Road To Armageddon 2011 Part 1: International Comic Creators

Above: The Mighty Avengers as drawn by Frank Cho. Copyright Marvel Comics 2011.

The Armageddon Expo returns to Auckland this week, taking a week's grace to avoid competing with the Rugby World Cup final. But now that that's out of the way, you can expect the usual masses of pop culture fanatics to descend on the ASB Showgrounds this October 28th-31st. Yes, you read that right: it's four days of none-stop geek overloading to make up for missing Labour Weekend (so now would be the time to fill out those annual leave forms, or start planning for a sick-day!).

The Expo is jam-packed with guests this year, so let's take a look at what's on offer for comic fans. Making up the guest list of international cartoonist are: Fred Van Lente, Frank Cho and Rob Guillory.

Above: Action Philosophers! by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey. Copyright Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey 2011.

Fred Van Lente is currently one of Marvel's most prolific writers. He came to the attention of The House of Ideas with his self-published comic series Action Philosophers!, which won an American Library Association Award. His writing credits include: Marvel Zombies, Incredible Hercules (with Greg Pak), Odd Is On Our Side (with Dean R. Koontz), Taskmaster, X-Men Noir, Amazing Spider-Man, Alpha Flight (also with Pak) and Comic Book Comics with artist Ryan Dunlavey. He was also one of the writers for the Cowboys & Aliens graphic novel, which inspired the recent movie starring Daniel Craig. There will be a special writing panel with Fred Van Lente on Saturday 29th at noon.

Above: Liberty Meadows by Frank Cho. Copyright Frank Cho 2011.

Frank Cho is responsible for drawing some of the most attractive women in comics this side of Dave Stevens (check out his website if you don't believe me, va-va-voom!). He started drawing a comic strip called University2 while studying Nursing, before graduating to producing the syndicated comedy strip Liberty Meadows. Since then he has gone on to draw for Marvel on such titles as: Marvel Knights Spider-man, Shanna the She-Devil, Mighty Avengers, Hulk and Ultimate Comics New Ultimates. He's also written/drawn Jungle Girl and Savage Red Sonja for Dynamite Entertainment. His next creator owned project is Guns & Dinos from Image Comics.

Above: Chew, drawn by Rob Guillory and written by John Layman. Copyright John Layman and Rob Guillory 2011.

Rob Guillory began his comic art career during a four-year stint as cartoonist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. From there, Guillory went on to work on several indie comic anthology projects, such as Teddy Scares from Ape Entertainment and Image Comics' Popgun Anthology.

In 2008, Guillory began working on his first major comics work, the New York Times Best-selling Chew, written by John Layman and published by Image Comics. The book has gone on to achieve much success, being nominated for two Harvey Awards (including Best New Talent for Guillory), two Eagle Awards and winning an Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2010. There will be a comics panel with Rob Guillory on Sunday at 1pm.

Check back tomorrow for a look at the local comic creators attending.

-AK!