Stephen R. Bissette (also known as Steve Bissette), is an American comics artist and publisher best known for working with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on the DC comic Swamp Thing in the 1980s.

Steve Bissette was born on March 14, 1955 in Vermont, where he was raised and still lives. Shortly after the publication of his first work, Abyss (1976), Bissette enrolled in the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. Before his first year was completed, his work was being published professionally in the pages of Sojourn, Sgt. Rock, and Heavy metal. In 1978, Bissette was among the Kubert School's very first graduating class, along with classmates Rick Veitch, Tom Yeates, and others.

His early work appeared in the pages of Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, Bizarre Adventures, Scholastic Magazines' Weird Worlds and Bananas (illustrating stories written by Goosebumps founder and author R. L. Stine), and he worked with Rick Veitch on the graphic novelization of Steven Spielberg's motion picture 1941 (Simon and Schuster, 1979).

Bissette is best known for his multiple award-winning collaboration with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on DC Comics' Saga of the Swamp Thing (1983-87). He subsequently worked with Moore, Veitch, Totleben, and others on the Image Comics' series 1963, their final creative collaborative effort.

He later published the horror anthology Taboo , the original home of Moore and Eddie Campbell''s From Hell and Tim Lucas's Throat Sprockets (illustrated by Mike Hoffman and David Lloyd). He created Tyrant, a comic book biography of a Tyrannosaurus rex, which lasted only four issues, and worked on the miniseries 1963 with Moore, Totleben, and Rick Veitch. From 1963, Bissette owns the characters Hypernaut, N-Man, and the Fury. He contributed five covers for a comic book series about another swamp monster, Bog Swamp Demon. Scott McCloud's 24-Hour Comic project began as a dare to Bissette in 1990. Each created a 24-page comic in 24 hours. The 24-Hour Comics involved into a challenge taken up by hundreds of hopeful contributors with several published collections, and inspired other time-limited creative projects.

No longer active in mainstream comics, he teaches courses in Comic Art History, Drawing, and Film at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Since the Spring of 2005, he has also edited and published Green Mountain Cinema, a trade paperback journal devoted to the independent cinema scene in his home state of Vermont.

The Stephen R. Bissette Collection at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas houses Bissette's works and memorabilia.  -- wikipedia.

Artwork © Stephen R. Bissette.  -- For more information regarding Stephen R. Bissette, visit:  www.srbissette.com

Rick Veitch is an American comic book artist and writer who has worked in mainstream, underground, and alternative comics.

Al Columbia (born 1970) is an American cartoonist, illustrator, writer, photographer and musician.

Al Columbia started his career in comics at the age of nineteen, when he was hired to assist Bill Sienkiewicz. Together, they created Big Numbers, which Al eventually took over. In 1992, however, the pressure of continuing this real-world, realistically painted comics series became too much for him. Al Columbia vanished, destroying the fourth issue of Big Numbers he was working on, and nothing was heard from him until 1994. He then made The Biologic Show, published by Fantagraphics, in which he broke away from the realistic, Sienkiewicz-inspired style, developing a more grotesque, caricatural style of his own. From 1995 on, Al Columbia experimented, contributing stories such as 'Pim and Francie' to the anthologies Zero Zero and Blab!, introducing the character of frightened little Seymour Sunshine.  -- wikipedia.

Artwork © Al Columbia.  -- For more information regarding Al Columbia, visit:  www.alcolumbia.com/

Basil Wolverton (July 9, 1909 - December 31, 1978) was an American cartoonist, comic book writer-artist, illustrator and professed "Producer of Preposterous Pictures of Peculiar People who Prowl this Perplexing Planet", whose many publishers included Marvel Comics and Mad.

With no formal art training, Basil Wolverton sold his first cartoon to America's Humor magazine in 1926. He was long established as a newspaper artist by the time he started contributing to comic books in 1938. His first regular feature was 'Spacehawk' in 'Target' comics in the mid-1940s. His most famous cartoon appeared on the cover of Life in 1946, when he won a contest for drawing the best depiction of a character alluded to, but never seen, in All Capp's Li'l Abner strip - 'Lena the Hyena'.

The Lena drawing established Wolverton as a master of comics, and he contributed to Mad magazine in the 1950s, and to the short-lived 'Plop' in the 1970s. Another Wolverton creation, 'Powerhouse Pepper', began in 1942. Powerhouse Pepper was conceived as a character along the lines of Popeye or Alley Oop, an innocent comic hero who could out-punch anyone who pushed him too far. The feature lasted nearly a decade in Joker Comics, and there were five intermittent issues of Powerhouse Pepper comic books produced as well. Wolverton died in 1978.  -- lambiek.net

Artwork © Basil Wolverton.  -- For more information regarding Basil Wolverton, visit:  http://wolvertoon.com/index.html

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth (March 4, 1932 - April 4, 2001) was an artist and cartoonist who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other extreme characters. As a custom car builder, Roth was a key figure in Southern California's "Kustom Kulture"/Hot-rod movement of the 1960s.

