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.

Françoise Mouly (born October 24, 1955) is a Paris-born French artist and designer best known for her work with RAW, a showcase publication for cutting edge comic art, and as art editor of The New Yorker, a position she has held since 1993. In April 2008, comics critic Jeet Heer wrote on his blog, Sans Everything: "Is there anyone in the cartooning world who is more underrated than Françoise Mouly?" and went on to give an extensive list of Mouly's achievements.

Mouly came to New York for the first time in 1974 as a 19-year-old architectural student. She soon settled in a loft in Soho and survived by doing a series of odd jobs: selling cigarettes in street kiosks, actress in a Richard Foreman play, model-maker in a Japanese architectural agency, plumber, electrician, and assistant to a plastic surgeon (her father). In 1976, she met Art Spiegelman (who would only later become the author of Maus, in which she makes brief appearances) and discovered her passion: graphic arts and book production. From 1972–1979 Mouly was a freelance colorist for Marvel Comics, where she worked on such comics as Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Marvel Two-in-One, and Tomb of Dracula, as well as doing individual fill-ins on numerous other titles.

Neil Richard Gaiman ( /ˈɡeɪmən/; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Newbery Medal, and Carnegie Medal in Literature. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work.

Gaiman's family is of Polish and other Eastern European Jewish origins; his great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy. After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I’d say, 'I’m a Jewish Scientologist.'" Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion.