Tom created a teaching environment that fostered open discussion, unbiased attitudes and a love for understanding how comics work and the kind of work we wanted to make.
-Jess Fink
You make comic stories, story telling so exciting and fun. I know I came to you with a crazy idea of writing a story. I don't think I'd have embarked on such an ambitious journey without your enthusiasm, boundless optimism, and most importantly, a belief in the story.
-Anna Kim
The way Tom teaches just electrifies my passion for making comics to an extent that I don't often experience.
-Hillary Allison
Tom’s approach to education and guidance offers sensitivity and candor in equal measure. He offers technical insight across genre boundaries, adapting his criteria to each student’s goals and aesthetic preferences.
- Dan Strauss
Tom picked me up from my rut, showed me what potential I had as an illustrator, and kicked my self-doubt’s ass six ways till sunday.
- Carlos Abdu
If you’re having a problem with your art or story, rather than spouting out answers at you, he’ll try to talk you through it and eventually draw a solution from you. This teaching style helped boost my artistic confidence and problem solving.
- Jon Mosley
Tom is a magical teacher and all-around great guy. He did not just help my brain understand how to create a good comic, but also opened my eyes to tons of great cartoonists, provided advice outside of class time, helped me find a thesis advisor, lent me fantastic books, etc. (the list goes on).
-Jess Worby
Board of Directors The Board of Directors represent the public and see that the guiding mission of the non-profit is adhered to
Travis Fristoe, President Travis Fristoe is a co-founder of Wayward Council, in Gainesville, a performance space and retail shop for independent artists and musicians. He is the Programming Librarian at the Headquarters branch of the Alachua County Library District, and organized the zine library at the Civic Media Center circa 1998. He writes, reviews books, plays music and practices kung fu.
Lauren Weinstein. Vice President Lauren Weinstein is a cartoonist and comics educator who has been teaching to a broad population of New York City for more 15 years. Her "Girl Stories" graphic novel was one of the most popular pages in gUrl.com where it was partially serialized. Her latest comic, The Goddess of War, was published by Picturebox in 2008. She currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts and is working on a sequel to "Girl Stories."
Geoffrey Mason, Legal Counsel, Secretary and Treasurer Geoffrey Mason is a Gainesville-based lawyer. He was publisher of Alternative Comics from 1993-2008. In that time, he published the first graphic novels from many notable cartoonists such as Gabrielle Bell, Tomer Hanuka, James Kochalka, Graham Annable, Nick Bertozzi, Leela Corman, Sara Varon, Joel Orff, Dash Shaw, Damon Hurd, Allison Cole, and K. Thor Jensen. and distributed self-published works by Josh Neufeld, Lauren Weinstein, Derek Kirk Kim, Ben Catmull, Jen Sorensen, Karl Stevens, and Jacob Weinstein.
Advisors We are currently asking everyone we know for help and wisdom. These people, among others, have helped us by offering and continue to offer advice, ideas and inspiration:
Dr. Donald Ault
Donald Ault (PhD, 1968, University of Chicago) has been a professor in the English Department at the University of Florida, Gainesville since 1988.
He is editor of Carl Barks: Conversations (2003). He served as consultant and contributor to The Carl Barks Library of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge (1983–90) and The Barks Library in Color (1992–98). His work has appeared in journals such as Studies in Romanticism, Modern Philology, Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Wordsworth Circle, The Keats-Shelley Journal, and The Comics Journal, as well as in various essay collections, including Comics & Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics (2000). He was executive producer and editorial supervisor for the videotape production The Duck Man: An Interview with Carl Barks (1996).
With the help of UF students, he organized the first two annual installments of “University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels” – “The Will Eisner Symposium” (2002) and “Underground(s)” (2003). He is also General Editor of ImageTexT, a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of comics and related media, produced in UF’s Department of English.
William Ayers William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, teaches courses in interpretive and qualitative research, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament. A graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, Bennington College, and Teachers College, Columbia University, Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is currently the vice-president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association, and a member of the executive committee of the UIC Faculty Senate. He has recently published To Teach: The Journey in Comics. http://billayers.wordpress.com/
Brendan Burford Brendan Burford is the comics editor of King Features Syndicate, home of Popeye and Betty Boop, and Mutts and Beetle Bailey. He is also a cartoonist and editor of alternative comics stories. His own comics can be seen in his anthology, Syncopated, a collection of comix-journalism.
Vanessa Davis
Cartoonist Vanessa Davis has been featured in The New York Times, Tablet magazine, and popular comix anthologies such as Kramers Ergot. Her collection of diary comix, Spaniel Rage, was published in 2005, and her next collection, Make Me a Woman, published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2010. She hold a degree in fine arts from the University of Florida. http://www.spanielrage.com
Shaenon Garrity Shaenon Garrity is a cartoonist and editor in San Fransisco, CA. Her popular strip Narbonic, ran for 7 years, gathering such a rabid fanbase that they created an annual convention for it alone. Garrity writes essays for The Comics Journal, Otaku USA and other magazines, and edits manga for Viz. Her other stories and ongoing serials include Smithson, L'il Mell, Skin Horse, and Trunktown.
