Doug Latino’s earliest comic memories involve Mad Magazine, Mad paperbacks, and wondering if that Mr. Natural character he kept seeing on t-shirts really had all the answers. He also knew a couple of minutes in that the mom of his best friend at the time, Doug, made a big mistake taking Doug and Doug to the drive-in theater to see Fritz the Cat. He wouldn’t have gone if he had known about Crumb’s lousy film contract. He’s come back around to writing, giving it up shortly after college to pursue a rewarding career in newspaper publishing. You can follow him on Twitter at @douglatino.

Gideon Kendall always loved comics. As a youngster he copied Garfield and Doonesbury panels. He got really good at drawing the White House. Then he got into superheroes, and practiced inventing engorged fictitious muscle groups. Now he’s trying to get really good at drawing Doug Latino. He also paints garbage, works as an animation designer, and illustrates children’s books. He’ll do just about anything to earn a living, as long as it involves making pictures. Go to: gideonkendall.com

– Sarah Morean

Scott Mikesh is an independent illustrator and visual communications designer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After 12 years in corporate marketing and communications, Scott headed out on his own to form Scott Mikesh Creative, a freelance agency that provides eye-catching icons, characters, portraits, comic strips, storyboards and décor.

Scott’s first weekly web comic Popcorn Toons features a cast of modern-day characters including two best girlfriends, two dogs, and a robot named A.R.T. The characters were inspired by his own nieces and family dogs. The name of the strip is also an homage to one of Scott’s icons and role models, the late great Charles “Sparky” Schultz, who was originally from the Twin Cities area. Born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, Scott recently discovered that he had coincidentally taken art classes when he was 12 from the same correspondence art school where Charles Schultz originally received his art education and later taught.

Scott is also involved with a local youth art mentor program called Art Buddies that pairs professionals from the commercial design industry with inner-city kids to explore their own creativity and expose them to career opportunities in the creative field. He is working with Art Buddies this fall to expand the program to Bancroft Elementary School in South Minneapolis.

- Sarah Morean

Simon Moreton is a cartoonist and zine maker living in Bristol, UK. He has been writing, drawing and self-publishing comics since 2007. To date, he has released three issues of his semi-autobiographical comic zine Smoo and a bunch of other minicomics and zines. Smoo #4 will be out later this year.

Along with fellow guest-stripper Nick Soucek, Simon is also one half of Things in Panels, a joint publishing venture. In May 2011, Things in Panels published its first title, an Indie-Go-Go funded newsprint anthology called The Sorry Entertainer. This black and white, tabloid sized newspaper featured contributions from Jarod Rosello, Noah Van Sciver, Sam Spina, Rob Jackson, and Brad Foster amongst others. He thinks it’s pretty awesome.

In July 2011, Simon launched Better, Drawn, a website where readers can share their experiences of living with long-term mental or physical illnesses in the form of short comics. In addition to this project, Simon and Nick, along with a group of illustrators, comics artists and writers based the South-West, also collectively founded the Bristol-based Bear Pit Zine. Bear Pit #2 will be released later this summer.

Simon’s current series, The Escapologist, is a gentle, abstract comic dealing with the lightness and the weight of things (it also has some pretty pictures in it). The first issue was released in May 2011, and you can read the first three pages HERE. Issue 2 will be out very soon.

Simon and Nick will be appearing at the Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival in Leeds, UK November 2011.

- Sarah Morean

I’ll just take a moment to say that I love receiving guest strips.  Seriously.  And I hope to get one from all of our cartoonist readers someday (nudge nudge).

Usually I receive guest strips one at a time and I try to space them out so you don’t see the same person appear more than twice a year.  Some eager beavers though will send in more guest strips than I can reasonably use.  So on this completely unreasonable day it seemed like the perfect opportunity (and excuse) to post nine — nine! — guest strips all from the same person.  A really earnest and sweet cartoonist named Ji Wook Moon made nine comics all about cell phones.  Adorable.  Here goes number one.

[PART ONE] [PART TWO] [PART THREE] [PART FOUR] [PART FIVE] [PART SIX] [PART SEVEN] [PART EIGHT] [PART NINE]

As a pastor and a cartoonist, I have kept studying English, theology and cartooning. Finally, I made some fun stories about a cell phone. Well, smart phone. Under the recent value of FAST, QUICK and SMART, I think many old day memories are forgotten so easily. Slow tea time after the lunch, peaceful conversation with family over dinner…these things are getting harder to find in a smart phone dominated world. So I wanted to share an analogue cell phone who struggles to live in a smart phone world. By showing his/her concern, agony and experience, I believe that I can communicate with the readers still using analogue phones!

