Jan Eliot
Jan Eliot started cartooning when she was a divorced single mom trying to raise two daughters, work full-time, make ends meet and still have a little fun.
Eliot is a self-taught cartoonist, and her first attempts at cartooning were modest but therapeutic. Drawing from her own experiences, Jan tried to reflect real life and real situations, with empathy for anyone with too little time, money or patience.
Stone Soup is her second comic endeavor. Originally self syndicated, and titled Sister City, it was launched in 1990 in the Eugene Register Guard and ran weekly for 5 years, until it was picked up by Universal Press Syndicate and retitled Stone Soup. Stone Soup launched nationally as a daily comic strip November 20, 1995 and currently runs in 300 newspapers worldwide as well has having a large following online.
There are currently 10 Stone Soup Book Collections in print, the most recent being "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time".
Eliot’s cartoons have been exhibited in the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa; The San Francisco Museum of Cartoon Art: in the Library of Congress where 16 of her cartoons are part of the permanent collection, and in Portugal at B.D. Amadora, an International Cartoon Exhibition held annually in Lisbon.
In Fall 2009 Eliot appeared at the 2nd annual international cartoon exhibition, FBIDA Algiers, in Algeria. She has won numerous awards for her cartooning work including "Best Book, B.D Amadora International Cartoon Exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal" and the College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Fellow Award from the University of Oregon.
Jan is also heavily involved in charity work - The Stone Soup characters are licensed by Habitat for Humanity International, and have been used to promote the Women’s Build program, Girls’ Build, Operation Home Delivery, and Habitat’s Katrina rebuild effort. In 2005 Eliot served on the Talbot’s Foundation Scholarship Board. The “Stone Soup Day of Fame”, an auction item that puts the winner’s name in the strip, has raised over $60,000 for Oregon charities.
Bill Morrison
Award-winning cartoonist and illustrator Bill Morrison began his career in The Motor City as a technical illustrator, but he really wanted to be a cartoonist. When Bill decided that he had rendered his last diesel fuel pump, he moved to Southern California with his wife and two cats.
He began working immediately in motion picture advertising where he painted dozens of movie posters, including many for Walt Disney Pictures, such as The Little Mermaid, Bambi, Peter Pan, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book.
For the past several years Bill has spent most of his waking hours on various projects related to The Simpsons. For that iconic property he has created thousands of drawings for T-shirts, video games, posters, toy packaging, books, calendars, limited edition prints, etc.
When The Simpsons creator Matt Groening founded Bongo Comics, Bill was hired on as art director and realized his cartoonist dreams when he drew the very first Simpsons comic. He quickly took on the role of Creative Director, editing Bongo’s entire output, and writing and drawing stories and covers as time permitted.
Bill also worked with Groening on early character designs for the TV show Futurama and served as the series art director.
After eighteen years, Bill stepped down from the Creative Director position to develop a digital comics department at Bongo.
In addition to his work on The Simpsons and Futurama, Bill has written and drawn his own comic book series; the four-time Eisner Award-nominated Roswell, Little Green Man and co-created two other comic book series, Heroes Anonymous and Lady Robotika (the latter with Jane Wiedlin of the legendary all-girl rock band, The Go-Go’s).
Presently, Bill is delighted to have rekindled his relationship with the classic Disney characters with an ongoing series of limited edition animation art prints published by ACME Animation Archives. He is also writing and drawing his new series “Dead Vengeance” for Dark Horse Comics and is working on a revival of “Roswell Little Green Man.”
Mark Tatulli
Launched in 2006, LIO is Mark’s exploration of the darker side of his own childhood, and fans have really responded. Influenced by such cartooning greats as Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, and 19th century satirist A.J. Volck, LIO is a wordless strip about a weird little boy who nonchalantly lives in a twisted world of monsters, giant robots, jetpacks and aliens…along with his long-suffering single Dad, who tends to look the other way.
