This event will feature a panel of local comics creators discussing the process of making comics, from ideas, writing, and storyboarding, to drawing, inking, and coloring, to publishing original comics and comic art. It will also include a display of library special collections materials and some recently acquired circulating materials related to comics-making that will be available for browsing and check-out through our PopUp Library!
Sponsored by the Comics Studies at UNT community and the UNT Libraries.
Panelists
Sarah Mensinga
Sarah Mensinga’s debut graphic novel, Kindred Dragons, is available on October 14th! She has also illustrated multiple books, including Flipping Forward Twisting Backwards, the Trillium Sisters series, and the New York Times bestseller, Different: A Great Thing to Be. Her short stories have appeared in comic anthologies such as Flight, Volume 4, Flight, Volume 5, and Fablewood. She’s published three indie books, and she has also worked on a variety of animated movies and TV shows, including The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Escape from Planet Earth, and The Ant Bully.
Devin Kraft
Devin Kraft is a comic artist originally from Roswell, New Mexico, who had the great fortune to live and study in Japan for a year as part of an exchange program with Hosei University. During that time, he studied the manga industry first-hand and experimented with a wide range of Japanese pens. To date, Devin has completed more than 30 comics, several short works, worked on a variety of covers for clients like IDW, Heavy Metal, Sumerian Comics, Literati Press, and drawn thousands of poster designs. He has successfully run over ten Kickstarter campaigns and exhibited at over 100 comic, anime, and game events. Currently based in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, Devin draws at night and manages the video department at White Unicorn Agency during the day.
Jake Jacobson
Jake Jacobson (under the pen name Jake Ekiss) has over a decade of experience creating independent comic book and illustration work. He was a co-founder of former Dallas-Based comic Studio Space-Gun, and while with Space-Gun organized the nation-wide comic event “Indie Comic Book Week” in 2009 to put independent comics on brick-and-mortar shelves. Jake’s own work can be seen in several of his indie books including but not limited to the Synesthetic Anthology, Sun Dogs, and When the Devil Drives. He also did comic book and card art for the collectible card game The Spoils and has contributed retailer incentive covers to Titan’s Doctor Who comics. The original art for one of these covers still hangs to this day behind the counter of local comic shop More Fun Comics and Games on the square.
Emily Dickenson
Emily Dickenson is a professional comic book artist for the series Author Paradox, freelance illustrator, and project manager for the UNT Comic Book Club. She primarily works digitally because she is interested in accessible, grassroots art forms (zines/quilting/assemblage). But no matter the medium, her true passion is storytelling! She is currently attending the University of North Texas and will be opening a studio with her infinitely talented peers after graduation.
Dr. Joanna Davis-McElligatt
Joanna Davis is an Assistant Professor of Black Literary Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, and Affiliate Faculty at Women’s and Gender Studies, and LGBTQ+ Studies. She is the author of Black Aliens: Kinship in the Cosmic Diaspora, forthcoming from The Ohio State University Press as part of the New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Speculative Series, and the co-editor of four volumes, including BOOM! SPLAT! Comics and Violence (UP of Mississippi 2024). Her most recent comic can be found in Black Punk Now (Soft Skull Press 2023).
