The Guest List For BALTIMORE COMIC-CON 2025 Continues To Grow

from the official Baltimore Comic Con press release

Baumann, Dani, McKone, Petersen, Rugg, and Vazquez Come to Baltimore Comic-Con 2025

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - May 19, 2025 - The 2025 Baltimore Comic-Con takes place on October 17-19 at the Inner Harbor's Baltimore Convention Center. The Baltimore Comic-Con welcomes comics guests Marty Baumann, Dani, Mike McKone, David Petersen, Jim Rugg, and Gus Vazquez to this year's event. Tickets are now available on our website!

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Marty Baumann is an illustrator, graphic artist, and production designer. He has contributed to some of the most popular, Oscar-winning animated films of all time. Marty has worked as an artist at Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios as an illustrator, graphic artist, and production designer on such films as Toy Story 3, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Cars 2, Planes, Wreck-It Ralph 2, and many others. He also helped develop theme park installations, toy packaging, and Pixar corporate branding. Marty has rendered illustrations and developed characters for toy manufacturers, magazines, and newspapers, and illustrated children's books, created logos, info-graphics, broadcast promotions, and presentation art for Hasbro, Universal Studios, National Geographic, Scholastic Books, Nickelodeon, and many others. Recent projects include his role as concept artist for the new Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the visual development of Sir Paul McCartney's feature film, High in the Clouds.

Dani was born in Athens, Greece in 1992 and studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She began to produce a self-published series called Tales from the Stripsthat won the Reader’s Choice Award at the Greek Comics Awards in 2015, before working at 2000 AD contributing to Judge Anderson, Black Beth, and other series. Soon, she was on the radar of the US industry and broke in with work from IDW on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. More recently, she has worked with DC/Vertigo on Sandman: The Dreaming, Hill House Comics: The Low Low Woods, and on the Image Comics creator-owned series Coffin Bound. Dani has continued her collaborations at DC Comics with Sensational Wonder Woman and as the regular artist on Arkham City: The Order of the World.

Hailing from England, Mike McKone's first published work was for DC Comics' Justice League of America and Marvel Comics' Punisher series. In the years since, he has illustrated almost every major character from the big two publishers, including lengthy runs on Teen Titans, Amazing Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four. Recent projects were the Avengers graphic novel, Endless Wartime and Justice League United. Now residing in the US, McKone is working on a creator-owned project while providing covers and merchandising illustrations for clients such as Marvel, DC, Dynamite, Valiant, Dorling Kindersley, and Converse.

David Petersen is a cartoonist and children's book illustrator who launched his career with a self-published issue of his series Mouse Guard in 2005, when it was then picked up by Archaia, who continues to publish the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning series. Petersen has also worked on covers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Dark Crystal. He's illustrated an edition of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows for IDW and his artwork also graced the cover for the 2012 Baltimore Comic-Con program, as well as the show-exclusive t-shirt. In 2008, David won the Eisners for Best Publication for Kids (Mouse Guard Fall 1152 & Winter 1152) and Best Graphic Album - Reprint (Mouse Guard Fall 1152 Hardcover). In 2010, he was nominated for a Harvey Award for Best Artist (Mouse Guard: Winter 1152).

Jim Rugg is a writer, artist, designer, illustrator, and YouTuber. His comics include Hulk Grand Design, Street Angel, The PLAIN Janes, Afrodisiac, and Supermag. Honors include Eisner and Ignatz Awards and AIGA's 50 Books/50 Covers selection. He was the co-host of YouTube's popular comics channel -- Cartoonist Kayfabe.

Gus Vazquez is an illustrator who has worked in nearly every field, including comic books, trading cards, storyboarding for music videos, commercials, animation and film, logo design, character and toy design, and more. He started his career in comic books working as an assistant to comic book artists Adam Pollina on X-Force, and Kevin McGuire on Trinity Angels. He got his first solo gig at Marvel Comics drawing the covers and interiors for Sunfire and Big Hero 6, the series that introduced the characters featured in Disney's Oscar winning Big Hero 6. He has worked on such Marvel titles as Deadpool, X-Force, Spider-Man, What If? Civil War, What If? Back in Black, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and more. For DC, he has worked on such titles as Green Lantern, JLA, Blue Beetle, and most recently on Flash, Suicide Squad, and Green Arrow. Gus was the artist on several issues of Claudio Sanchez's (of rock music group Coheed and Cambria) The Amory Wars, and was instrumental in helping bring together the creative team of his friends, David Atchison (writer) and Tony Shasteen (illustrator), and his niece, film and TV actress Rosario Dawson on 12 Gauge's The O.C.T. More recently, Gus has been working for DC Comics on The Sasquatch Detective, a backup story which can be found in the pages of Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, as well as DMC (Daryl Makes Comics) and on La Borinqueña. He is also working on his creator-owned book, Fang.

"These guests are some of the most talented artists (and cartoonists) out there," said Marc Nathan, show promoter for the Baltimore Comic-Con. "It is always a pleasure to visit the tables of such accomplished creators and just soak in the creativity and skill, and maybe even purchase some art they have for sale. Fans are going to be excited to meet them at this year's show!"