Spec Fic Sci-Fi Explosion

Ben Passmore is an artist and the author of DAYGLOAYHOLE, Goodbye, and Your Black Friend. His comics are about crime, monsters, anarchism, sexual dysfunction, police brutality, and art theory.

Joan Hilty directs comics and graphic novel publishing at Nickelodeon, and is Editor-in-Chief of the book producer Pageturner. She has been a senior editor at DC Comics/Vertigo and a syndicated cartoonist. She co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival graphics committee and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Koren Shadmi is an Israeli-American, Brooklyn-based graphic novelist and illustrator. His books have been published internationally and include: In The Flesh, The Abaddon, Mike's Place, Love Addict: Confessions of a Serial Dater, and Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D.  His illustration and comics have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Wired, BusinessWeek, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times. In Higwayman (Top Shelf) Koren Shadmi follows an unnamed protagonist over the course of centuries, in a sprawling, ambitious journey across time and space. Forever on the move, Highwayman travels through the vastness of North America searching for the source of his condition: a strange, seemingly incurable disease: immortality. Bound to the road and at the mercy of whomever will give him a ride, he encounters people who reflect the rapidly changing world around him. Moving through centuries of change, he watches humanity's precarious trajectory towards an unknown future. A review in Multiversity Comics called Highwayman ”… a beautiful book. It is a meditation on being, a story about the way society can change and crumble, and the things that humanity could do to survive. It tells all of those stories beautifully. [This] is a book that sits with you after you’ve finished reading it.”

Paul Pope is an American artist/designer living and working in New York City. His most recent book, Battling Boy, debuted at #1 on the New York Times best-seller list. It’s his third book to hit the NYT Top 10. His iconic Batman: Year 100, a science-fiction take on the classic Batman origin tale, appears frequently on many Top 10 Batman story lists. In 2010 Pope was recognized as a Master Artist by the American Council of The Arts. His short science fiction comic strip Strange Adventures (DC Comics)-- an homage to the Flash Gordon serials of the '30s-- won the coveted National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Award for Best Comic Book of the year. He has won 5 Eisners to date. Heavy Liquid (Image comics) is a sci-fi/cyberpunk classic celebrating its 20th anniversary. Time Magazine listed Heavy Liquid among the 100 most important science fiction graphic novels of the decade. In a future where New York has evolved into a sci-fi metropolis, a man named S becomes entwined in a mystery that's littered with love and drugs, and in particular, an addictive substance called “heavy liquid” that's both a drug and an art form. In his search, S finds himself battling deadly foes as well as the inner demons of addiction, but if he can survive these trials, he might discover the shocking secret behind “heavy liquid.” Library Journal noted that “Drawing inspiration from noir films, cyberpunk, manga, and the world of high fashion, this work has a influenced an entire generation of cartoonists but remarkably still feels fresh today.”