The staff of the MCAs is what makes the whole thing possible! Below are the Cartoonist United members who’ve worked hard to keep this whole circus running. They’ve sent emails, logged financials, worked on this website, wrangled judges, and so much more.
MCA staff are responsible for inviting judges from a very long list of suggestions every year, but do not have any input in the judging process itself. MCA staff are also ineligible from submitting comics themselves.
CORI WALTERS
Cori Walters is a Floridian illustrator and indie cartoonist living out of Oklahoma whose influences tend towards the pulpy and self-indulgent. Also they like drawing tropical plants a whole lot.
Cori was published in Power & Magic Press’ Heartwood: Non-binary Tales of Sylvan Fantasy comics anthology, Everything is Going Wrong! Comics on Punk & Mental Illness anthology, Recondite Hill: Things to See horror comics anthology, and Who is The Silhouette? superhero comics anthology. They’ve also had a zine published through the Wiggle Bird Mailing Club. In addition to these, they’ve written and drawn the webcomic Spectra and are currently working on the webcomic Hole, updating Mondays.
VAL K WISE
Val is a cartoonist, illustrator, and art director from the southeast U.S. She makes work about the body and what can come from it.
SLOANE LEONG
Sloane Leong is a cartoonist, illustrator, art director, narrative game designer, writer, and editor of mixed indigenous ancestry. She creates fantastically speculative narratives across mediums that pursue a hypersensory path to the convergence of the otherworldly and the visceral. Through a radical kaleidoscopic lens, he takes embodied private memory and obsession and sculpts it into speculative metaphysical worlds. Her work aims to debride collective myths with their own autolytic daydreams and pluralistic ecological collisions.
Besides doing art, comics, and writing fiction, she also works as a Narrative Game Designer at Wizards of the Coast. He is currently living on Chinook land near what is known as Portland, Oregon with their partner and three dogs.
KYLE TORNBY
Kyle Torneby is a cartoonist, graphic designer, and quilter from Seattle, currently residing in Oregon. His work focuses on horror, anticapitalism, the intersection of tradition and modernity, and being gay.
LEO GARCIA
Leo is a Mexican cartoonist, illustrator and animation artist with 7+ years of experience in storyboarding for animation. He writes stories about failure, gay romance, difficult emotions and the particularly strenuous parts of being alive, combined with a love for utopian sci-fi and complex, multi-faceted characters.
He is currently hard at work on his first long-form comic project.
NERO VILLAGALLOS O’REILLY
Nero is a Seattle-based indigenous Mexican cartoonist with 10+ years in the erotic comics scene. His adult and non-adult comic work has been published by Slipshine, Iron Circus Comics, Fortuna Media, The Nib, Real Change, and more.
