Stan Sakai is a Japanese-born American artist and comic book creator. His creation, Usagi Yojimbo, first appeared in 1984. Usagi has been on television as a guest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as toys, on clothing, in comics, and in a series of trade paperback collections. He is a multiple Eisner-Award-winning cartoonist and the recipient of numerous national awards including an American Library Association Award and a Cultural Ambassador Award from the Japanese American National Museum. In 2020, Sakai was inducted into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame. He currently is an executive producer on the Netflix original CGI animated series Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, which is based on "Usagi Yojimbo". He lives in Pasadena, CA.
Jeff Smith is an American artist and the award-winning creator of the bestselling comic books Bone and RASL. For his work on Bone, Smith has received numerous awards, among them ten Eisner Awards and eleven Harvey Awards. In 1995 and 1996, he won the National Cartoonists Society's award for Comic Books. Smith helped found the annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus festival, which debuted in 2015, and he serves as its artistic director. He lives in Columbus, OH.
