
Authors

Metaphrog are Franco-Scottish duo Sandra Marrs and John Chalmers, award-winning graphic novelists. They are winners of The Sunday Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2016 for Best Visual Artist; Excelsior Award Junior 2018; SICBA Outstanding Achievement 2018 and multiple Eisner Awards nominees for their Louis graphic novels. See also: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...



Paul Hornschemeier was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1977 and raised in nearby rural Georgetown, Ohio. As a child he liked to draw, dreaming that he might publish his own comic books one day. While majoring in philosophy and psychology at The Ohio State University, Hornschemeier was introduced to the graphic novel Ghost World by Daniel Clowes and began exploring underground and literary comics. He saw that comics could be a venue for exploring issues from his studies and other interests, and within a year he began publishing his own black and white comics, under the banner "Sequential". Those early experimental works have since been compiled by AdHouse Books under the title The Collected Sequential. After graduation from college, Hornschemeier began using colors in his comics. In 2001, after moving to Chicago, he self-published the final issue of "Sequential," and began publishing the full-color comics series "Forlorn Funnies" with (now defunct) Absence of Ink Press. In 2003, Dark Horse Comics published his first graphic novel titled Mother, Come Home. In 2007 Hornschemeier colored the Marvel mini-series Omega The Unknown. Hornschemeier also sang and played guitar for the now defunct band Arks.


Paul Chadwick (b.1957) has worked widely as an artist and writer for comic books, with collaborators like Ron Randall, Doug Wheatley, Alan Moore, John Bolton, Harlan Ellison, Jan Strnad, Randy Stradley, Archie Goodwin, Brian K. Vaughan, and others. He's most noted for his award-winning series Concrete, about a thoughtful man stuck in a brutish, rock-coated body. Born in Seattle, he grew up in its lakeside suburb Medina, then a haven for Boeing engineers and their families, now the site of palaces for Bill Gates and his ilk. His father Stephen F. Chadwick was City Attorney for the small hamlet. As a teen, he joined Apa-5, the amateur press alliance of comics fans which also provided a creative outlet for future comics luminaries like Frank Miller, Mike Richardson, Randy Stradley, Chris Warner, Randy Emberlin, and others. He attended Art Center College of Design, majoring in illustration. Around this time Chadwick lived in a courtyard apartment building, The Golden Palm, which teemed with talent. Bryn Barnard, Ron Harris, David Mattingly, James Gurney, Thomas Kinkade, Kurt Cyrus, Mark Verheiden, Andy Su, Terry Robinson all lived there, five of them as Chadwick's roommate (at different times). Chadwick graduated in 1979, and began storyboarding movies for Disney, Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm and others. Credits include Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Strange Brew, The Big Easy and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. Chadwick says the auteurs behind two small films he worked on, Lies (Jim & Ken Wheat) and Miracle Mile (Steve DeJarnatt) were the greatest personal influences on his writing. Chadwick also freelanced illustration, mainly for movie advertising (Streamers and Galaxy of Terror were the only finished posters among the dozens of preliminary paintings he did) and for SF and Fantasy paperbacks. Chadwick decided to devote himself to comics, but Concrete didn't sell at first. Chadwick's first comic in print was The Life of St. Norbert, published by an order of Norbertine monks. Going from the sacred to the (mildly) profane, he next drew Steve Perry's strange and silly Salimba, about a jungle girl fighting "wormboys" and a giant three-headed were-dog. A year on Marvel's Dazzler completed Chadwick's apprentice years, and he sold Concrete in 1985 to Dark Horse comics. It has appeared intermittently ever since. A Concrete movie has been in development for years. Chadwick has written several screenplays for it, first in collaboration with Larry Wilson, then solo. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh wrote one, as well, which briefly won a green light for the film. The decision was reversed upon the release of the surprise hit The Blair Witch Project, which caused the sudden mass delusion that Hollywood could dispense with costly visual effects and stars. The fever passed, but Concrete's window had closed, at least until somebody with the clout or energy decides to brave the thousand demons that lay waiting to kill every movie. Chadwick wrote and drew (inks by Ron Randall) eight issues of The World Below, about a network of vast, mysteriously lit caverns beneath northern Washington State, and the strange beings and technology to be found there. Dark Horse plans to reissue the series as a collection. The Human Dilemma, the newest Concrete series, won an Eisner Award (best cartoonist) and a Reuben Award (best in comic books division) from the National Cartoonist Society. Chadwick is currently drawing a miniseries for DC, Seven Against Chaos, written by Harlan Ellison. He's also working on a (non-Concrete, TBA) graphic novel for Dark Horse, as well as a new Concrete miniseries. Biography updated 2010

