MEET THE ARTISTS:

Matt BATTAGLIA (House on Fire) is an artist and video producer. His work in comics started from coloring for BOOM! Studios and Roche Limit at Image Comics. He collaborated with author Michael Moreci for their book Indoctrination at Z2 Comics. After a multi-year hiatus from making comics, he returned with his solo work Ghosts of the Carousel which was published by Dauntless Stories. His latest, House on Fire, is forthcoming from Living the Line. In his other professional life Matt works for Free the People, where he directs and produces a variety of video projects and documentaries.  

Carson GRUBAUGH (Strange Death of Alex Raymond, The Abolition of Man) earned an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art as well as BFAs in Fine Art and Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. He was named the Mercedes Benz Financial Services Emerging Artist of 2011, was a keynote speaker at the 2013 Difference That Makes a Difference Conference at the Open University, placed 3rd in the 15th Art Renewal Center Salon portraiture category, and has shown in the US, Germany, England at venues such as The Cranbrook Museum of Art, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, ABTART, Virginia Beach Museum of Contemporary Art, The Chrysler Museum, Museum of New Art, Sotheby’s NY and the European Museum of Modern Art among many others. Carson is currently a Full-Time Instructor of Art at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Brandon GRAHAM (Moonray, Surviving on Mars) was born in 1976, the grandson of pin-up artist Bill Randall. He grew up in Seattle around a lot of graffiti and comics from all over the word. His books include KING CITY, MULTIPLE WARHEADS, PROPHET, ROYALBOILER, and RAIN LIKE HAMMERS.

Ryan HOLMBERG (Plaza, Her Frankenstein, UFO Mushroom Invasion, Mansect, Face Meat, translator, editor, curator) is a leading scholar of postwar manga. He has edited and translated over two dozen manga for such publishers as Drawn & Quarterly, New York Review Comics, Breakdown Press, Bubbles, and PictureBox. His edition of Tezuka Osamu’s The Mysterious Underground Men (PictureBox) won the 2014 Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material: Asia. He is also the author of The Translator Without Talent (Bubbles, 2020) and Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964-1973 (Center for Book Arts, 2010). On social media, he can be found at @mangaberg, and online at mangaberg.com.

KAWASHIMA Norikazu (Her Frankenstein) (1950-2018) was one of the last great authors of the classic era of Japanese horror manga. Ranging from traditional monster and slasher stories to bloody ESPer tales and psycho-horror, Kawashima's many graphic novels for the cult horror publisher Hibari Shobo are avidly sought after by collectors and horror fans. Her Frankenstein (1986), about a sad young man and his bizarre fantasies of power, is regarded as his best work.

KOGA SHINICHI (Mansect) was one of the leading authors of horror manga in the 20th century. After debuting in Black Cat in 1957, he became a regular in rental kashihon periodicals, most notably the foundational horror anthology Kaidan from Hibari Shobō. In 1964, he began drawing horror stories for the shōjo magazine Weekly Margaret, standing with Umezz Kazuo as one of the pioneers of shōjo horror manga. Between 1975 and 1979, he created what became his most popular title, Eko Eko Azarak, for Weekly Shōnen Champion. Starring an evil high school girl who wields black magic, the series ignited an obsession with the occult and satanic in manga, and has been adapted into movies and television shows multiple times. Mansect, originally serialized in Monthly Shōnen Champion in 1975 under the title Yōchū, is regarded by fans and critics as one of his most grotesque and fantastical works.   

Erik KRIEK (The Exile, The Pit) studied illustration and graphic arts at the Rietveld Academy for Art and Design in Amsterdam. Ever since graduating in 1991 he has been working as a freelance illustrator and his work has adorned almost every printable surface one can think of, ranging from skateboards, snowboards, posters, record sleeves, sneakers and of course books and magazines. He has also achieved (inter)national acclaim as a comics author for his ongoing ‘silent’ comic book series Gutsman, stories centered around a faux-superhero and the troubled relationship with Tigra, his scantily clad girlfriend. In 2006, Gutsman was even brought to the stage as a ‘silent’ music-theatre piece, combining both dance and mime. In 2008 Kriek received the ‘Stripschapsprijs’ for his entire oeuvre.

