Five members from Brooklyn’s legendary Hang Dai Studios will be attending Baltimore Comic-Con, being held the weekend of September 25-27, 2015 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Featuring artists and writers Dean “The Fox” Haspiel, Gregory “B+F” Benton, Christa “Ghetto Klown” Cassano, Jonathan “Plunder” Lang, and Vito “Stray” Delsante, they will be playing the dozens and selling their latest comix, prints, graphic novels, and be available for commissions. Hang Dai Editions (in conjunction with Alternative Comics), will be debuting their three new graphic novels: Smoke by Gregory Benton, Beef With Tomato by Dean Haspiel, and Schmuck by the late Seth Kushner.
Emmy award winner and Eisner Award nominee Dean Haspiel created Billy Dogma, illustrated for HBO’s “Bored To Death,” was a Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, is a Yaddo fellow and a playwright, helped pioneer personal webcomics with the invention of ACT-I-VATE.com and TripCity.net, and is the co-founder of Hang Dai Editions in Brooklyn, NY. “Dino” has written and drawn many comic books, including The Fox, Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men: First Class, Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Godzilla, Mars Attacks, Garbage Pail Kids, Creepy, The Walking Dead, and collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, Inverna Lockpez, Jonathan Lethem, Mark Waid, and Stan Lee. Look out for his upcoming graphic novel memoir, Beef With Tomato (Alternative Comics).
Gregory Benton‘s book B+F was awarded the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s inaugural Award of Excellence at MoCCAFest 2013. An expanded version of B+F was published in the autumn of 2013 through Adhouse Books (USA) and Editions çà et là (France). The long form edition of B+F was selected for the Society of Illustrators’ first Comics and Cartoon Art Annual in 2014. Gregory has written and drawn stories for Nickelodoeon, Vertigo, DC Comics, Disney Adventures, Watson-Guptil, and Entertainment Weekly. Gregory has also produced numerous limited-edition mini-comix, some of which reside in The Library of Congress’ rare books collection. Gregory’s latest book Smoke, published by Hang Dai Editions, makes its BCC debut!
Christa Cassano has a background in fine arts and began making comics in 2012 when she attended The Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 2013 she became a member of Hang Dai Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where she wrote and drew The Giant Effect, did a comix-accordian collaboration with Dean Haspiel called A Letter Lasts Longer, and contributed to The Hang Dai Comix Anthology and Seth Kushner’s Schmuck. Christa recently co-adapted John Leguizamo’s Ghetto Klown, coming out this fall from Abrams, and is currently working on her own graphic series, titled Pawnland.
Swifty Lang was born in Liege, Belgium and raised in South Florida. He received his M.A. in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam. He is a comix writer and filmmaker. He won a Van Gogh Award for World Cinema Directing in 2015 from the Amsterdam International Film Festival for his film The Showing. Swifty is co-creator of the critically acclaimed, Feeding Ground (Archaia), which was optioned by Pressman Films in 2014. He was a contributor to Occupy Comics (Black Mask). He has worked with IDW on Garbage Pail Kids with Dean Haspiel, and lived his childhood dream of creating a GPK. His mini-series Plunder was published by Archaia in 2015 and a collection is forthcoming in 2016. He has been a member of Hang Dai Studios since 2013. He is a founding partner of S/Lang Entertainment.
Vito Delsante is a comic book writer/graphic novelist and the co-creator of Stray, published by Action Lab Entertainment. He’s written for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Image Comics, and Simon & Schuster, including stories for Superman, Batman, X-Men, and Scooby Doo, and his stories have been reprinted overseas. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Michelle, his daughter, Sadie, his son, James and his dog, Kirby.