As a kid, Robert Williams was polluted by E.C. comics, B-movies, lurid pulp magazines and Tex Avery cartoons. ("When the first issue of Mad arrived, it blew my mind!") Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Williams has lived most of his life in Los Angeles. As a teenager, he was art director for Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and produced four issues of Roth magazine, featuring the weird, inventive car designs that Roth and his artist pioneered.

When Robert Williams saw the comic Zap # 1 by Robert Crumb, it blew his mind again, and soon he joined the underground comix family, contributing comics to Gothic Blimp Works, Felch Comics, Cootchy Cooty Men's Comics, Snatch, The Snatch Sampler, Tales from the Tube and most issues of Zap comics. Since 1970 Williams made a living with his fine art oil paintings, which have enjoyed great commercial success. Besides painting, he edits Juxtapoz, the contemporary art magazine he founded, and produces books. A sixth volume of his surrealistic art, 'Malicious Resplendence', was published by Fantagraphics Books in 1999.  -- lambiek.net

Artwork © Ed Roth.  -- For more information regarding Ed Roth, visit:  http://www.ratfink.org/

Virgil Franklin Partch (October 17, 1916 - August 10, 1984) was one of the most prominent and prolific American magazine gag cartoonists of the 1940s and 1950s. His unusual style, surreal humor and familiar abbreviated signature (VIP) made his cartoons distinctive and eye-catching.

Virgil, better known as 'VIP', studied at the University of Arizona and the Chouinard Art Institute in California, where he got a job at the Disney Studios. After taking part in the Disney Studio strike in 1941, Partch was fired and started submitting his cartoons to various newspapers. When he sold his first one to Collier's in 1942, it marked the beginning of an illustrious career as one of America's most accomplished cartoonists. Virgil Partch created several theme books, such as 'Bottle Fatigue' (1950), 'Here We Go Again' (1951), 'The Wild, Wild Women' (1951), 'Man the Beast' (1953), 'The Dead Game Sportsman' (1954) and 'Hanging Way Over' (1955). In 1960, Partch created a cartoon panel feature called 'Big George'. In addition, VIP also drew the short-lived comic strip 'The Captain's Gig' in the late 1970's.

Partch's humor was absurd, on the daring side but never crude, and his art is characterized by the fact that in many of his drawings people are depicted with more than five fingers on each hand - Partch said this was compensation for his years at Disney, where hands had usually just three or four fingers. Partch died in 1984, in a car accident.  -- lambiek.net

Artwork © Virgil Partch.  -- For more information regarding Virgil Partch, visit:  http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/partch.htm

Elzie Crisler Segar (December 8, 1894 - October 13, 1938) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of Popeye, a character who first appeared in his newspaper comic strip "Thimble Theater," in 1929.

After several odd jobs, Elzie Crisler Segar (E.C. Segar) began working the film projector in a movie house. Inspired by seeing the humorous movies of Charlot, he created a few comics copying the same situations. These had no success, until Segar met Richard Felton Outcault, creator of 'The Yellow Kid', who encouraged him to carry on and introduced him at the Chicago Herald. The Herald published Segar's first comic, 'Charlie Chaplin's Comedy Capers'. Two years later, he moved on to the Chicago Evening American, for which he created 'Looping the Loop'.

In 1919, Elzie Segar's work attracted the attention of King Features Syndicate. For them, he created 'The Five-Fifteen' in 1920 (renamed 'Sappo' in 1926) and 'The Thimble Theatre', published in the New York Journal. This series features the rail-thin Olive Oyl, her brother Castor and their friend Ham Gravy. Ten years later, the sailor Popeye was introduced to the comic, immediately becoming the star of the show and capturing a large, world-wide audience. After the death of their creator in 1938, Popeye and Olive continued on, but unfortunately lost most of their ingenious and provocative edge, which was uniquely characteristic of Segar's brilliant, inimitable style.  -- lambiek.net

Artwork © Elzie Segar.  -- For more information regarding Elzie Segar, visit:  http://www.popeyespoopdeck.com/

Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 - September 24, 1991) was an iconic and beloved American writer and cartoonist, better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss.

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Theodore Geisel, who would become known as Dr. Seuss, studied at the Dartmouth College. After his graduation in 1925, he began his weekly 'Birdsies and Beasties' page in Judge magazine. Using the penname of Dr. Seuss, his name soon appeared on gags and strips inside the magazine and on covers. Later on, he also drew for Life, Vanity Fair and Liberty. He was the creator of the shortlived newspaper strip 'Hejji' in 1935. In the 1940s, he drew political cartoons for the PM newspaper in New York, and embarked on a career in animation.

