out of Colorado between ’92-‘02. He likes dropping names he’s either worked or been shown with including H.R. Giger, Hart Fisher, Sophie Crumb, and Tenacious D. He can also be seen on TV several times as a background punk on the Fox Network Batman prequel series GOTHAM and was also in the original TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie release from Dino De Laurentiis. His last publication was in HUSTLER HUMOR PRESENTS HUSTLER COMIX Vol. 34 #2. Matt Groening called his work “Grungy” in a write up in FS5. He was noted by R. Crumb to be one of his favorite comic artists of 2005. He is definitely a cartoonist you should f-ing know.

Bio:
Dan Fogel is a leading authority and historian of Underground, Alternative, and Adult comic books. He is the author and publisher of the 2006 FOGEL’S UNDERGROUND COMIX PRICE GUIDE, its 2010 SUPPLEMENT, and the current FOGEL’S UNDERGROUND PRICE & GRADING GUIDE V.1: Underground Comix, which is the industry standard for retailers, collectors and investors. His companies Fogelcomix, Hippy Comix, and Apex Novelties have published dozens of titles and helped keep classic Underground Comix art in print including several remastered collections of work by R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Spain Rodriguez.  His writing, editing, and publishing career began in the early ’90s with Larry Welz’s best-selling line of books starring CHERRY (POPTART). When he’s not making and/or selling comic books and books about comic books he’s also the art agent for Dan O’Neill and Ted Richards of the notorious Air Pirates Studios, and the licensing agent for Dana Crumb Associates.