Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure (i.e., H. Kurtz-man).

In 1952, he was the founding editor of the comic book Mad. Kurtzman was also known for the long-running Little Annie Fanny stories in Playboy (1962–88), satirizing the very attitudes that Playboy promoted.

Because Mad had a considerable effect on popular culture, Kurtzman was later described by The New York Times as having been "one of the most important figures in postwar America." Director and comedian Terry Gilliam said, “In many ways Harvey was one of the godparents of Monty Python.” Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb asserted that one of Kurtzman's cover images for Humbug "changed my life," and that another Mad cover image “changed the way I saw the world forever!” Writing for Time, Richard Corliss touted Kurtzman's influence:

He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1989.

William Erwin "Will" Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an instructional medium; for his leading role in establishing the graphic novel as a form of literature with his book A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories.

The comics community paid tribute to Eisner by creating the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, more commonly known as "the Eisners", to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium. Eisner enthusiastically participated in the awards ceremony, congratulating each recipient. In 1987, with Carl Barks and Jack Kirby, he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Stan Lee (born December 28, 1922) is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he headed the first major successful challenge to the industry's censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, and forced it to reform its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995.

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York City on December 28, 1922, in the apartment of his Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia (née Solomon) and Jack Lieber, at the corner of West 98th Street and West End Avenue in Manhattan. His father, trained as a dress cutter, worked only sporadically after the Great Depression, and the family moved further uptown to Fort Washington Avenue, in Washington Heights, Manhattan. When Lee was nearly 9, his only sibling, brother Larry Lieber, was born. He said in 2006 that as a child he was influenced by books and movies, particularly those with Errol Flynn playing heroic roles. By the time Lee was in his teens, the family was living in a one-bedroom apartment at 1720 University Avenue in The Bronx. Lee described it as "a third-floor apartment facing out back", with him and his brother sharing a bedroom and his parents using a foldout couch.

Art Spiegelman (born February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor and comics advocate, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been highly influential, and he spent a decade as contributing editor of The New Yorker starting in 1992, where he also made a number of high-profile and sometimes controversial covers. He is married to Françoise Mouly.

Spiegelman's work first gained prominence in the underground comix scene in the 1970s. His work in this period was short and formally experimental, and often included autobiographical elements. A selection of these strips appeared in the collection Breakdowns in 1977. After Breakdowns, Spiegelman wanted to work on a "very long comic book". He settled on the theme of his father's experiences during as a Holocaust survivor. The book, Maus, would take thirteen years to complete. It drew both praise and criticism for depicting Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. The book won a number of prizes, most prominently a special Pulitzer Prize. It has come to be viewed as a pivotal work in comics, responsible for bringing serious scholarly attention to the medium.

Alan Oswald Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell. Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history, he has also been described as "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years". He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon.

Moore started out writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", he worked on big name characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the minor character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for the medium in the United States and United Kingdom, and has subsequently been credited with the development of the term "graphic novel" over "comic book". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell, pornographic Lost Girls, and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea.