Keith Ian Giffen was an American comic book illustrator and writer. He is possibly best-known for his long runs illustrating, and later writing the Legion of Super-Heroes title in the 1980s and 1990s. He also created the alien mercenary character Lobo (with Roger Slifer), and the irreverent "want-to-be" hero, Ambush Bug. Giffen is known for having an unorthodox writing style, often using characters in ways not seen before. His dialogue is usually characterized by a biting wit that is seen as much less zany than dialogue provided by longtime collaborators DeMatteis and Robert Loren Fleming. That approach has brought him both criticism and admiration, as perhaps best illustrated by the mixed (although commercially successful) response to his work in DC Comics' Justice League International (1987-1992). He also plotted and was breakdown artist for an Aquaman limited series and one-shot special in 1989 with writer Robert Loren Fleming and artist Curt Swan for DC Comics. Giffen's first published work was "The Sword and The Star", a black-and-white series featured in Marvel Preview, with writer Bill Mantlo. He has worked on titles (owned by several different companies) including Woodgod, All Star Comics, Doctor Fate, Drax the Destroyer, Heckler, Nick Fury's Howling Commandos, Reign of the Zodiac, Suicide Squad, Trencher (to be re-released in a collected edition by Boom! Studios)., T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and Vext. He was also responsible for the English adaptation of the Battle Royale and Ikki Tousen manga, as well as creating "I Luv Halloween" for Tokyopop. He also worked for Dark Horse from 1994-95 on their Comics Greatest World/Dark Horse Heroes line, as the writer of two short lived series, Division 13 and co-author, with Lovern Kindzierski, of Agents of Law. For Valiant Comics, Giffen wrote XO-Manowar, Magnus, Robot Fighter, Punx and the final issue of Solar, Man of the Atom. He took a break from the comic industry for several years, working on storyboards for television and film, including shows such as The Real Ghostbusters and Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy. He is also the lead writer for Marvel Comics' Annihilation event, having written the one-shot prologue, the lead-in stories in Thanos and Drax, the Silver Surfer as well as the main six issues mini-series. He also wrote the Star-Lord mini-series for the follow-up story Annihilation: Conquest. He currently writes Doom Patrol for DC, and is also completing an abandoned Grant Morrison plot in The Authority: the Lost Year for Wildstorm.

Dan Jurgens is an American comic book writer and artist. He is best known for creating the superhero Booster Gold, and for his lengthy runs on the Superman titles Adventures of Superman and Superman (vol. 2), particularly during The Death of Superman storyline. Other series he has been associated with include The Sensational Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Thor (vol. 2), Captain America (vol. 3), Justice League America, Metal Men, Teen Titans (vol. 2), Zero Hour, Tomb Raider: The Series, Aquaman (vol. 3), and the creator of DC Comics' imprint Tangent. Jurgens' first professional comic work was for DC Comics on Warlord #63. He was hired due to a recommendation of Warlord-series creator Mike Grell who was deeply impressed by Jurgens' work after being shown his private portfolio at a convention. In 1984, Jurgens was the artist for the Sun Devils limited series (July 1984 - June 1985), with writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas. Jurgens would make his debut as a comic book writer with Sun Devils he began scripting from Conway's plots with #8 and fully took over the writing duties on the title with #10. In 1985, Jurgens created the character Booster Gold, who became a member of the Justice League. His first work on Superman was as penciller for Adventures of Superman Annual #1 (1987). In 1989, Jurgens began working full-time on the character when he took over the writing/pencilling of the monthly Adventures of Superman. Dan Jurgens was the penciller of the 1990–1991 limited series Armageddon 2001 and co-created the hero Waverider with Archie Goodwin. In 1991 Jurgens assumed the writing/pencilling of the main Superman comic book, where he created a supporting hero named Agent Liberty. During his run on Superman, Dan created two major villains, Doomsday and the Cyborg. Doomsday was the main antagonist in the Death of Superman storyline. Jurgens wrote and drew Justice League America for about one year and in 1993 pencilled the Metal Men four-issue miniseries, which was a retcon of their origin story. Jurgens wrote and pencilled the 1994 comic book miniseries and crossover Zero Hour. He wrote and penciled layouts (with finished art by Brett Breeding) to the Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey miniseries, which was a follow-up to the successful Death of Superman storyline. In 1995 Jurgens and Italian artist Claudio Castellini worked on the highly publicized crossover Marvel vs DC. In the same year, he gave up the pencilling duties on Superman. Jurgens scripted and provided layout art for the Superman vs. Aliens miniseries. The story was about a battle between Superman and the aliens created by H. R. Giger (a.k.a. the Xenomorphs), from the Alien film series. It was co-published by Dark Horse Comics and DC Comics in 1995. In January 1996, Jurgens was writer and penciller of the new Spider-Man series, The Sensational Spider-Man (Vol. 1), at Marvel Comics. The title was initially conceived to be the flagship showcase for the new Ben Reilly Spider-Man (it replaced the Web of Spider-Man series). The initial seven issues (#0–6, January–July 1996) were written and pencilled by Jurgens. Jurgens pushed strongly for the restoration of Peter Parker as the true Spider-Man and plans were made to enact this soon, but Bob Harras, the new Editor-in-chief, demanded the story be deferred until after the Onslaught crossover. Jurgens had by this stage become disillusioned with the immense amount of group planning and constant changes of ideas and directions and took this as the last straw, resigning from the title. In a past interview several years after his Spider-Man run, Jurgens stated that he would like to have another chance on the character, since his run was with the Ben Reilly character during the Spider-Man Clone Saga, and not Peter Parker. Jurgens had also written and pencilled Teen Titans (vol. 2) for its entire two year, 24 issue run. New Teen Titans co-creator George Pérez came on board on this incarnation of the Titans as inker for the se

