Michael Comeau moved to Toronto in 1995 for art school. He began making zines, printing posters, authoring comics and playing in bands.

Currently he gardens and has a comic series "Slomeauzine". His video work can be found @comeauslomeau on instagram and @slomeau on youtube

John Kelly is the editor and publisher of Dummy. He is a writer who has contributed regularly to the Comics Journal since 1990 and is the former Executive Director of The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh's now closed museum of comics and cartoon art.

Seena Shamsavari aka Sina Sparrow is a Hastings-based illustrator, comic book artist and DJ. His work explores themes of popular culture, movie icons, camp , cult B-Movies, pop idols, gay culture, comic book heroes, the sacred and profane.

Seena’s portfolio includes album sleeves, packaging, visual merchandising, editorial illustrations, T-shirts as well as an extensive range of self-published comic books.

Clients include: Bella Freud, Liberty London, Fanpages (Bay Garnett) and Concept Store-Y Soho. Seena's T-Shirts have been stocked in various boutiques across the UK, Berlin, and Japan.

Trevor Alixopulos' comics began from an obscure place, employing idiosyncratic characters and settings that resonate with some unusual significance to him, and the journey of the work is in how they become knowable. He starts a strip hoping to search and inhabit unfamiliar perspectives.

He tries to create comics that are superficially straightforward cartoons, with a smooth read, that nonetheless on completion leave the reader a bit confounded, with a different story told by the sum than by the parts. The language of the cartoon makes a deal with the reader as to how it will be "read" and what it represents, with terms always subject to change.

His limited edition collection of nightlife comics, Lipstick Traces was listed among the top comics of 2021 by the contributors of The Comics Journal and his graphic novel The Hot Breath of War was nominated for Outstanding Graphic Novel in the 2008 Ignatz Awards and featured on tcj.com's "Top 100 Comics of the Decade."

Mark Connery is a Canadian cartoonist, artist, and educator who studied English literature and women's studies at the University of Toronto. He's best known for his comic series Rudy, which was so popular it even got a spin-off! 

He's been creating and distributing a multitude of strange comics since the 80s and throughout the 90s, often leaving them anonymously at public transit stops or fests! You can find his more recent works of art on Instagram at mark_connery_art.

Mike Taylor is a longtime cartoonist best known for his zine Scenery, later titled Late Era Clash, which ran from 1994 to 2015. However, he’s been immersed in the comics scene and creating comics since he was twelve! He graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and has gone on to create the graphic novel In Christ There Is No East or West, which explores themes of the modern-day American psychological landscape using both abstract mark-making and mind-bending scenes created using analog art techniques. 

He still values traditional art with a minimum of digital adjustments today and lives in sunny St. Augustine, Florida.

Mark Newgarden has worked on a wide variety of creative projects in numerous forms including print, film, TV and digital media (from Cartoon Network to Microsoft). His work has been exhibited at such venues as the Smithsonian Institute, the Cooper-Hewitt, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the ICA in London and the Picasso Museum in Lucerne. He has won the Eisner Award and the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, among other honors. He currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

David Kiersh is an illustrator and cartoonist with a love for personal comics. He created the comic strip Drop-In and published the books Afterschool Special and Dirtbags, Mallchicks and Motorbikes which he also wrote and illustrated. By day, he has worked as a planetarium narrator, children’s librarian and graphic designer.

His website, davidkiersh.com showcases his illustrations and comics over a period of twenty years. More recently, Dave has created and maintained a personal collection of obscure comics and related ephemera into the searchable site/archive comicartandbooks.com

You can check out his shop to help support his projects and encourage him on his journey to create more books, both handmade and heartfelt. Or visit his website for a deep dive into this exhaustive survey of his portfolio, most of which has never been published elsewhere!

Fiona Smyth is a feminist Canadian cartoonist, illustrator, and comics educator born in Montreal. She began creating comics while studying at the Ontario College of Art. She soon became immersed in the art world, creating paintings, murals, comics, and zines, and then went on to contribute her work to various anthologies. Her work has appeared in Exclaim! magazine, Vice magazine, and more.

She's been published by Seven Stories Press, Koyama Press, Annick Press, and Pedlar Press. She's received many awards for her work and is now teaching the next generation of cartoonists at OCAD and working on her next book.

Megan Kelso is primarily a cartoonist but also teaches art and does freelance illustration. She graduated from Evergreen State College in 1991 and started her comic series Girlhero, which won her a Xeric grant. 

