Join the 2026 Baltimore Comic-Con at the Inner Harbor’s Baltimore Convention Center on September 25-27, 2026. Baltimore Comic-Con has announced Howard Chaykin, Steve Conley, Amanda Conner, Pop Mhan, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Brian Stelfreeze as guests of the 2026 event! Your tickets are waiting for you online now!

Howard Victor Chaykin is a longtime veteran of the comic book business. As a cartoonist — both writing and drawing — he has been a major influence on the direction of comics, referred to frequently as one of the principal architects of the modern comic book. His signature creation, American Flagg!, introduced a new level of narrative complexity, depth of character, and point of view in its text, not to mention a previously unseen level of design and craft to the visual nature of an all-too-frequently staid and timid medium. And, yes, sex that wasn’t confined to pinup posing for most proclivities to enjoy. Chaykin continues to produce work that pushes the envelope of concept, context, and content in comics…his The Divided States of Hysteria, for example, a comic book which, thanks to social media, enraged an entire new generation of the willfully ignorant who might have had a better case if they’d actually read the damned book. Chaykin’s Hey Kids! Comics! is a fictionalized history of the comic book business, a love letter written with just a frisson of acid in the ink, to the field he’s loved and called home for over five decades. His magnum opus bebop comic book, The Time² Omnibus, might still be out there…and The Black Kiss Omnibus, four hundred pages of unredeemed filth, is in stores now.

Steve Conley is the writer and artist of The Middle Age, a “beautifully drawn and hilarious” fantasy webcomic that has earned ‘best webcomic’ nominations in the Ringo Awards, Eisner Awards, and National Cartoonists Society Awards. He has provided art and covers for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (BOOM! Studios), Adventure Time (BOOM Studios!), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW Publishing), Star Trek: Year Four (IDW Publishing), and Michael Chabon’s Escapist (Dark Horse Comics). Steve is a co-host of the weekly Pencil to Pencil comics livestream with Jamar Nicholas and Mike Manley.

When not making comics, Steve’s gaming work includes writing and illustrating Dungeons & Dragons-compatible supplements including Nibblemancy, Death Dealing, and Intoximancy. Steve’s comics and TTRPG work can be found online at SteveConley.com.

Amanda Conner has worked on many of the top titles in comics, such as Lois Lane, Codename: Knockout, and Birds of Prey for DC Comics, X-Men Unlimited for Marvel, Gatecrasher for Blackbull Comics (which she also co-created), and The Pro, an Eisner-nominated creator-owned book for Image Comics with Jimmy Palmiotti and Garth Ennis. Recently, she worked on the highly successful Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre series with Eisner-winning creator Darwyn Cooke.

Amanda’s work can also be seen outside the comic-book community, in such places as ABC’s Nightline, New York Times, MAD Magazine, Arm & Hammer, PlaySchool, and Nickelodeon. She has also done monthly spot illustrations for Revolver magazine and has enjoyed a huge success with the DC Comics title Harley Quinn with Jimmy Palmiotti. Her collaboration with pop sensation Ingrid Michaelson was industry celebrated. Additionally, her work has been featured and spotlighted on the award-winning CBS comedy series The Big Bang Theory, where her artwork was used for multiple episodes.

She continuously produces cover work for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and an assortment of independent titles. Her involvement with DC and Warner Brothers for the Harley Quinn animated series along with several characters and themes leveraged for the cartoon and motion pictures are evident.

Pop Mhan was lucky enough to get his jump into the comics industry under the tutelage of Jim Lee at Wildstorm Productions. Since those early days, his art has graced the pages of comics from Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Top Cow, Dark Horse Comics, and Tokyopop. His recent work can be seen at DC Comics, where he has been penciling licensed properties like Gears of War 3 and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Marvel Comics on All-New X-Factor and variant covers for Amazing Spider-Man.

Jimmy Palmiotti is a writer, editor, and a multi-award winning character creator with a wide range of experience in advertising, production, consulting, editorial, film writing, development and production, media presentation, and video game development. Just a few of his clients include Nike, Nickelodeon, Universal Pictures, Disney, Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Lion’s Gate, Vidmark, Starz, Fox Atomic, Alliance Films, New Line, Spike TV, MTV, 2K Games, Midway, Radical Games, Activision, and THQ Games.