Born February 12th, 1970 and raised on Long Island in New York, Judd began cartooning professionally at 16 with a single-paneled strip called Nuts & Bolts. This ran weekly through Anton Publications, a newspaper publisher that produced town papers in the Tri state area. He was paid 10 dollars a week. In August of 1988, Judd began attending the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor bringing Nuts & Bolts with him, but turning it into a four-panel strip and creating a cast of characters to tell his tales. Nuts & Bolts ran in The Michigan Daily 5 days a week from my freshman year (freshperson, or first-year student, as they liked to say at U of M), until graduation in the spring of 1992. A collection of those college years Nuts & Bolts was published in Ann Arbor. Watching the Spin-Cycle: the Nuts & Bolts collection had a small run of a thousand books a couple of months before graduation. They sold out in about 2 weeks and there are no plans to republish it. Before graduation he accepted a development deal with a major syndicate (syndicates are the major league baseball of comic strips. They act as an agent or broker and sell comic strips to newspapers). Judd spent the next year living in Boston, and developing his strip. The bottom dropped out when the syndicate decided that they were not going to pursue Nuts and Bolts for syndication and were terminating his development contract. Crushed and almost broke, he moved back in with his parents in July 1993. Getting by doing spot illustration jobs, Judd actually had Nuts & Bolts in development with Nickelodeon as an animated series. At one point he even turned the human characters into mice (Young Urban Mice and Rat Race were the working titles). In August of 1993 he saw an ad on MTV for The Real World III, San Francisco. For those who may not know, The Real World is a real-life documentary soap opera, where 7 strangers from around the country are put up in a house and filmed for six months. You get free rent, free moving costs, you get to live in San Francisco, and get to be a famous pig on television. The "Audition process," was everything from doing a video, to filling out a 15 page application, to in-person interviews with the producers, to being followed around and filmed for a day. 6 months and 6 "levels" later, Judd was in. On February 12th 1993, he moved into a house on Russian Hill and they began filming. Along the way Nuts & Bolts was given a weekly spot in the San Francisco Examiner. This WHOLE deal was filmed and aired for the show. They moved out in June of 1994, a couple of days after O.J.'s Bronco chase in L.A. The show began airing a week later. Along with the weekly San Francisco Examiner gig, Judd began doing illustrations for The Complete Idiot's Guide series through QUE Books. Since then, Judd has illustrated over 300 Idiot's Guides and still does the cartoons for the computer oriented Idiot's Guides line. A collection of the computer related titles' cartoons was published in 1997 as Terminal Madness, The Complete Idiot's Guide Computer Cartoon Collection. Not too long after the show had been airing, Judd's roommate from the show and good friend, AIDS activist Pedro Zamora, took ill from AIDS complications. Pedro was to begin a lecture tour in September. Judd agreed to step in and speak on his behalf until he was well enough to do so again. In August of 1994, Pedro checked into a hospital and never recovered. Pedro passed away on November 11, 1994. He was 22. Judd continued to lecture about Pedro, Aids education and prevention and what it's like to live with some one who is living with AIDS for most of 1995. Speaking at over 70 schools across the country, Judd describes it as, "...the most fulfilling and difficult time in my life." But time and emotional constraints forced him to stop lecturing. In May of 1995 Judd found the weekly Nuts & Bolts under-whelming and decided to give syndication another go. Re-vamping Nuts & Bolts

