As Editor-in-Chief of BOOM! Studios, Matt Gagnon is head of creative at the publisher, overseeing the Editorial and Production/Design departments. Matt joined BOOM! Studios in 2008 and–aside from the company’s founder–is the longest serving employee of the company. Since his promotion from Managing Editor to Editor-in-Chief in 2010, the publishing house has grown exponentially and earned numerous Eisner Awards, Harvey Awards, GLAAD awards, and Diamond Best Publisher awards. BOOM!’s titles have also earned multiple New York Times Best Seller designations.
Throughout Matt’s tenure overseeing content creation at BOOM! the publisher has amassed the largest independently-controlled comic book and graphic novel library in the industry; in 2017 20th Century Fox invested in BOOM! as a strategic partnership to fuel the company’s generation of more original content.
Previous to BOOM!, Matt was the GM/Buyer of the legendary Meltdown Comics on Sunset Blvd when it was one of the nation’s preeminent comic book shops. In this role Matt was a local tastemaker during the comics-to-Film/TV boom of the early aughts, coordinated events for the likes of Disney and MTV, and raised money for the CBLDF by throwing “Y the Last Party,” the red carpet finale party for Y: The Last Man.
As a writer, Matt created the comic book series FREELANCERS and created the comic book series DAY MEN, which is currently in development for TV.
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. His latest 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 was crowdfunded through Kickstarter, surpassed its funding stretch goal of $30,000, and was published by 12 Gauge Comics.