KUTIKUTI (Tihku) is a non-profit contemporary comics association and artist collective formed in Finland in 2005. The core of Kutikuti consists of ca. fifty members who make, teach, and publish comics. Kutikuti has over a hundred supportive members around the world and has quickly become one of the most recognized marvels of the Finnish comics scene abroad. They operate internationally with an aim to maintain and develop comics as an art form.

Xurxo G PENALTA (Moonray) is a Galician artist who’s collaborated with Brandon on KIEM and PROPHET. He's been published by Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Marvel, and illustrated for multiple music labels and live events. He focuses on science fiction and fantasy artwork in the European clear line style, with late 70s and 80s influences from comics, animation and film. 

Sean Michael ROBINSON (Discards, forthcoming) is a writer, illustrator, musician, and former high school art teacher, as well as a man-about-town. In his brief time as an adult human he's drawn hundreds of pages of comics, scribbled a gazillion portraits, sung two seasons as a mercenary Christmas caroler, performed on a hundred street corners, in a dozen plays, and written and recorded nine albums. This is the very short list, leaving out as it does candy salesman, lifeguard, and other unsavory occupations. He's currently an adjunct professor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

SHIRAKAWA Marina (UFO Mushroom Invasion, TBA) (1940-2000) was an artist of many talents. As a cartoonist, he drew bizarre and harrowing manga about such things as UFO invasions, time-traveling vampires, and zombie cats. As an illustrator, he worked on projects related to Japanese folklore and H.P. Lovecraft. He was also a folklorist himself, authoring manga and illustrated anthologies about Japanese ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. All of these interests come together in UFO Mushroom Invasion (1976), his most famous manga.

David Victor SIM (Strange Death of Alex Raymond) is the author, cartoonist, and publisher of Cerebus the Aardvark, a groundbreaking  independent comic which ran from December 1977 to March 2004. In 2018 he was entered into The Guinness Book of World Records for “most consecutive issues of a comic book written and drawn”. The series, which largely followed the life of the titular character, was noted for its exquisitely-rendered art and stylistic flexibility, its novelistic character development and story arcs, and bold violations of audience expectations. During the run of the series, Sim was awarded an Eisner award for Best Graphic Album (Flight, 1994), a Harvey award for “Best Cartoonist” (1992), an Ignatz award for “Outstanding Artist” (1998), a Joe Shuster award for “Outstanding Comic Book Achievement” (2005), and two Kirby awards for “Best Black & White Series” (in both 1985 and 1987). Throughout his career Sim has advocated for self-publishing as a means of securing both creative and financial freedom for comic creators. His influence, mentoring and advocacy led to a wave of self-publishing throughout the 1980s  and the1990s, prompting such notable (and distinct) self-published works as From Hell (Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell) A Distant Soil (Colleen Doran), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird).

Miel VANDEPITTE (Centralia) lives in Ghent, Belgium and graduated at LUCA School of Arts with a degree in Graphic Storytelling. As part of this program, he got to spend a few months in the Pacific North-West College of Arts in Portland (OR), where under the tutelage of Jonathan Hill (Odessa), his interest in comics only grew. He started Centralia as part of his thesis project, and finished the book almost two years later in "The Bright Yellow Cube", a workspace for young comic book artists in Brussels. His main interests are comics, professional wrestling and spending time with his amazing girlfriend Lise.   

YOKOYAMA Yuichi (Plaza) is Japan's leading creator of avant-garde comics. Born in 1967, he studied painting in art school, then turned to manga in the late 1990s. Characterized by modernist abstraction, sparse dialogue, oversize sound effects, obsessive movement and speed, and a wry sense of humor, Yokoyama's "neo-manga" cross the boundary between art and comics. Among his many books are New Engineering (2004), Travel (2006), Garden (2007), Outdoors (2009), Baby Boom (2009), World Map Room (2013), Iceland (2016), and Plaza (2019). His works have been extensively translated, and have featured in museum exhibitions in Japan and around the world.

ABOUT LIVING THE LINE:

Sean Michael ROBINSON: Owner, Editor, Production, and design, Living the Line.
Carson GRUBAUGH: Advising Editor, Living the Line.
Serena BODIN: Production Artist, Designer
Max WEBER:  Production Artist, Designer

ABOUT SMUDGE:
Sean Michael ROBINSON: Co-owner, Production, Lettering, and Design
Ryan HOLMBERG: Co-owner, Acquiring Editor, Translation, Curation