About this issue's contributors...

About this issue’s contributors...

Rich Barrett is the writer-artist behind the ongoing webcomic Nathan Sorry, which has been collected in two volumes available in both print and digital editions. A resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, he has become a regular at the annual HeroesCon—first as a fan, and in more recent years as an artist. He also writes a weekly comics column for the online version of the magazine Mental Floss. A web designer and commercial illustrator by trade, Barrett has provided creative support to the likes of JWT, Wray Ward and Merrill Lynch. After several years in New York City, Barrett relocated with his wife in 2004 to Charlotte, where they are now joined by their three young children and two dogs.

Gavin Burrows, from his base in Brighton, England, has badgered the foolish and unwary with a plethora of comic strips, articles, polemics, drunken rants and nuisance phone calls for over twenty-five years now. (While he may write about music from time to time he has no musical abilities of any kind; the DJ, producer and remix artist is another fellah!) His favourite subjects are film, music, comics and visual art... or anything which might be able to induce a lucid frenzy.

Mark Gabrish Conlan was born September 4, 1953 in San Francisco, California. He has been an avid record collector and movie fan since he was seven years old, and has been involved in journalism of one sort or another since he launched his first publication, The Urgent Message, in junior high school at age 11. (He hates the current neologism “middle school”.) From 1994 to 2012, Mark published, edited and wrote for Zenger’s Newsmagazine, a monthly periodical on alternative lifestyles, politics, media, culture and health. He currently maintains two blogs: Zengers Mag, dealing with national, state and local politics and current events; and Movie Magg, which reviews both classic and current films. Mark legally married his partner of 18 years, Charles Nelson, on the Fourth of July, 2008, which for the occasion they renamed “Interdependence Day”.

Michael French grew up on Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters and Huey Lewis. He has degrees in film and journalism, and spent most of college investigating where George Lucas’s talent went to die. French was closely involved with the development of Star Wars: Revisited and ESB: the Reconstruction. He also served as a staff writer for TheRaider.net and IndyGear.com. Between the discovery that Voltron was actually an ultra-violent Japanese cartoon and his scathing oratory on his dislike of the ThunderCats, French launched RetroBlasting on YouTube. Recently, RetroBlasting has been featured on the Official Voltron Facebook page. It is also showcased regularly on igrewupstarwars.com, and once a month hosts a dedicated podcast on Mike Alonzo’s Clobberin’ Time on BlogTalkRadio. One can visit French and his partner Melinda at RetroBlasting! and youtube.com/retroblasting.

Bill Harvey was one of the students at John Buscema’s original Workshop For Comic Book Art, in NYC. He has published the DangerWorld comic book and publishes THE ODDs comic strip. Michigan born and bred, he lives in the Detroit suburbs, and when not laid off, works as a computer technician. He generally considers himself a penciller/plotter in the arena of comic books. He does inking and lettering out of necessity. His favourite comic book was The Fantastic Four with art by Jack Kirby. At age 56, he would love to be part of a documentary on the life and works of Jack Kirby, mostly centred on his theatrical approach to comic books, his unfettered imagination and glorious artwork. Mr. Harvey's website is www.BeholdComics.com. Copies of DangerWorld can be ordered from there.

Dennis Hyer is the New Jersey artist behind the comic strips Inhuman Relations and Mullein Fields. He doesn’t have a lot to write about himself except that he loves old movies and television shows. He is also an amateur curmudgeon, with no patience for anime, rap music, modern newspaper comics, asphalt driveways, or anything produced by the Disney Channel (in that order). Aside from classic cartoons and comic strips, his other areas of interest include billiards, anthropology, girls, Indians, and agriculture. His two comic strips have been collected in the volumes Inhuman Relations and Greetings from Mullein Fields. Both are available in paperback and ebook editions from his store at Lulu.com. Hyer’s more current comics can be found at his website.

Steve K. is a lifelong comics reader, having started around the time he learned to read. He grew up on DC and Marvel superheroes. As a teenager and young adult, he drifted away from the Marvel characters and read mostly DC superhero books (“90’s Marvel—ugh!”). Marvel got him back with Marvel Knights, the Ultimate books, and some of its more “experimental” offerings in the early 2000’s. Also in the late 90’s / early 00’s, his tastes began to broaden somewhat, leading him to the Vertigo / independent scene. Though he mostly follows creators rather than characters, he is a Batman-aholic and knows way more useless information about Batman than anyone really should. Despite having a decent head for trivia, he tends not to care much about shared universe continuity, and actually feels that DC’s and Marvel’s focus on intricate, inter-title continuity has negatively affected their respective outputs for quite some time. He does, however, love discussions of ACTUAL comic history. K. started his Iceberg Lounge blog near the end of 2007 (on Christmas Eve, actually) with the idea of having a site devoted to trade paperback reviews. Other than comics, his interests include baseball (Braves), college basketball (Duke), good TV (HBO, AMC), and novels. He is an attorney by day, and has two daughters (whose commentary occasionally shows up on the blog). He can perform a five-star concert on the Hannah Montana wii game, but is otherwise secure in his masculinity. He can also be found on Twitter as ‘allstarmatches’.

Randy Kinden is a seasoned comics enthusiast and collector. He has been a friend of Comics Decoder editor R. W. Watkins since 1993, when they were officially introduced by his brother Boyce Kinden and underground poet Robin Tilley, who had both been friendly with Watkins for several years. Besides comics, Kinden’s interests and avocations include cult cinema, alternative and classic rock music, record collecting, and computer matters. He has also been known to study and dabble in journalism. He resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he lives out the Canadian Gen-X dream, working at a call centre.

Jessica Tremblay currently lives in Vancouver, BC, where she creates her weekly haiku comic strip Old Pond. As a winner of the Best BC Poem of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational 2008, her poem was sculpted in a stone at the VanDusen botanical garden. More of Jessica’s poetically insightful strips can be found at her Old Pond Comics website.

R. W. Watkins is a Canadian poet, essayist, and longtime appreciator of comics and cartoons. He was the editor and publisher of Contemporary Ghazals, the world’s first English-language journal dedicated to the style of Middle Eastern poetry from which it took its title. His poetry and literary criticism have appeared most notably in Lynx, RAW NerVZ Haiku, Haiku Canada publications, and Agha Shahid Ali’s ghazals anthology Ravishing DisUnities. Also known for his work in Japanese styles of poetry, he has published three chapbooks of haiku, tanka and renga, including New England Country Farmhouse (2005), which has proven fairly popular with fans of an early Jodie Foster film from which it takes inspiration. In recent years, Watkins has shifted much of his attention to internet publishing (‘weblishing’), serving as assistant poetry editor at webzine Red Fez in the process.