- Sarah Morean

Tom Van Deusen is an artist and writer based out of Seattle, Washington. He graduated with a BFA in Printmaking from the University at Buffalo in 2008. After college he wrote and compiled a few zines, helped start an all-ages gallery and performance space called Buffalo Sugar City and did some illustration work. Over the course of a year he wrote and performed an hour-long faux parenting presentation called “Rearing Your Tween,” which covered everything from The Family Dinner to the disgusting changes going on in your child’s body.

He moved to Seattle, Washington, in 2009 with the hope of becoming a hot-shot artist in the big(ger) city. Instead, he became a lonely recluse, and, as is custom for lonely recluses, became enamored with alt comics.

He recently released his first full-length comic book A Matter of Life and Death. Its sequel Another Matter of Life and Death is currently being serialized online.

You can follow him on Twitter and visit his website where you can purchase A Matter of Life and Death and read other excellent comic stories.

- Sarah Morean

It’s been just over a year since Nick (Bristol, UK) first appeared at The Daily Cross Hatch, and only just over two years since he thought to have a go at comics at all. Nick’s comic project MisComp continues to evolve, and in this way is an archive of an ever-improving drawing-and-story-telling confidence (Nick says).

Since about this time last year, Nick now has a regular comic slot in the internationally distributed cycling magazine Boneshaker, with his co-conspiritor Simon M. has tabled at a couple of comic expos (kinda breaking even-ish), and is co-coordinating several Bristol-based and international sequential art zines, a zine market, and a newspaper anthology. He has recently finished his first mini-comic, available to read for free on his site, and is currently half way through a longer dystopian piece about which he is very excited.

– Sarah Morean

Lars Martinson grew up in a little suburb of Minneapolis on beautiful Walnut Street.  His childhood was idyllic and he grew up strong and happy.  Then, he got into comic books…

In college, he studied design, which may account for his lovely self-published books Tonoharu and Young Men of a Certain Mind.

Martinson taught English through the JET Program and returned to Japan a few years later on a Monbusho Scholarship to study East Asian Calligraphy.

In 2007, he won an enormous sum from the Xeric Foundation which he used to self-publish Tonoharu: Part 1.  Tonoharu: Part 2 came out in 2010 and the story will continue in parts 3-4 sometime in the future.  Look forward to it!

Follow the adventures of Lars Martinson on Twitter and his blog.  Buy his comics books on Amazon or direct from the author using his online store.

– Sarah Morean

Sophia Wiedeman got her MFA at the School of Visual Arts. She currently lives in New York. When she isn’t drawing or working off debt, she fills time by walking, stopping strangers on the street to pet their dogs, and disinfecting dog bites.

Her excellent comic The Deformitory won a Xeric grant in 2008. Right now she’s completing The Lettuce Girl, a re-imagining of the fairy tale Rapunzel, which should be out in time for MoCCA.

View more of her work online at sophiadraws.com and follow her blog at sophiadrawscomics.blogspot.com. You’ll also see her work featured on Top Shelf 2.0 and printed regularly in Time Out New York.

(Remember: Click to enlarge.)

– Sarah Morean

Anna Trodglen is a painter and illustrator living in Atlanta with her husband, cat and three dogs. That’s not just personal, “get to know her” information, as dogs and cats are her artistic subjects. Her love of animals is rivaled only by her love of classic children’s book illustration. She is particularly inspired by work of Louis Wain, Garth Williams and Tasha Tudor.

Aside from her whimsical paintings (she works in acrylic and watercolor), Trodglen is a cartoonist with a twice-weekly strip appearing on Facebook. Additionally, she just completed a graphic novel, The Blue Mountain, a silent story following her recently deceased corgi-mix pup named Jack and his adventurous journey of self-discovery in the afterlife.

Keep up with her comic on Facebook HERE.

– Sarah Morean

Erich Fletschinger grew up in Vermont where he drew a lot of Dungeons & Dragons characters before discovering metal and punk rock — after which he made a lot of gig posters.

For awhile he also rocked.  Until, one day, he fell for a girl.  Then he quit his band and headed to Brooklyn where he now designs, illustrates and does some fashion event planning.  Since cohabiting with his lady in a Park Slope apartment (complete with a backsplash) he has became obsessed with comics.

He just finished his first sizable mini-comic Beloved and has been working on a strip called This is How We Love which you can read on his BLOG.  This guest strip comes from a new series he’s starting up called Brooklyn.

Fletschinger says he’s brand new to comics.  Welcome to the club, buddy!

– Sarah Morean