The authors are available for media interviews to discuss topics related to comic-book history, Marvel Comics, and the career of Stan Lee. Please contact Chicago Review Press publicist Sara Hoerdeman at (312) 337-0747 x236 or .

Jordan Raphael was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and educated at Montreal's McGill University. While he was an undergraduate, he completed an internship at The Comics Journal in Seattle, eventually moving up to become a news writer and assistant editor with the magazine.

Since then, he has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Globe and Mail, Inside.com, and several other publications. His areas of coverage include comics culture, film, technology and business.

Jordan earned an M.A. in Communication and an M.A. in Journalism from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in Communication.

Jordan lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife, Michele.

Tom Spurgeon is one of North America's best-known experts on the comic strip and comic book art forms and the industries that service them. The son of a newspaperman in East Central Indiana, Tom and his brothers helped their father select new strips for the paper's comic-book page, making the Muncie Star-Press one of the first publications to carry "Calvin and Hobbes" and "The Far Side," as well as one of the few to carry "Rudy."

After receiving a broad education at Washington and Lee University and a focused one at Garrett seminary on the campus of Northwestern University, Tom worked briefly for QVC, Inc. Drawing on experience in his nepotism-fueled career as a beat writer, editor and entertainment reporter, Tom in 1994 took the position of managing editor at The Comics Journal in Seattle, Washington.

Tom edited the Journal for five years, first as managing editor and then as executive editor. During that time, the magazine won multiple industry awards, increased its focus on world comics and encouraged the comics community to see small press and mini-comics as legitimate artistic outlets rather than a training ground for traditionally published works. In forcing the magazine to build on the breadth and depth of its coverage, Tom helped improve the magazine's general mainstream profile as one of American Arts' most unique and valuable publications. When literary comics began to make a major impact in the late 1990s, the Journal was the gateway publication for many editors and writers to understand the phenomenon. Tom also edited the magazine's infamous 'Stan Lee issue' (October 1995) and helped launch its popular companion Web site.

In 1999, Tom left the magazine to become a freelancer. He remains a columnist, reviewer and occasional newsman for the publication he previously edited. He has written about comics and a variety of arts-related subjects for Suck.com, Feed, The Stranger, and more than a dozen newspapers and regional magazines. From 1999 to 2002, he wrote the critically lauded newspaper comic strip "Wildwood," which enjoyed a daily presence in more than 18 million homes. He currently lives in Silver City, New Mexico. This is his first book, with more to come.

Jeff Wong is a Brooklyn-based illustrator who has drawn caricatures and humorous illustrations for Sports Illustrated, Premiere, The New Republic and The Washington Post. A longtime follower of the comics medium, he has also painted cover illustrations for The Comics Journal of important industry figures Robert Crumb, David Levine and Art Spiegelman.

The authors are grateful to Jeff for the stunning cover image he provided to adorn their first book project. To see more of Jeff's work, check out www.jeffwong.com.