Art Spiegelman | Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!
One of the pioneers of the graphic novel genre, Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, a narrative memoir of the Holocaust that portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Known for his comics’ complex, controversial content, Spiegelman is a strong proponent of the value of comics as a valid medium of art and was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People. Breakdowns is a retooling of Spiegelman’s classic 1978 anthology of the same name.

Chip Kidd | Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
An art director at Alfred A. Knopf and editor at large for Pantheon, Chip Kidd's work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and is collected in Chip Kidd: Book One, a monograph that reveals his distinctive ability to compress a literary trajectory onto the body of a book. He also is the author of novels The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners. Bat-Manga! examines and celebrates the popularity of Batman comics in Japan.

Jessica Abel | Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond

Cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel is the author of the Harvey Award-winning graphic novel La Perdida, about an American woman in Mexico City, and two collections, Soundtrack and Mirror, Window, which gather pieces from her popular comic book, Artbabe. With Ira Glass, Abel is co-author of Radio: An Illustrated Guide, a non-fiction comic about how the National Public Radio show This American Life is made. She received the 1997 Harvey Award for Best New Talent and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Charles Burns | Black Hole

A prolific and highly sought after comic illustrator, Charles Burns' images appear on the covers of such magazines as Time and the New Yorker, and he is the regular cover artist for the McSweeney’s magazine The Believer. Best known for his magnum opus, Black Hole, a multiple Harvey, Eisner, and Ignatz Award winner, that was named one of Comics Journal’s Top 100 English Language Comics of the Century, Burns has also designed the cover for Iggy Pop’s Brick by Brick album and a major marketing campaign for Altoids.

David Heatley | My Brain is Hanging Upside Down

David Heatley, author of the Deadpan comic series, has illustrated the cover of the New Yorker and Best American Comics 2007 and his work has graced the pages of the New York Times, Nickelodeon magazine, and Kramers Ergot. Taking more than five years to complete, My Brain is Hanging Upside Down is a graphic memoir that Heatley calls: an illuminated manuscript of my life. My statement to the world.