John Jennings is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY-Buffalo and has written several works on African-American comics creators. His research is concerned with the topics of representation and authenticity, visual culture, visual literacy, social justice, and design pedagogy. He is an accomplished designer, curator, illustrator, cartoonist, and award-winning graphic novelist. His work overlaps into various disciplines including American Studies, African American Studies, Design History, Media Studies, Sociology, Women and Gender Studies, and Literature.
Damian Duffy, cartoonist, writer, and comics letterer, is a PhD student in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and a founder of the Eye Trauma Comix collective (eyetrauma.net). His first published graphic novel, The Hole: Consumer Culture, created with artist John Jennings, was released by Front 40 Press in 2008. Along with Jennings, Duffy has curated several comics art shows, including Other Heroes: African American Comics Creators, Characters, and Archetypes and Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics, and published the art book Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art & Culture. Duffy has also published academic essays in comics form about curation, new media, diversity, and critical pedagogy.