Rob Liefeld is an American comic book writer, illustrator, and publisher. A prominent artist in the 1990s, he has since become a controversial figure in the medium. In the early 1990s, self-taught artist Liefeld became prominent due to his work on Marvel Comics' The New Mutants and later X-Force. In 1992, he and several other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which rode the wave of comic books owned by their creators rather than by publishers. The first book published by Image Comics was Rob Liefeld's Youngblood #1. He is married to actress Joy Creel.

Geoff Johns originally hails from Detroit, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Media Arts and Film. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s in search of work within the film industry. Through perseverance, Geoff ended up as the assistant to Richard Donner, working on Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4. During that time, he also began his comics career writing Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. and JSA (co-written with David S. Goyer) for DC Comics. He worked with Richard Donner for four years, leaving the company to pursue writing full-time. His first comics assignments led to a critically acclaimed five-year run on the The Flash. Since then, he has quickly become one of the most popular and prolific comics writers today, working on such titles including a highly successful re-imagining of Green Lantern, Action Comics (co-written with Richard Donner), Teen Titans, Justice Society of America, Infinite Crisis and the experimental breakout hit series 52 for DC with Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. Geoff received the Wizard Fan Award for Breakout Talent of 2002 and Writer of the Year for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 as well as the CBG Writer of the Year 2003 thru 2005, 2007 and CBG Best Comic Book Series for JSA 2001 thru 2005. Geoff also developed BLADE: THE SERIES with David S. Goyer, as well as penned the acclaimed “Legion” episode of SMALLVILLE. He also served as staff writer for the fourth season of ROBOT CHICKEN. Geoff recently became a New York Times Bestselling author with the graphic novel Superman: Brainiac with art by Gary Frank.

Ann Nocenti is most noted as an editor for Marvel Comics, for whom she edited New Mutants and The Uncanny X-Men. She made her comics writing debut on a brief run of Spider-Woman (#47-50) and subsequently wrote a long run of Daredevil (1st series) #236-291 (minus #237) from 1986 to 1991, directly following on from Frank Miller's definitive Born Again storyline. She also wrote the 1986 Longshot limited series for Marvel, and in the same year produced the Someplace Strange graphic novel in collaboration with artist John Bolton. She wrote "the Inhumans Graphic Novel" in 1988. In 1993, she wrote the 16-issue run of Kid Eternity for the DC Comics imprint Vertigo. In Incredible Hulk #291, published in September 1983 (cover date January 1984), Ann Nocenti made a cameo appearance, talking to Dr. Bruce Banner, in a history written by Bill Mantlo, drawn by Sal Buscema and inked by Carlos Garzón and Joe Sinnot. That time Ann Nocenti was Assistant Editor for Larry Hama on Incredible Hulk and X-Men. She is noted for her left-wing political views which, particularly during her run on Daredevil, caused some controversy among some fans who didn't agree with her politics. She created several popular characters, including Typhoid Mary, Blackheart, Longshot and Mojo, and wrote the 1998 X-Men novel Prisoner X. Although Nocenti left comic books in the '90s after the industry sales collapsed, she later returned to the field, penning stories such as 2004's Batman & Poison Ivy: Cast Shadows. In Ultimate X-Men, a reimagination of the X-Men comic, the character Longshot, who was invented by her, has the civil name Arthur Centino. His last name, Centino, is an anagram of Nocenti and a homage to Nocenti. The name Arthur is for the co-creator of Longshot Arthur Adams who was Ann Nocenti's artist on the Longshot Mini Series. She edited High Times magazine for one year (2004) under the name Annie Nocenti and is the former editor of the screenwriting magazine Scenario.