J. Michael Straczynski

David Victor Sim is a Canadian cartoonist and publisher, best known for Cerebus the Aardvark, his formal artistic experimentations, his advocacy of self-publishing and creator's rights, and his controversial political, philosophical and religious beliefs. Sim dropped out of high school to pursue a... career in comics, and rose to prominence after he began his chef d'oeuvre, the comic book series Cerebus in December, 1977. It started simply as a parody of Conan the Barbarian and other sword and sorcery comics, but two years into the work, he began to conceive of it as one self-complete work, which would run for 300 issues and be subdivided into "novels". By the time the 6000-page work was completed in March 2004, Sim had delved into politics, theology, metaphysics, and a particularly controversial examination of gender issues, while becoming progressively more formally sophisticated and experimental in his storytelling and artwork. Sim has continued to work on Cerebus Archives since completing Cerebus, as well as producing the comics Glamourpuss, which examines the history of photorealistic comics, and Judenhass, about the Holocaust.
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Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction. His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. He was editor and anthologist for... two ground-breaking science fiction anthologies, Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions. Ellison has won numerous awards including multiple Hugos, Nebulas and Edgars. Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27, 1934. His Jewish-American family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following his father's death. As a child, he had a brief career performing in minstrel shows.
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Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form... television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and anti-war politics. Serling was born December 25, 1924, into a Jewish family in Syracuse, New York, the second of two sons born to Esther and Samuel Lawrence Serling. Serling's father had worked as a secretary and amateur inventor before having children, but took on his father-in-law's profession as a grocer in order to earn a steady income. Sam Serling later took up the trade of butcher after the Great Depression forced the store to close. Serling's mother was a homemaker. He and his family spent most of his youth seventy miles south of Syracuse in Binghamton after moving there in 1926.
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