Saturday, March 14, 2015

PIX 2015 Guest Announcement #6 in a Series: Don Simpson

Don Simpson was one of the early entrants to the explosion of creator owned comics in the early 1980s.  In 1984 he debuted his premiere creation, Megaton Man, a full color comic book series which melded a Kurtzman-era Mad satire informed and updated by Jerry Lewis and Jean Luc Godard and brought its full weight to bear on the superhero genre, making a lasting imprint.  Now 30 years after that debut, he is working on an all-new Megaton Man graphic novel.  In the intervening years, he created the science fiction series, Border Worlds, contributed to Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, collaborated with Alan Moore on "In Pictopia" and 1963, and free-lanced for many other comic book titles.  He also illustrated Saturday Night Live alumnus (and later U.S. Senator) Al Franken’s 2003 bestseller Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.  For years, Don has taught cartooning workshops throughout the Pittsburgh area, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, and in 2013, he earned a PhD in history of art and architecture from the University of Pittsburgh. He currently teaches art and art history at Waynesburg University.  (Check out this freely available  download of his Figure Drawing Basics – Action and Structure:  https://www.academia.edu/2214932/Figure_Drawing_Basics_Action_and_Structure_2000_2nd_ed._March_2015_ )