The Best American Comics series launches its latest collection with this year’s guest editor: Bill Kartalopoulos! He will be joined by Ben Katchor--along with Kim Deitch, Gabrielle Bell, Eli Valley, and Josh Bayer-- all artists behind his picks for the year’s best comics:
Bill Kartalopoulos is the publisher/editor of Rebus Books and the programming coordinator for SPX: The Small Press Expo. He was a cofounder and the programming director for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. He is a member of the Executive Committee for the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), a contributing editor for Print magazine, and has worked as an assistant to Art Spiegelman for several years. He currently teaches classes about graphic novels at Parsons, The New School for Design and comics history in the MFA Visual Narrative program at SVA.
Ben Katchor is an American cartoonist and illustrator best known for his critically acclaimed comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. He has contributed comics and drawings to The Forward, The New Yorker, Metropolis magazine, and weekly newspapers in the United States, and is a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship recipient.
Kim Deitch was born in Los Angeles many moons ago. He came from an artistic background and was first published way back in 1967. He is still highly excited to be doing this sort of work. He's married to the best wife ever and lives with her and two cats in New York City. Kim is currently working on a book called Reincarnation Stories.
Gabrielle Bell’s work has been featured in McSweeney’s, The Believer, Bookforum, and VICE magazines. Her story, “Cecil and Jordan in New York,” was adapted for the film anthology Tokyo! by Bell and Michel Gondry. She has published several books and her latest, Everything Is Flammable, was released in April 2017. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Eli Valley is a writer and artist whose work has been featured in The Nation, the New Republic, the Daily Beast, the Nib, the Village Voice, Gawker, and elsewhere. He was the 2011-2013 Artist in Residence at the Forward newspaper, and his art has been labeled “ferociously repugnant” by Commentary and “hilarious” by the Comics Journal. Eli’s comics collection, Diaspora Boy: Comics on Cirsis in America and Israel, was released in 2017 from OR Books.
Josh Bayer is the author of Theth, Raw Power #1 and 2, and the editor of the Suspect Device and The Black Hood anthologies. He is the writer and executive editor of All Time Comics from Fantagraphics Books. He teaches art and comics at the Parsons School of Design, 92 Y, and many other New York-based schools.
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