Lalo Alcaraz
A native of Los Angeles, Lalo Alcaraz is an award-winning editorial cartoonist and Latino journalist. His editorial cartoons have been published by LA Weekly since 1992, and Universal Press Syndicate distributes his English and Spanish editorial cartoons. His comic strip La Cucaracha is the first nationally syndicated daily comic strip based on Latino political themes. Alcaraz also co-edits the satirical magazine Pocho and illustrated Latino USA: A Cartoon History. He hold a master’s degree in architecture from University of California, Berkeley.

Tom Batiuk
Tom Batiuk, a native of Akron and graduate of Kent State University, worked as a high school teacher before he started Funky Winkerbean in 1972. His comic strip matured into a series of realistic stories about social issues such as teen pregnancy, breast cancer, alcoholism, suicide, and capital punishment, and it is now syndicated by King Features to more than 400 newspapers worldwide. He co-creates the comic strip Crankshaft with Chuck Ayers, and this feature also deals with contemporary concerns such as illiteracy and aging.

Charles Brownstein
The comics journalist Charles Brownstein was named director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) in early 2002. Founded in 1986, the CBLDF is a non-profit organization devoted to the preservation of First Amendment rights for members of the comics community. Prior to joining the CBLDF in 2002, Brownstein was one of the most prolific journalists covering the comics artform and business. He wrote and published the interveiw magazine Feature and was a regular contributor to Comiccon.com's SPLASH, The Comics Journal, Publishers Weekly, Comics Buyers Guide, ComicBookkResources.com, and Wizard Edge. In his role as an advocate for comics, Brownstein has noted that because of their relatively low production costs, comics offer an unrivaled opportunity for diverse artistic expression.

Al Feldstein
Al Feldstein penciled and inked comic book pages professionally before he graduated from high school. Following service in World War II, he worked with Bill Gaines at EC Comics where he created, wrote, illustrated and edited comic books such as Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, and Panic. After EC Comics folded due to the wave of comic book censorship in the 1950s, Feldstein was the editor of MAD Magazine from 1955 to 1984. He now lives and paints in Montana.

Nicole Hollander
Nicole Hollander holds an MFA in painting from Boston University and began her artistic career as a graphic designer. After joining the National Organization for Women, she began drawing for a number of feminist publications. The character that became Sylvia debuted in 1976 in The Spokeswoman, and the comic strip Sylvia debuted in 1980. Tribune Media Services now syndicates Sylvia to more than eighty papers in major markets.

Bob Levin
The San Francisco underground cartoonists collective known as the Air Pirates parodied Mickey Mouse and other Walt Disney characters in comic books published in the early 1970s. The saga of the Disney Corporation’s lawsuit against them is the topic of Bob Levin’s book The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney’s War against the Underground. One reviewer noted, “For all of the intriguing artistic and legal implications of this story, there is also the simple fact that this is a compelling piece of history, abundant with opportunities to revel in the idiosyncrasies and excesses of the 1970s counterculture.” Levin is an attorney practicing in Berkeley.

Jay Lynch
Jay Lynch grew up reading MAD Magazine and joined other teenage cartoonists of the late 1950s and early 1960s in creating comic fanzines that they shared by mail. He was founder, publisher and editor of Bijou Funnies, one of the first underground comix. In addition to his own work, Lynch published comix by R. Crumb, Kim Deitch, Justin Green, Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman, Skip Williamson and others from 1968 to 1973. Lynch is now a commercial designer living in upstate New York.

Cindy McCreery
Cindy McCreery is a faculty member in the Department of History of the University of Sydney, Australia. She is a graduate of University of Oxford and her specialty is eighteenth century caricature. McCreery’s most recent book is The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England.

Joel Pett
Joel Pett, winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning, has been the editorial cartoonist at the Lexington KY Herald-Leader since 1984. His work is widely reprinted and is syndicated internationally by Universal Press Syndicate. Pett is a past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and currently is a board member of the international human rights organization, Cartoonists Rights Network. Four books reprinting his cartoons have been published.

Mike Ramirez
Mike Ramirez was the editorial cartoonist for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal before he succeeded Paul Conrad at the Los Angeles Times’ in 1997. His work has been syndicated by Copley News Service since 1988, and he is the winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize and the 1996 Mencken Award for Best Cartoon. He is a past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman’s career began with underground comix after he dropped out of college in 1968. He worked for more than a decade on Maus, his biographical Holocaust narrative, and it received a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. With Françoise Mouly, he published the avant-garde comics magazine RAW from 1980-1991. After it ceased, he worked as a staff artist and writer for The New Yorker from 1993 to 2003 and wrote and illustrated several books. His latest book, In the Shadow of No Towers, will be published in 2004.

Ann Telnaes
Ann Telnaes, a graduate of California Institute of the Arts, worked as an animator before turning to editorial cartooning in the early 1990s. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and Tribune Media Syndicate distributes her editorial cartoons internationally. She is past vice president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. The Library of Congress will exhibit her work in the spring of 2004. Telnaes is also the Thursday contributor to Six Chix, King Features Syndicate’s daily comic strip that highlights the work of six different women.

Michelle Urry
Michelle Urry, the cartoon editor at Playboy, immigrated from Canada, hoping to be a fashion designer. After working in Los Angeles and New York, she went to Chicago where she was hired in a staff position at Playboy. The interest of Hugh Hefner, founder and editor of the magazine, in cartoons is well-known, and he personally hired her as cartoon editor. For many years Urry has worked closely with him to publish work by the nation’s top cartoonists in Playboy.

Tom Tomorrow
Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) is the social and political satirist who creates This Modern World, a weekly cartoon that appears in approximately 150 newspapers nationally. His unique artistic style, which is reminiscent of 1950s advertisements, provides a lively visual counterpoint to the content of his drawings. He has won numerous awards including the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoons are reprinted widely and six books featuring his work have been published.