Bill Kartalopoulos Bill Kartalopoulos teaches classes about comics and illustration at Parsons The New School for Design. He is a frequent public speaker and is the programming coordinator for SPX: The Small Press Expo and the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. He writes about comics for Print Magazine, where he is a contributing editor, and reviews comics for Publishers Weekly. He is a member of the Executive Committee for the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), an annual academic conference devoted to comics. In 2008 he curated Kim Deitch: A Retrospective at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. He lives in Brooklyn.
Matt Madden
Matt Madden (NYC 1968) lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Jessica Abel, and their two children. He is a cartoonist, editor and translator who also teaches comics and drawing at the School of Visual Arts. His recent work includes 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin), a collection of his comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, a translation of Aristophane’s Zabîme Sisters (First Second Books) and A Fine Mess, Madden’s anthology series. The couple are also series editors for The Best American Comics from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. For recent news and comics, check out www.mattmadden.com.
Joey Manley
Joey Manley is the founder of Modern Tales, one of the first online comics communities, and is Director of Comics Development for E-Line Media, an educational multi-media company in New York City.
Chris Staros
Chris Staros is the publisher of Top Shelf Comics as well as the former President of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) Board of Directors. For more than 15 years he has dedicated himself to expanding the realm of cartoonists and comic book art, publishing work by up and coming artists as well as industry giants such as Eddie Campbell and Alan Moore. He created the Staros Report in 1994, a magazine devoted to comics criticism and discussion and has since served as publisher, agent, editor and director in many aspects of the publishing industry. http://wwwtopshelfcomix.com
Phil Yeh Phil Yeh is the founder and president of Cartoonists Across America. He has traveled for 30 years across the globe promoting literacy with his comix stories and murals. He is also one of the earliest practitioners of the American Graphic Novel, having published his Even Cazco Gets the Blues in 1977. http://www.ideaship.com
Tom Hart is the creator of the Hutch Owen series of graphic novels and books, and has been a core instructor at New York City's School of Visual Arts for 10 years, teaching cartooning to undergraduates,working adults and teens alike. Among his students were Dash Shaw, Sarah GliddenBox Brown and other published cartoonists like Leslie Stein, Jessica Fink, Nicole Virella, Tintin Pantoja, Yali Lin, Josh Bayer, Brendan Leach and many others. His own work has been nominated for all the major industry awards; his The Collected Hutch Owen was nominated for best graphic novel in 2000. He was an early recipient of a Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, and has been on many best-of lists in the Comics Journal and other comix publications. He has been called "One of the great underrated cartoonists of our time" by Eddie Campbell and "One of my favorite cartoonists of the decade" by Scott McCloud. His daily Hutch Owen comic strip ran for 2 years in newspapers in New York and Boston, and his "Ali's House", co-created with Margo Dabaie was picked up by King Features Syndicate. He has taught comix and sequential art at schools and institutions all around New York City for 10 years, and has conducted week-long workshops from Maine to Hawaii. In addition to constant comix practice and work, he has studied drama, acting and improvisation in New York and sees creating the Sequential Artists Workshop as the next step of his teaching and learning career. His next book will be Daddy Lightning, in March 2012 from Retrofit, and Let's Get Furious, a 380-page new Hutch Owen collection, also in March 2012, from Top Shelf.
Leela Corman studied painting, printmaking and illustration at Massachuesettes College of Art and is the author of three graphic novels. Her newest book t Unterzakhn, published by Schocken/Pantheon, has garnerd rave reviews in The New York Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and other places. Her first, Queen's Day earned her a Xeric Award in 1999 and was called "Music to my eyes" by Scott McCloud. In her successful illustration career, she has illustrated books for major publishers on crafts, fashion, gardening, dating and other topics. She is also an accomplished bellydancer and bellydance instructor. Her website is
www.leelacorman.com
Dan Stepp
Daniel Stepp received his M.F.A. in painting from the New York Academy of Art.
He has exhibited in Florida, New York, Canada, and around the U.S. His paintings have been described as American genre. Subjects that his paintings explore are: tools and technology, gender roles in labor, corporate branding, and the transference of myth and archetype onto genre activities.
His comic-book series, Humungous Man, humorously playing with myth and archetype, was published by Alternative Comics from 1995-1997.
Justine Mara Andersen was mentored by and learned from top names in the industry, including such luminaries as P. Craig Russell (Elric, Sandman), Val Mayerik (Punisher, Conan), Frank Thorne (Red Sonja), John Workman, Jim Steranko and Jeffrey Catherine Jones, but struck out on her own to create her long-running series Mara, Celtic Shamaness for Fantagraphics as well as working as an inker and illustrator for DC Comics, Image Comics, Wizards of the Coast (D&D, etc.), Lucasfilms and other clients.
Writing teacher Carrie Guss currently teaches undergraduate creative writing at the University of Florida, and is finishing up her MFA in Fiction. She has a degree in Politics and Media Studies from Pomona College, where she studied creative nonfiction under David Foster Wallace. She is working on a collection of short stories.
She also has an IMDB page for her role as "Zombie Queen" in 2009's The Hell Patrol.
