David Lapham began his career in the comic industry at the age of twenty working at Valiant Comics learning his craft illustrating and helping to create many original titles, including Shadowman, Harbinger and Rai. He left Valiant to work at Defiant Comics where he co-created Warriors Of Plasm with Jim Shooter. David turned his back on the superhero genre in 1995 to co-found the independent publishing company, El Capitan Books, which began publishing David's comic series Stray Bullets. Lapham has won Eisner Awards for his work on Stray Bullets and Murder Me Dead.

Shawn Martinbrough is the author of How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling by Penguin Random House and an Eisner Award nominated artist whose comic book projects include Batman: Detective Comics, Luke Cage Noir, Black Panther and Hellboy. He is a Vanity Fair contributor and an art curator. Shawn has given lectures about his career at Walt Disney Animation, Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon, Peterson Space Force Base, TEDx Mid Atlantic, the International Spy Museum, the California African American Museum, the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Society of Illustrators, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art, Columbia University, Fashion Institute of Technology, Savannah College of Art & Design, the University of Michigan, Temple University, and the Washington International School. He currently draws and writes in the Washington, DC, metro area.