APE 2014 featured these special guests at the event, Oct. 4 and 5 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
APE 2014 Special Guests
Bob Fingerman
Cartoonist, Minimum Wage, Bottomfeeder
Bob Fingerman is the creator of critically acclaimed graphic novels such as White Like She, Recess Pieces, and From the Ashes, as well as the novels Bottomfeeder and Pariah. In Bottomfeeder, Fingerman took on the vampire genre, tossing away the typical gothic and romantic trappings in favor of portraying the down to earth story of a working class Queens-bred bloodsucker. In the mid-90s, his series Minimum Wage won a devoted cult audience. In 2013 it was revised and collected in Image’s definitive Maximum Minimum Wage. Now Minimum Wage is back, better than ever and all new for 2014 and beyond.
Faith Erin Hicks
Writer/artist, Friends with Boys, The Nameless City
Faith Erin Hicks is the writer and artist behind Demonology 101, The War at Ellsmere, Friends with Boys, and the Eisner Award-nominated The Adventures of Superhero Girl. She also drew Brain Camp (with Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan), the Bigfoot Boy series (with J. Torres), Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (with Prudence Shen), and co-wrote the video game prequel The Last of Us: American Dreams with Neil Druckmann. She lives in Nova Scotia, where she is working on her upcoming graphic novel trilogy, The Nameless City.
Ed Piskor
Cartoonist, Wizzywig, Hip Hop Family Tree
Ed Piskor cut his teeth drawing American Splendor strips for Harvey Pekar. The duo went on to doing a few graphic novels together: Macedonia (Villard, 2007), and The Beats (Hill & Wang, 2009). His first solo graphic novel was the computer hacker story Wizzywig (Top Shelf, 2012) and he's currently working on the Hip Hop Family Tree series (Fantagraphics) of which two volumes will be available at APE. He plans on continuing the series for the foreseeable future.
Jason Shiga
Cartoonist, Empire State, Meanwhile, Demon
Jason Shiga was born and raised in Oakland, California. He has been drawing comics since 1996. His comics have a geeky side, and often feature exciting uses of math. Many of his comics are interactive and require the reader to make choices to move the story along. In his fifteen-year career, Shiga has created 5 graphic novels, 20 comic books, over a dozen magazines and newspaper strips, and the world’s second largest interactive comic. Although his works range from strips to graphic novels he is best known for his love of unusual structural forms. Jason's newest project is a 750-page science fiction epic entitled Demon. He is releasing it serially on his website, shigabooks.com.
C. Spike Trotman
Writer/artist, Poorcraft, Templar, Arizona
C. Spike Trotman was born in DC, grew up in MD, and lives in IL. She runs a teeny-tiny publishing company, Iron Circus Comics, and is responsible for Poorcraft, The Sleep of Reason, and Smut Peddler, along with the webcomic Templar, Arizona.
A Kickstarter early adopter, her projects have raised over $200,000 in funding and earned multiple awards. Her achievements are just a few of many like it in the independent publishing world, a world reinvigorated by webcomics, diversifying audiences, increased access and crowdfunding. In case you couldn't tell, she's a big fan of where things are going in comics.
Robert Williams
Photo by Joe Goode
Artist, cartoonist, Zap Comix, The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams
Often imitated but rarely equaled, Robert Williams remains an enduring and visionary original. In a career that has spanned not only decades, but more significantly generations, Williams has made an indelible mark on popular culture and inspired legions of artists long before his relatively recent and much belated rise to prominence in the art world. By the time Williams’ art finally received its critical acceptance and institutional acknowledgement in the last decade, he was already a living legend revered by many prominent filmmakers, musicians, writers and artists of our time. In addition to Williams’ career as a painter, he is also one of the legends of underground comix, and one of the artists who launched Zap Comix. He is also one of the founders of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine.