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About this issue’s contributors...
Mark Jarret Chavous was born in Columbus, Ohio. He received a degree in English from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and started his career in professional photography in 1983; a career in TV followed in 1985. He was hired by the company that would become known as Comcast in 1990, and a year later was hired by The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass. as a freelance photographer, later writing some articles. At Comcast, he rose from his initial position as editor to become a producer and director, eventually being nominated for a New England Emmy in 2002. Today, he continues to freelance as a writer and photographer for Gatehouse Media and as a camera operator for networks such as ESPN/ABC, CBS and NBC. On Facebook, he created a page called FTNN (Fairy Tale News Network) Media, a satirical news parody. Chavous currently lives in metro Boston.
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 (the original series; out of print), Greetings from Mullein Fields, The Complete Mullein Fields, and the recent Inhuman Relations (A Cartoon Collection). Hyer’s more current comics can be found at his website.
Hannah Hillam is an American cartoonist and illustrator. Signed and numbered prints of her work can be purchased via her website, HannahHillam.com.
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 63, 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.
Rick Friday is the farmer-cartoonist who found himself dismissed from the Farm News in 2016 when he dared take jabs at Monsanto. Rehired, he continues to create his weekly strip for that publication, as well as cartoons and art for such magazines as Backyard and Countryside. He resides in Iowa, where he runs the Friday family farm with the help of his wife and grown children.
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.
Steven Lewis is the cartoonist behind Murdercake.com. Murdercake is also represented with a Facebook page.
Gordon Lindholm is a typically debt-burdened American student. He’s been producing The Trivial Tales of Luna Lesser webcomic now for some five years. His contributions to the FreakAnimes site can be found here.
Matthew Quann hails from Miramichi, New Brunswick. A longtime comics enthusiast as well as a medical student, he resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Grant Snider’s interests have changed drastically since he was four years old — with the exception of dragons, dinosaurs, and drawing. Snider’s first published cartoons appeared in the University of Kansas student newspaper, followed by a weekly strip called ‘Delayed Karma’ for the Kansas City Star. His comics and illustrations now appear in newspapers, books, magazines, and across the internet. He lives in Wichita, Kansas with his family, where he practises orthodontics and webcomics. More of his work can be found at his Incidental Comics website.
Chris Tolworthy was born in England on the fourth of July, but now resides in a small cottage in the woods in the Highlands of Scotland. He has a longtime interest in Marvel Comics in general and The Fantastic Four in particular. He also devotes a large amount of his leisure time to something called ‘Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders’, which we believe to be some sort of video game or something. His two essays – written, for the most part, in the American spelling and punctuation style, which has left him totally confused (confuzed?) – included in this issue of The Comics Decoder are the first in a series; so stay tuned, O true believers, and keep thy webs untangled!
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 the author of two chapbooks of haiku and related verse, October Twilight and New England Country Farmhouse, and the co-author (with Robin Tilley) of a third, In The Grip of Sirens. His poetry and literary essays have been published in various journals throughout Canada and the US, and he was the only Canadian included in Agha Shahid Ali’s Ravishing DisUnities. Inspired by Ali’s vision, he published the first issue of Contemporary Ghazals in 2003. In more recent years he has turned his attention to the Internet, editing poetry at Red Fez and launching The Comics Decoder site. His latest major works are View From The Cellar: A Critical Analysis of Laird Koenig’s The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, Contemporary Ghazals: An Anthology (Ed.), and Trinity, which collects his three aforementioned chapbooks. These and other publications by the author are available at Amazon. Watkins holds a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and English Literature, but invests very little faith in contemporary formal education. Outspoken on many issues, he resides in Newfoundland, Canada.
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