As the president and publisher of Beginners Books, Dr Seuss changed the nature of children's books in the 1950s and later with the 'Cat in the Hat' series. He published over 40 children's books, full with imaginative characters and frequent use of rhymed prose. Besides 'Cat in the Hat', famous books by Dr. Seuss are 'Green Eggs and Ham' and 'One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish'.  -- lambiek.net

Artwork © Dr. Seuss.  -- For more information regarding Dr. Suess, visit:  www.seussville.com/

Chester Gould (November 20, 1900 - May 11, 1985) was a U.S. cartoonist and the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977. Gould was known for his use of colorful, often monstrous, villains.

Chester Gould was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma. His father didn't support his artistic ambitions, and sent him to law school. While studying however, Gould started his career drawing sport cartoons for the City Daily Oklahomian between 1921 and 1923. For the Hearst papers, he did 'The Radio Lanes' and later 'Fillum Fables', which replaced Edgar Wheelan's 'Minute Movies'.

In 1931, Chester Gould's career got a boost when he sold his comic strip idea about the hard-nosed plain-clothes detective Dick Tracy to the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News. After 1931, he devoted his life to writing and drawing the daily 'Dick Tracy' comic. Between 1956 and 1964, the 'Dick Tracy' strip was accompanied by the funny animal topper, 'The Gravies'.

Aided by the engineer Al Gross, Gould introduced numerous inventions which in the story that provided a foundation for developments in the future and established working models for anti-criminal aids for policemen, such as the video security camera, handheld video camera, and wrist video camera.

Gould's work has inspired a lot of other cartoonists, like Milton Caniff and Alex Raymond. He also received the Reuben award, one of the most important awards in the comics drawing field. Gould retired in 1977, and Rick Flectcher and Alan Collins took over 'Dick Tracy'. In 1981, Gould wanted his name removed from the 'Dick Tracy' motion picture credits because he was dissatisfied with the direction the movie had taken.  -- lambiek.net

Artwork © Chester Gould.  -- For more information regarding Chester Gould, visit:  http://www.chestergould.org/

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was a Spanish Catalan Surrealist painter born in Figueres.

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of mediums. 

Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes, to a self-styled "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. 

Widely considered to be greatly imaginative, Dalí had an affinity for partaking in unusual behavior to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork.  -- wikipedia

Artwork © Salvador Dalí.  -- For more information regarding Salvador Dalí, visit:  http://www.daliparis.com/

René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well-known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images.

René Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist known for mysterious and witty paintings. Using a deliberately banal painting style, he sought to penetrate the boredom of everyday life to reach something fantastic. He used his camera in much the same way, making photographs that manage to shimmer mysteriously, appearing by turns extraordinarily dull and extraordinary. He frequently posed his friends and more often his wife Georgette in tableaux with the same deadpan approach as is characteristic of his paintings; other images, however, are more casual, apparently recording the doings of Magritte and his fellow Surrealists.  -- Molly Rogers.

Artwork © René Magritte.  -- For more information regarding René Magritte, visit:  http://www.magritte.be/

Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of Dada movement and Surrealism.

Max Ernst gave up studying philosophy and psychology at Bonn University for painting. After serving in World War I, he became the leader of the Dada movement in Cologne (1919), working in collage and photomontage. A characteristic work is Here Everything Is Still Floating (1920), a startlingly illogical composition made from cutout photographs of insects, fish, and anatomical drawings. In 1922 he settled in Paris and was among the founders of Surrealism. His work was imaginative and experimental; he pioneered the technique of frottage and experimented with automatism. After 1934 the irrational and whimsical imagery seen in his paintings appeared also in his sculpture. In 1941 he moved to New York City, where he joined his third wife, Peggy Guggenheim, and began collaborating with Marcel Duchamp. He returned to France in 1953 and continued to produce lyrical and abstract works.  -- britannica.com

Franz Kafka ((3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century.

Franz Kafka was born to a middle-class German -speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austria-Hungary, presently the Czech Republic. His unique body of writing—much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously—is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature.

His stories, such as The Metamorphosis (1915), and novels, including The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal and bureaucratic world.  -- wikipedia.

For more information regarding Franz Kafka, visit:  http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Franz+Kafka

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007) was a prolific American author.

The novelist is known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973). He is also known for his humanist beliefs and being honorary president of the American Humanist Association.  -- wikipedia.

For more information regarding Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., visit:  http://www.vonnegut.com/

Alain Robbe-Grillet (August 18, 1922 - February 18, 2008), was a French writer and filmmaker.

Alain Robbe-Grillet was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32. He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian).  -- wikipedia

For more information regarding Alain Robbe-Grillet, visit:  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0730237/

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, most famous for his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.