Comic book artist and writer Michael Turner was born in Crossville, Tennessee on April 21, 1971. He had been a pre-medicine student at the University of Tennessee before moving to Aspen and San Diego, where he taught martial arts. At the 1993 Comic-Con in San Diego his artistic talent was discovered by the staff of Top Cow Productions. Turner illustrated backgrounds for Top Cow titles before co-creating the popular comic book character Witchblade, who was named for the supernatural weapon that affixed itself to the arm of New York homicide detective Sara Pezzini. In 1998 he debuted the aquatic Fathom character, whose secret identity was marine biologist Aspen Matthews. In 2002 Turner left… Top Cow to found his own entertainment publishing company, Aspen MLT Inc. In 2004 he began contributing art to DC Comics and Marvel Comics, including cover designs for issues of the Teen Titans, Superman, Identity Crisis, The Flash, Supergirl, Wolverine, Civil War, Incredible Hulk, Black Panther, and Sub-Mariner. In 2004 he provided the cover art and co-wrote the Superman "Godfall" story arc, and Soulfire began publication. Turner died at age 37 of complications from bone cancer and is survived by his family and fiance, Kelly Carmichael.
Alex Ross was born in 1968. He attended St. Alban's School in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Harvard University in 1990. It was there that he studied under composer Peter Lieberson and was a D.J. on the classical and underground rock departments of the college radio station. He earned a Harvard A.B. in English summa cum laude for a thesis on James Joyce. From the years, 1992-1996, Alex Ross was a music critic at the New York Times. He also wrote for the New Republic, Slate, and The London Review of Books. In 1993 he started contributing to The New Yorker and became a staff writer in 1996. In 2007 his released his first book in the U.S. entitled The Rest is Noise: Listening to the… Twentieth Century, a cultural history of music since 1900. This book received widespread crritical praise in the U.S. and earned a National Book Critics Circle Award, a spot on New York Times list of the ten best books of 2007, and a finalist citation for the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction. His second book - Listen to This- was published in September 2010. Alex Ross has also received a Holtzbrink fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.
