Peter Bagge created Hate , one of the bestselling and most influential comic book series of the past quarter century. Born in New York in 1957, after graduating from the School of Visual Arts, Bagge contributed to and, along with R. Crumb, edited the underground anthology Weirdo . Bagge's numerous original graphic novels and collections of comics have won him multiple Harvey Awards, an Inkpot Award, and numerous Eisner Award nominations. He lives in Tacoma, WA. Stephen DeStefano has been a professional cartoonist since he was 15. He has drawn comics for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Oni and Fantagraphics. In 1992 he began working in television animation on Ren & Stimpy , and more recently was a supervisor on Adult Swim's The Venture Brothers .

He currently resides in Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife Siobha´n. Johnny Ryan lives in Glendale, CA with his daughter. He is the creator of the cult favorite Angry Youth Comics , a co-creator of the Nickelodeon series Pig Boat Banana Cricket , and was the story editor of Warner's mid-2010s reboot of Looney Tunes . Born in Texas, Jim Blanchard has lived all across the U.S.A. and in Norway. From 1982-1988, he was the editor and publisher of the punk rock/graphics zine Blatch .

In 1987, he moved to Seattle, Washington, where he's been an illustrator, designer, and comic book artist, as well as an art director. His previous books for Fantagraphics include Meat Warp, Beasts & Priests, Glam Warp and earlier retrospective Visual Abuse: Jim Blanchard's Graphic Art 1982-2002 . He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife Diana and his dog Lucius. Matt Wray is an associate professor of sociology at Temple University. In addition to recent research on suicide in Las Vegas, the city with the highest metropolitan suicide rate in the United States, Wray has studied the stigmatization of poor rural whites and is a long-time participant observer of the Burning Man Festival.