SATURDAY, JULY 11
SATURDAY, JULY 11
Meet Creators & Explore Comics
Hear award-winning creators, artists, and scholars discuss Superman, comics history, graphic storytelling, Jewish humor, Harvey Pekar, Marvel Comics, and more.
Create Your Own Comics & Characters
Enjoy family-friendly workshops, cartooning activities, animation experiences, and hands-on creative sessions for kids, teens, and adults.
Meet Artists in Artist Alley
Connect with comic creators, illustrators, writers, and independent publishers. Discover new work, purchase artwork, and get books signed.
Explore the Exhibition
Visit Icons in Ink: The Jewish Comics Experience and discover the Jewish creators behind some of the world's most iconic superheroes and comic book stories.
Conversation with Brian Michael Bendis & Marc Andreyko (followed by Book Signing)
Acclaimed comic creators discuss their careers, Cleveland roots, and the graphic novel Torso, moderated by veteran journalist Mike Sangiacomo.
Cleveland Public Library (325 Superior Ave., Cleveland) 1 pm • FREE
Co-Sponsored by the Siegel & Schuster Society
Special Screening: Superman (1978)
Celebrate the hero born in Cleveland with a screening of the original film, followed by a discussion with Phillip Kennedy Johnson, one of today's leading Superman writers.
Cedar Lee Theatre (2163 Lee Rd, Cleveland Heights) 4 pm • $10
9 am – 6 pm
Maltz Museum Campus in Beachwood, Ohio
Superman and Cleveland comics history
Brian Michael Bendis and other acclaimed creators
Harvey Pekar discussions
Artist Alley
Family workshops
Cartooning demonstrations
International Superman panelists joining virtually
Access to the exhibition, Icons in Ink: The Jewish Comics Experience
What is
Icons Fest
Join the Maltz Museum for two days of conversations, workshops, artist meet-and-greets, family activities, and special events inspired by the exhibition Icons in Ink: The Jewish Comics Experience.
Most festival programming will take place at Congregation Mishkan Or, located next door to the Museum, and attendees can easily walk between the two campuses throughout the day.
INCLUDING:
Featured Guests
Headliners
Brian Michael Bendis is a Peabody award winning comics creator, Amazon and New York Times bestseller most known for Co- creating MILES MORALES, JESSICA JONES, RIRI WILLIAMS, MARIA HILL, NAOMI and dozens of other characters and stories that populate the Marvel, DC and all new original universes.
The JINXWORLD line of creator owned comics can be found at the legendary Dark Horse comics. These titles include the New crime comic MASTERPIECE (with co-creator ALEX MALEEV) Sci fi epic JOY OPERATIONS (with co-creator STEPHEN BYRNE), the hit action comedy THE ONES (with co creator Jacob Edgar), the Yakuza romance PEARL (with Jessica Jones co-creator Michael Gaydos), the comic book industry spy thriller COVER (with David Mack), and the alternate history mob story MURDER INC (with POWERS co-creator Mike Avon Oeming.)
Terri Libenson (pronounced LEE-ben-son) is a New York Times bestselling children’s book author and award-winning cartoonist of the syndicated daily comic strip, The Pajama Diaries, which ran from 2006-2020. Previously, she was an award-winning humorous card writer for American Greetings.
Terri graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BFA in illustration and a minor in art history. She developed her first professional comic strip, Got a Life, in 2000, which was distributed by King Features Weekly Service. The Pajama Diaries launched with King Features in 2006 and ran in hundreds of newspapers internationally until its retirement in 2020. Pajama Diaries has been nominated four times for the Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society and won in 2016. In addition, Terri has been nominated twice for Cartoonist of the Year by the NCS. You can read the Pajama Diaries archives daily on ComicsKingdom.
Peter Kuper is a 2026 Pulitzer Prize Finalist. His work appears regularly in Charlie Hebdo, The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad , where he has written and illustrated “Spy vs. Spy” since 1997. He is the co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated, a political comix magazine now in its 47th year of publication. He has produced over two dozen books including Sticks and Stones (winner of The Society of Illustrators gold medal), The System, Diario de Oaxaca, Ruins (winner of the 2016 Eisner Award) and adaptations of many of Franz Kafka's works into comics including The Metamorphosis and Kafkaesque (winner of the 2018 Reuben award and 2022 Lucca award for short stories) and an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.Translations of his work have appeared in Hungary, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Slovenia, China, Brazil, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Germany and Mexico.
Danny Fingeroth is a longtime popular culture critic and historian. He writes and speaks about topics that tell us about ourselves and the cultural icons that impact our lives.
His most recent book is JACK RUBY: THE MANY FACES OF OSWALD’S ASSASSIN, a look into the mind of the strange, violent man who changed history when, on November 24, 1963, he murdered Lee Harvey Oswald—presumed assassin of President John F. Kennedy—on live TV.