LIO has been nominated three times for the National Cartoonists Society’s Best Comic Strip, winning in 2009. LIO was also nominated for Germany’s 2010 MAX AND MORITZ award. Last year, Mark was nominated by the NCS for cartoonist of the year.
In addition to his cartooning experience, Tatulli is also an accomplished filmmaker and animator, and is the recipient of three Emmy awards for his television work. He is also currently working on a children’s illustrated novel series titled DESMOND PUCKET. The first book was released in October 2013, and the second, DESMOND PUCKET AND THE MOUNTAIN FULL OF MONSTERS, hit store shelves in August 2014. He also has two planned children’s picture books, coming from Roaring Book Press, a division of Macmillian.
Mark lives in a Spielbergian development in New Jersey with his wife Donna, three children and four nefarious cats, all of whom supply endless ideas for his books and comics.
Darrin Bell
Darrin Bell lives in Los Angeles where he produces three different features for syndication: editorial cartoons, the comic strip “Candorville,” and the comic strip “Rudy Park.” He also recently storyboarded the upcoming Broadway piece “Soul Train: The Musical.” Darrin does all of this while helping raise his one-year-old son, a goldfish, two rabbits and a dog.
Bell began his freelance editorial cartooning career in 1995 at age 20. His first sale was to the LA Times, which subsequently assigned him a cartoon every other week. He also sold his cartoons to the San Francisco Chronicle and the former ANG papers, which included the Oakland Tribune.
While he was a political science major at UC Berkeley, Bell became the editorial cartoonist for the Daily Californian the student paper at UC Berkely by which he was recently named Alumnus of the year. His work won several California Intercollegiate Press Association awards and an SPJ Mark of Excellence Award, and he was a two-time runner-up for the Charles M. Schulz Award as well as a runner-up for the Locher Award.
In addition to his other accolades Darrin has been awarded the 2015 RFK Prize For Editorial Cartooning - largely for his cartoons addressing the unrest in Ferguson MO, New York, Baltimore and other cities across the US.
Darrin's work is syndicated by Washington Post Writers Group.
He is a member of the National Cartoonist Society and currently serving on its board of directors.
Mark Anderson
Mark Anderson is a gag cartoonist and the creator of Andertoons.com. His cartoons have appeared in:
- Reader’s Digest
- Harvard Business Review
- The Wall Street Journal
- Forbes
- Good Housekeeping
- The Saturday Evening Post
and other major publications.
In addition to traditional print media, Anderson sells his cartoons from his website for presentations, newsletters, e-books and more. Andertoons also appears daily at GoComics.com.
He has spoken previously at the Gold Coast Arts Center, two Success in Comics events, and will be a featured presenter at the 2015 NCS Reuben awards. Mark lives in the Chicago are with his wife, son, daughter, two cats, a guinea pig, and numerous dust bunnies.
Ed Steckley
Racine, WI native Ed Steckley is an advertising illustrator based in New York City.
A lifelong Mad Magazine fan, Ed grew up enthralled with cartooning and caricature. This, and the inability to be good at much else, led to his career as an artist. .
In addition to concepting and creating the visuals and final art for some of the most recognizable TV and print ads in the world, he’s had illustration work in Mad magazine and a host of other smaller publications. Drawing and illustrating both pre-production advertising as well as post-production, with art created both traditionally and digitally, he’s become a much sought after illustrator in the advertising world. In 2012, he won the Best in Advertising Illustration Reuben award, presented by the National Cartoonist Society. Currently he’s also working with the Rube Goldberg estate on the first ever children’s book based on the inventions and daily life of a young Rube Goldberg.
In 2009, he joined a small group of cartoonists who travel with the USO to military bases and hospitals all over the world, drawing and entertaining for the troops. These trips have taken him to Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Germany and a host of other countries who agree to let him in.
Ed is currently on the Board of Directors of the National Cartoonists Society (founded in 1946), and is the President of the Manhattan chapter of that organization.
Great lineup!
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