Bob Layton is an American comic book artist, writer, and editor, who has worked for Marvel Comics, Valiant Comics, DC Comics, Future Comics, and other publishers.

Bob Layton learned to read comics from the age of four, explaining that his "older sister Sue became bored with reading the same comic to me about fifty times. (It was a Showcase featuring The Challengers of the Unknown.)"

After leaving high school, Layton began "playing comics dealer . . . selling them out of his apartment in Indianapolis," through which he met Roger Stern in 1973, while the latter was working for a radio station in Indianapolis.

Ultimately, Layton and Stern began publishing a fanzine called CPL (Contemporary Pictorial Literature) out of Layton's apartment.

Stern recalls that, "CPL started out as Bob's sale catalog. Bob was drawing the covers and including little reviews written by some of his customers. By issue #5, it turned into a small 'zine with a catalog insert, and I started writing short articles for it. I eventually became an editor of sorts."