Her graphic novel, Artichoke Tales, was published by Fantagraphics along with three collections of mini comics. In 2004 she edited a comics anthology titled Scheherazade, that showcases the work of many female graphic novelists. You can find her on Blogspot and Instagram at megangirlhero.

Vanessa Davis is an illustrator and cartoonist currently living in Los Angeles. She is the author of Spaniel Rage (Buenaventura Press, 2005) (re-released in March 2017 by Drawn and Quarterly) and Make Me a Woman, (Drawn and Quarterly, 2010). She's currently working on her next book for Drawn and Quarterly and mentoring at the Sequential Artists Workshop.

In recent years she's taught at California College of the Arts, and was the art director and comics editor at Popula. She won the Terry Southern Award for humor from The Paris Review in 2017. Some of her other clients include: The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, SpongeBob Comics, Amplify Education, and Bento Box Entertainment.

Diane DiMassa is a feminist and comic artist from New Haven, Connecticut, who began drawing 'Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist ' in 1991 as a form of anger therapy. Hothead Paisan is a character who uses guns, grenades, guillotines and anything else that can be used as a weapon to avenge wrongs against women, creating a popular underground comic for lesbians, feminists and recovering addicts.

Paul Pope is an American artist/designer living and working in New York City. He has been working primarily in comics and screenprinting since the early '90s, but has also done a number of projects with Italian fashion label Diesel Industries and, in the US, with DKNY.

His recent collaboration with Errolson Hugh/Acronym for Nike’s AF1 debuted spring 2017. His media clients include LucasArts, NBC, Disney, Cartoon Network, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Conde-Naste, Kodansha (Japan), Sapporo (Japan), Dargaud Editions (France), EMI Canada, The Grateful Dead Estate, and The British Film Institute.

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. His latest book, Battling Boy, debuted at #1 on the New York Times best-seller list, his third book to hit the NYT Top 10.

SAW spoke with YLP Alum and FLOW + Publish member Dusty McGowan about his experiences with comics, his creative process, and his unique perspective as a psychotherapist cartoonist.

Dusty was also a guest on the most recent episode of SAW’s Comics Karma podcast with hosts Tom Hart and Lauren Weinstein. Check out the episode!

We had such a splendid and informative time having Sacha Mardou speak with us about her healing journey and career in comics. She gave us a generously in-depth look at her process in making her newly-released graphic memoir Past Tense. We also got a sneak peak at what she's working on next!

About our guest speaker:

"Sacha Mardou was born in Macclesfield in 1975 and grew up in Manchester, England. She began making comics after getting her BA in English Literature from the University of Wales, Lampeter. Her critically acclaimed graphic novel series, Sky in Stereo was named an outstanding comic of 2015 by the Village Voice and shortlisted for the 2016 Slate Studio Prize.

Since 2019 she has been making comics about therapy and healing. Her graphic memoir Past Tense: Facing family Secrets and Finding myself in Therapy published by Avery/Penguin USA is out now. Since 2005 she has lived in St Louis, Missouri with her cartoonist husband Ted May, their daughter and two disruptive cats."

What a pleasure it was to have Yasmeen Abedifard speak with us at the Sequential Artists Workshop! We talked in depth about the making and many iterations of her recently published When to Pick a Pomegranate (2024 Silver Sprocket), as well as her journey through arts, comics, publishing, and teaching. Give it a listen! About our guest speaker: "Yasmeen Abedifard (b. 1996) is an Iranian-American artist born in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently based in Oakland, CA, USA. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, where she received the Charles Baskerville Painting Award. Her work is centered around storytelling mediums, including comics, illustrations, and animation. She is currently teaching in the Comics program at The California College of the Arts (CCA) and the UC Berkeley Art Studio."

Our very last episode of The Terrible Anvil (Season One) was recorded this week! With Tom and Jess together in the same room!

We tried to tie a bow around the business of comics by offering ideas on HOW TO KEEP GOING (FOREVER), AKA making your own sustainable comics practice amidst inner/outer turmoil and also remembering to wash the dishes.

A big takeaway from this episode: CELEBRATE SMALL WINS!

This week we recorded the penultimate episode of THE TERRIBLE ANVIL, this time discussing scripts, dialogue, and writing for comics!

The words we use and how they are arranged on the page can guide readers' understanding of our comics and influence how they feel about a story and its characters. But how do you pick the right words? How much is too much dialogue? How can you make sure readers understand your text the way you intend?