Frank Johnson, Secret Pioneer of American Comics Vol. 1

About the Author

Frank Johnson was born in Chicago on November 7, 1912. During the 1940s, he worked as a shipping clerk. Johnson married in 1968 after meeting his future wife, Kay, at the Paragon Ballroom on Lawrence Avenue. They lived on the North Side of Chicago until his death in 1979. Chris Byrne is the author of the graphic novel The Magician (Marquand Books, 2013), included in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Byrne is the owner and founder of the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton, NY, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He was the former chair of the American Visionary Art Museum. Keith Mayerson (b. 1966, Cincinnati, OH) has professionally exhibited his art in galleries and museums since 1993. His exhibitions are often installations of images that create larger narratives. His long running non-linear narrative "My American Dream" has been presented in separate exhibitions as "chapters" and the ongoing series continues through today and has recently been published as a 428 page "wordless novel" and monograph by Karma. His graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged, a collaboration with the writer Dennis Cooper, is well known among graphic artists and the queer community. A graphic-novel biography of James Dean is forthcoming, to be published by Fantagraphics.