Roster Update: 12-01-08

Your Regular Blog@ Crew

Troy Brownfield: Your Blog@ cruise director teaches, writes and edits.  Frequently.  In addition to working on Blog@ and the Newsarama mothership, Troy works for Fangoria (writing Unkillable Classics on the website and serving as Associate Editor on the comic line) and owns ShotgunReviews.com.  A college professor by day, Troy’s also written for WIRED, Topps, The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis Monthly, Nuvo Newsweekly, Street Miami, INTake Weekly, and the late Newtype USA, among others.

Lucas Siegel: Lucas Siegel loves being a geek. He is the lead contributor to the Games section at Newarama, and has also written various comics columns (Flashback Fridays, Damn Dirty Skrulls w/Troy, etc), interviews, and reviews (Best Shots) on the site. He ran an audio then video geek culture podcast called Shots in the Dark, where he and his cohorts pontificated on everything from writing in video games to Y: The Last Man, and interviewed Jeph Loeb, Ed Boon, Mike Norton, and many more in its various incarnations. Outside of the geek world, he sings and plays guitar (and loves karaoke), and served 6 years in the United States Army as a Combat Medic. After being a communications, theater, history, and education major, he settled on journalism and hasn’t looked back. Here at Blog@, he plans to get way too excited about genre and comic based video games. He’ll also let readers know what he loves about comics in the column Non-Jaded Comics Fan, and he’ll rant about things that bug him, letting you know what to think in My Opinion is Right.

Michael C. Lorah: Jovially referred to as the “indie guy” of the Best Shots team, Mike has worked in various capacities for DC Comics, Soaps in Depth, and business publications.  He’s writing “It Came from the NYPL” and “Top Five” every week here at Blog@ .

Sarah Jaffe: Sarah Jaffe writes about comics, politics, feminism, rock’n’roll, film, pop culture, books, and whatever else someone will give her space to pontificate upon. She is unarmed, but still very dangerous, and can only be placated with large doses of jasmine tea and Cadbury Cream Eggs. When not at Newsarama, she writes for Globalcomment.com, Bust.com, Kaffeinebuzz.com, and blogs at ohyouprettythings.net/blog and alterdestiny.blogspot.com. She also enjoys kickboxing, getting tattooed, and making people feel very, very stupid.

Corey Henson

J. Caleb Mozzocco: Caleb maintains daily comics blog Every Day Is Like Wednesday and freelances for just about anyone who will pay him money to write about comic books or, if he’s really hard-up for cash, even things that aren’t comic books. He’s a former writer and editor for an Ohio altweekly, and contributes to altweeklies as often as possible. Past credits include Las Vegas Weekly, donewaiting.com, alternet.org, two (2) articles for The Comics Journal and, when he was young and foolish, a shameful amount of articles for Wizard and its sundry sister publications. Despite all this experience, he still feels weird writing about himself in the third-person. He’ll be providing Blog@ with linkblogging under the heading Linkarama@Newsarama, previews of the week of new releases under ‘Twas the Night Before Wednesday, occasional graphic novel reviews and frequent bad jokes about superheroes.

The Rev. OJ Flow

David Pepose: Following his internship at a major comics company, David Pepose was placed in a rocket ship which crash-landed on Earth and was found by a perplexed Troy Brownfield. Raised on a diet of comic books and yellow sunlight, humanity soon discovered that David could write blog posts faster than a speeding bullet, as well as reviews more powerful than a locomotive. Having joined the mighty Blog@ team, you can read David’s analyses on industry trends and retrospectives in his column Dial H for History.

Barbara Hallock

Vaneta Rogers

Russ Burlingame

Julius Marx and the Action Figure Insider crew: Daniel “JuliusMarx” Pickett - is the co-owner/co-creator and Editor in Chief of Action Figure Insider, home of “The Best Darn Toy News on the Internet.” He is a toy collector and expert, who writes about toys, the industry and consults with many toy companies.  It’s a hobby that grew into a business and a reputation and an alter ego of sorts. Now he answers questions from collectors all over the world, hosts panel discussions at conventions and trade shows, in addition to his duties at AFI . If you run into him somewhere out in the world he will answer to both “Daniel” and “Julius.”  He has a CRAZY amount of toys… no… I mean a lot! The sensation of walking into his toy room has been described as…”you know that moment in a serial killer movie where the protagonist finds his way into the killer’s lair and walks into a room to discover all the walls and every surface is covered with information, clippings and pictures of the protagonist and his family and then the camera starts spinning, going all wonky and fish-eyed? That’s the sort of disorientation you feel when you see his collection.”  So, just a word of warning in case he invites you over.  Now he writes about and takes pictures of toys and attempts to put all his weird knowledge to work for him. He has been collecting toys his entire life.

Jeff Trexler

Matt Maxwell

Rob Staeger

Jim Zubkavich: Jim is a Project Manager at Toronto-based UDON Entertainment, acting as a liaison on creative services projects the studio tackles including work on comics, video games, toys, RPGs and other entertainment-related art/design. At the same time, Jim is also an art Professor teaching at Seneca College, the largest college in Canada. Between those two jobs and tinkering away on other pet projects, he stays kind of busy.

Lee Cherolis: Lee is a Cartoonist and Graphic Designer living and working in Indianapolis, Indiana. He founded and maintains a local artist blog and promotional group, at http://www.indywebcomics.com. He’s had short stories published in comics anthologies as well as his comic strips appearing in local news-weekly magazines in Indianapolis. You can reach Lee at lcherolis@gmail.com.

Kyle Latino: Used bookseller by trade, sequential artist by vocation.  Aspires to become a professional penciler, though he is fully aware that it is far more likely to be struck by lightning.  First started reading comics right after the first X-Men movie, has only gotten snobbier since then.  Can be reached at latino.kyle@gmail.com.

Pros
Jimmy Palmiotti

Troy Hickman

Dirk Manning: Dirk Manning is the writer/creator of the comic properties including NIGHTMARE WORLD, TALES OF MR. RHEE and FARSEEKER as well as the driving force behind the “How To” column “Write or Wrong” at Newsarama, in which he details his journey from a wannabe comicbook writer to his rise as a published, spotlighted, award-winning and generally well-liked writer who has worked with over two dozen artists across the globe to date and has recently been picked-up by Image/Shadowline Comics to boot. Along with regular installments of “Write or Wrong” he also contributes articles, interviews and other bits of interest to both Blog@ Newsarama and Newsarama proper. Cthulhu is his homeboy.

“Company” Pros
Paul Levitz from DC Comics
Scott Allie from Dark Horse
Chris Ryall from IDW
Chris Staros from Top Shelf
Christian Beranek from Kingdom Comics (Disney)
Raven Gregory from Zenescope
Scott Licina from Fangoria Graphix
David Marks from Avatar
Holly G. and Jim Balent from Broadsword
Bon Alimagno from Harris Comics
Filip Sablik from Top Cow
Terry Nantier from NBM
Nick Barucci from Dynamite
Gianluca and Dave from Radical
Randal C. Jarrell of Oni Press
Players to be Named Later