Jon Bogdanove is an American comics artist and writer. He is best known for his work on Power Pack and Superman: The Man of Steel, as well as for creating the character Steel with writer Louise Simonson in 1993.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson broke into comics in 2015 with BOOM! Studios miniseries Last Sons of America and Warlords of Appalachia, soon leading him to Marvel and DC Comics. He is best known for his acclaimed work on Superman| Action Comics, Marvel's Alien, Green Lantern: War Journal, Hellhunters, and his current fan-favorites runs on Incredible Hulk, Infernal Hulk, and Batman & Robin.
NYT best-selling writer, Eisner and Ringo! winner, GLAAD nominee, OUT 100, 3x game show contestant, dog person, and movie lover.
Featured speakers & Creators
Joe Rubinstein is a comic book artist and inker, best known for his work onThe Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the 1982 Wolverine limited series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller.
Josef was born in Wrocław, Poland, on June 4, 1958. His family immigrated to the United States, and he became a naturalized citizen in 1972. He has considered America his home ever since.
Joe started his career in comics as a teenager in the early 1970s. He got his foot in the door as an office assistant at Continuity Associates, working under the legendary Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. (pictured) That job was his first real education in inking—Joe is so grateful to Giordano for taking the time to show him the ropes.
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Gary is a life-long Clevelander. Gary’s mom helped teach him to read using comic books as a kid, so they’re kind of in his blood! He attended Cuyahoga Community College in the sixties where he took classes in painting and printmaking. He married Laura in 1971, and they started a life of artistic collaboration as well as creating their own art.
In 1974 Gary met author Harvey Pekar through a friend of Laura’s who worked with Harvey, and began a 30+ year association drawing comics art for his ground-breaking autobiographical comic book “American Splendor”, and Laura added color as needed. Many other comics projects and art show exhibitions have followed for this husband-and-wife team. Laura has had solo art shows, as well as exhibiting with Gary in numerous group shows. They have worked on many publications, independent comic books and graphic novels. They have even co-curated a couple of successful art shows in Cleveland that extolled the virtues and importance of their city's current and storied comics’ history.
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Amy is a New Yorker cartoonist and the author of two graphic memoirs: Flying Couch and Artificial: A Love Story. She was a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow with the American Academy in Berlin and a 2019 Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute, and she has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and elsewhere. She recently won the 2024 Overseas Press Club Cartoon Award for her essay with the Los Angeles Times, “A Palestinian, an Israeli, and a Path to Peace.”
Her work has been nominated for a Reuben Award and an Ignatz Award for “Technofeelia,” her four-part series with The Believer Magazine. Her writing, comics, and cartoons have also been published in The Verge, The New York Times Book Review, Longreads, Literary Hub, WIRED, and many other places. She has taught writing and comics at Parsons The New School for Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Center for Talented Youth, Interlochen Center for the Arts, in New York City Public Schools, and in many other venues. She teaches a monthly cartooning class to a growing—and enthusiastic—community of virtual students around the world via her Patreon.
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Matt Horak is an artist and designer based in Akron, Ohio. Along with creating artwork for EarthQuaker Devices guitar pedals and merchandise, he has worked in the comics industry since 2014. He has provided interior art and covers for publishers including Image, Marvel, Dark Horse, Oni, and Mad Cave on titles such as Punisher, Spider-man/Deadpool, Magik, Star Wars, Black Panther, Flash Gordon, Rick and Morty and more. Co-creator of Dr. Crowe and Space Step Dad, and Octo Skull.
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THE BERKOWITZ BROTHERS, founded by Ben and Max Berkowitz, is a production company that creates and develops original comic book IP as a direct pipeline for film and television. Their first comic book project, The Writer, co-created with Josh Gad, was published by Dark Horse Comics from 2024 to 2025. The series received critical acclaim and won JewCE Best Writer of the Year, Nerd Initiative Cheersie Awards Best Limited/Mini Series, and AIPT Best of the Best 2024: Best Writer, Best Mini Series, Best Issue #1, Best Single Issue. The collected edition was released in May 2025 and is currently in development as a live-action feature film.
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Writer for Masters of the Universe and Heavy Metal. Netflixer. Marvel/Disney alumni. An optimist from Maui,Hawaii. Join the adventure!
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Festival Schedule
All Speakers
Strategy
Engineering
Emily
Carter
David
Thompson
Amanda
Nguyen
Head of AI Strategy
EchoDesign
R&D
VP of AI Research
BrightPixel
AI Research Scientist
NovaAI
LLM
Business
Sarah Mitchell
Christopher
Johnson
Michael
Anderson
AI Architecture Lead
Lumina Labs
Design
Director of AI Partnerships
MetaCanvas
CTO
QuantumSketch