He is co-founder of such companies as Event Comics, Black Bull Media, Marvel Knights, a division of Marvel Comics, and the current Paperfilms, where he is partners with Amanda Conner. Together, they have created and co-created numerous universes, comics, TV series, and characters including: The New West, Monolith, 21 Down, The Resistance, The Pro, Gatecrasher, Beautiful Killer, Ash, Cloudburst, Trigger Girl 6, Thrill Seeker, Trailblazer, Ballerina, The Twilight Experiment, Killing Time in America, Rage, Queen Crab, Retrovirus, Pop Kill, and the TV series, Painkiller Jane. Other titles with which he is involved are hit series Harley Quinn, DC Comics’ relaunch into the Wal-Mart nationwide stores, Jonah Hex, and several other series. Several of his contributions for both DC and Marvel can be found in major motion pictures and TV series, including Black Panther, Daredevil, Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn animated, and more.

Brian Stelfreeze is an American comic book artist. Stelfreeze is a painter, penciller, inker, and colorist, and has worked for nearly every major American comic book publisher. He is one of the original members of Atlanta’s Gaijin Studios. Stelfreeze began his career as the artist of the sci-fi miniseries CyCops in the mid-1980s. While Stelfreeze has been known throughout his career primarily as a cover artist, painting more than fifty cover illustrations for DC Comics’ Shadow of the Bat, he’s also produced a significant amount of sequential work, most notably of late with the miniseries Domino for Marvel Comics and Matador for DC Comics’ Wildstorm imprint. Currently, Stelfreeze acts as art director for 12-Gauge Comics and occasionally has provided artwork for their series The Ride and its prequel, Gun Candy. Recent work can be seen on the Walt Simonson-written Demon/Catwoman feature in DC Comics’ Wednesday Comics. Stelfreeze is the artist on the 2016 revival of Marvel’s Black Panther with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. In 2020, Stelfreeze launched Thomas River, a spy series with a 40-page first issue. He created the art for the series, and co-wrote the series with Doug Wagner. The first issue, crowdfunded through Kickstarter, surpassed its funding stretch goal of $30,000, and was published by 12-Gauge Comics.

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This year’s confirmed guests for the show include: Jason Aaron (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Marty Baumann (Pixar artist), Mark Buckingham (Fables), Jim Calafiore (NED, Lord of the Pit), Howard Chaykin (Time Squared), Jo Chen (Runaways), Cliff Chiang (Paper Girls), Frank Cho (Harley Quinn), Steve Conley (The Middle Age), Amanda Conner (Harley Quinn), Olivia Cuartero-Briggs (The College Try),Todd Dezago (The Perhapanauts), Colleen Doran (The Sandman), Trish Forstner (Feral), Gene Ha (Mae), Larry Hama (GI Joe: A Real American Hero), Tony Harris (The Whistling Skull), Mike Hawthorne (Deadpool), Jamal Igle (Superman), Phillip Kennedy Johnson (Infernal Hulk), Dan Jurgens (Action Comics), Mike Kunkel (Herobear and the Kid), Jae Lee (Inhumans), Jose Marzen Jr. (Y: The Last Man), Mike McKone (Teen Titans), Bob McLeod (New Mutants), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), Adriana Melo (Fantastic Four), Pop Mhan (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe), Al Milgrom (Spectacular Spider-Man), Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise), Mark Morales (Thor), Bill Morrison (The Simpsons), Sarah Myer (TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures), Kevin Nowlan (Batman: Sword of Azrael), Patrick Olliffe (Untold Tales of Spider-Man), Ryan Ottley (Invincible), Jimmy Palmiotti (The Punisher), Andrew Pepoy (Simone & Ajax), David Petersen (Mouse Guard), Tom Raney (Incredible Hulk), Afua Richardson (Kahhori: Reshaper of Worlds), Don Rosa (Uncle Scrooge), Craig Rousseau (The Perhapanauts), Mark Schultz (Xenozoic Tales, courtesy of Flesk Publishing), Louise Simonson (The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special), Walter Simonson (Thor), Matthew Dow Smith (DC’s Misfits of Magic), Scott Snyder (DC K.O.), Brian Stelfreeze (Black Panther), Gus Vazquez (Sunfire and the Big Hero Six), Mark Waid (Action Comics), Matt Wieringo (Stargate Atlantis: Gateways), Rich Woodall (Sgt. Werewolf), and Thom Zahler (Long Distance).