Will Eisner was born on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, Will Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined. In a career that spanned nearly eight decades—from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics - Will Eisner was truly the 'Father of the Graphic Novel' and the 'Orson Welles of Comics.' He broke new ground in the development of visual narrative and the language of comics and was the creator of The Spirit, John Law, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk, Sheena, and countless others. During World War II, Will Eisner used the comic format to develop training and equipment maintenance manuals for the US Army. After the war this continued as the Army's "PS Magazine" which is still being produced today. Will Eisner taught Sequential Art at the New York School of Visual Arts for 20 years. The textbooks that he wrote were based on his course and are still bestsellers. In 1978, Will Eisner wrote "A Contract with God," the first modern Graphic Novel. This was followed by almost 20 additional graphic novels over the following 25 years. The "Oscars" of the Comic Industry are called The Eisner Awards, and named after Will Eisner. The Eisners are presented annually before a packed ballroom at San Diego Comic-Con, America's largest comics convention. Wizard magazine named Eisner "the most influential comic artist of all time." Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-prize winning novel "Kavalier and Clay" is based in good part on Eisner. In 2002, Eisner received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Federation for Jewish Culture, presented by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

Comic book artist and writer, and co-founder of Bongo Comics (along with Matt Groening and Steve and Cindy Vance). He currently serves as creative director of Bongo Comics. Morrison is a native of Lincoln Park, Michigan, a Downriver community situated south of Detroit, Michigan. He attended the College for Creative Studies. Morrison is an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America; he created the mural A Century of Values to celebrate the BSA centennial in 2010. At the beginning of his career in the early 1980s, Morrison worked as a technical illustrator for Artech, Inc. in Livonia, Michigan, before going to work as an illustrator for Disney. Then he worked as an illustrator for The Simpsons and created his own comic Roswell. He served as director for Futurama.

Jason Lutes was born in New Jersey in 1967 and grew up reading American superhero and western comics until a trip to France at age nine introduced him to the world of "bandes dessinées." In the late 1970s he discovered Heavy Metal magazine and the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, both of which proved major influences on his creative development. Lutes graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration in 1991. While at RISD, among the many new comics he encountered were Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine and Chester Brown's Yummy Fur, which together inspired him to start publishing minicomics under the imprint "Penny Dreadful." Upon graduation in 1991, he moved to Seattle, where he spent several years working as a dishwasher and assistant art director at Fantagraphics Books. His "big break" came in 1993, when he began drawing a weekly comics page called "Jar of Fools" for The Stranger, Seattle's alternative paper. By 1995 he had become the paper's art director, but upon collecting and self-publishing Jar of Fools in 1996, he left The Stranger and made the leap to becoming a full-time cartoonist. In the handful of productive years following that decision, Lutes began the comic book series Berlin, an ongoing 22-chapter story set in the twilight years of the Weimar Republic. The first eight chapters are collected in Berlin: City of Stones, and chapters nine through sixteen are collected in Berlin: City of Smoke. Lutes currently lives in Vermont with his partner and two children, where he teaches comics at the Center for Cartoon Studies and works on City of Light, the final installment of his Berlin trilogy, whenever he can find the time. He still tries to play Dungeons & Dragons once a week with friends.

Stan Sakai (Japanese: 坂井 スタンSakai Sutan; born May 25, 1953) is an artist who became known as an Eisner Award-winning comic book originator. Born in Kyoto, Sakai grew up in Hawaii and studied fine arts at the University of Hawaii. He later attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He and his wife, Sharon, presently reside and work in Pasadena. He began his career by lettering comic books (notably Groo the Wanderer by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier) and became famous with the production of Usagi Yojimbo, the epic saga of Miyamoto Usagi, a samurai rabbit living in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century Japan. First published in 1984, the comic continues to this day, with Sakai as the lone author and nearly-sole artist (Tom Luth serves as the main colorist on the series, and Sergio Aragonés has made two small contributions to the series: the story "Broken Ritual" is based on an idea by Aragonés, and he served as a guest inker for the black and white version of the story "Return to Adachi Plain" that is featured in the Volume 11 trade paper-back edition of Usagi Yojimbo). He also made a futuristic spin-off series Space Usagi. His favorite movie is Satomi Hakkenden (1959).

Farel Dal lives in Portland, Oregon and is currently working on a comic book called ROBot TOD. He is the creator of: 20202020 (2022 floating World comics), THE OFTEN WRONG(Image comics 2019), Proxima Centauri (Image comics 2019), IT WILL ALL HURT (Image Comics 2018), Pop Gun War: Chain Letter (Image Comics 2017) and POP GUN WAR: GIFT (2016 Image Comics, 2001 Dark Horse), The Wrenchies (First Second Books 2014), and Delusional (Adhouse 2013). Farel was a co-founder and contributor to the comic anthology, Meathaus, and the artist on Palefire (Secret Acres 2015) written by Mk Reed, Prophet (Image Comics 2012) by Brandon Graham, Omega the Unknown (Marvel Comics 2010) by Jonathan Lethem, Jenny Finn (Dark Horse 2018) by Troy Nixey and Mike Mignola, and Caper (DC Comics 2003) by Judd Winick. Farel Dalrymple and Soph Franz just debuted MONSTER_US!!! a 64-page monster art zine which you can get on their store https://store.fareldal.com/