Augustyn got his start in the industry in 1986 as an editor for Tru Studios' Trollords. He then edited Syphons and Speed Racer for NOW Comics in 1987. In 1988, he joined DC, starting out as a co-editor on Action Comics during its period as a weekly title. During the late 1980s and early 1990s Augustyn was an editor for DC Comics, where he edited The Flash, Justice League and the Impact Comics line of titles. Augustyn was recognized for his work in the industry with the Wizard Fan Award for Favorite Editor in 1994. He served as the managing editor of Visionary Comics Studio. As editor of The Flash beginning in 1989, Augustyn brought in Mark Waid as writer in 1992, which led to an acclaimed eight-year run. Under Augustyn's stewardship, the Flash was brought out from the shadow of his predecessors and increased his powers dramatically. Other Augustyn-Waid editor-writer partnerships included The Comet (DC/Impact, 1992) and Impulse (DC, 1995–1996). Augustyn currently works as story editor for publisher Red Giant Entertainment and their Giant-Size Comics line of free print comic book titles which debuted on May 3, 2014 as part of Free Comic Book Day.[

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.

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

Once a professional juggler and fire eater, Tom Taylor is a #1 New York Times Bestselling, multi-award-winning comic book writer, playwright and screenwriter. Well known for his work with DC Comics and Marvel, Taylor is the co-creator of NEVERLANDERS from Penguin Random House, SEVEN SECRETS from Boom Studios and the Aurealis-Award-winning graphic novel series THE DEEP. Taylor is also the Head Writer and Executive Producer of The Deep animated series, four seasons of which is broadcast in over 140 countries. He is perhaps best known for the DC Comics series, DCEASED (Shadow Awards Winner), NIGHTWING (nominated for 5 Eisner Awards), SUPERMAN: SON OF KAL-EL (GLAAD Award Nominee), INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US, SUICIDE SQUAD, EARTH 2 and BATMAN/SUPERMAN as well as Marvel's FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN, ALL NEW WOLVERINE, X-MEN: RED, DARK AGES and SUPERIOR IRON MAN. Taylor is also the writer of many Star Wars series, which include STAR WARS: INVASION and STAR WARS: BLOOD TIES (Stan Lee Excelsior Award winner). Taylor has written for Marvel, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, Boom Studios, Wildstorm, 2000 AD and Gestalt Comics. He can be followed on twitter @TomTaylorMade.

Douglas "Doug" Mahnke is an American comic book artist and penciller. He embarked on a love affair with comics at the age of five, having received a pile of Spider-Man issues from a rugby-playing college student named Mike who lived in his basement. A consistent interest in the medium, coupled with some art skill, landed Mahnke a job drawing comics for Dark Horse at the age of 24. His first gig was illustrating a moody detective one-shot entitled Homicide written by John Arcudi. The two went on to collaborate on Dark Horse's The Mask and their creator-owned series Major Bummer, originally published by DC. Since then, Mahnke has worked almost exclusively for DC on a wide variety of titles, including Superman: The Man Of Steel; JLA; Justice League; Batman; Team Zero; Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein; Black Adam: The Dark Age; Stormwatch: P.H.D.; Final Crisis; Green Lantern; Superman/Wonder Woman; Superman; and Detective Comics.

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts. Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce. Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly. Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six. Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion. He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Marcus To is a Toronto-based artist and illustrator whose previous work includes Soulfire and DC's Red Robin. To, who was born in Alberta, has been drawing since childhood. With the hopes of keeping her very active son occupied, his mother started drawing pictures for him, then gave him a pencil and encouraged him to do his own. He’s been drawing his own comics since his early teens, working on his storytelling and drawing hockey players for classmates. But, he never dreamt that he would be able to do it professionally. A one-year animation program in North Vancouver, involving 13-hour days, and nights spent drawing his own comics to build his portfolio, helped prepare him for his future career. After a year studying computer science, he decided to take the plunge and work with a family friend at a photography studio in Los Angeles while trying to break into the comics industry. After receiving great feedback at a Wizard World convention, he revamped his portfolio for San Diego Comicon, meeting the Aspen Comics crew and going on to work with them on such projects as Fathom and Soulfire. In 2009, he made the move to Toronto, and that same year he started working with DC. In 2010, he joined the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design, or R.A.I.D. studio, in downtown Toronto. His two years on Red Robin were a dream come true – as a fan of the Bat series, it was a chance to work on a character close to his heart. Since Red Robin wrapped, he’s most recently worked on a project for the Green Lantern video game and a Huntress mini-series.