COSMIC TIMES

Martin Pierro began his entertainment career at the age of 12 by publishing a comic fanzine titled "Metropolis Times" (later renamed "Cosmic Times").  During the following years he never lost his love for comics, yet he studied and worked in other areas of the entertainment industry such as live theater, video, music, television, and film.  Recently he has returned to this first love, bringing his vast knowledge of the entertainment industry to his current work in the field of comic book production.

He has stated "Cosmic Times is a homecoming for me.  I feel like someone has pressed reset on my life."

Beyond his duties as publisher/editor Martin also created and wrote Cosmic Times' flagship series Arthur: The Legend Continues as well as the critically successful first two issues of Decisions. Currently he is co-writing the third installment of Decisions with Zach Bassett with whom he collaborated with for the scripting of From Blood issue 2. He is also the driving force behind PalmCon: The Palm Beach County Comic Book and Collectibles Show - the third installment will take place September 21st 2013. More information about PalmCon can be found - HERE.

Martin lives in southern Florida where Cosmic Times is currently based.  He is married to his wife Bethany and he has two children, Alexander and Madison.  He attended the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale where he won his first major award for two short films "Getting Rich" and "Getting Rich II: Getting Even".  He plans on guiding Cosmic Times into becoming a major production company in the independent comic book market.

Zach Bassett grew up in Colorado, drawing, writing, and reading comics with his friends. While in high school, he got his start doing graphic design and illustrations for local magazines, before earning his BFA, in the sequential art program, from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). There, he also landed his first published sequential art work, in their annual anthology. 

Since then, Zach has gotten married and started a family with his College sweetheart, taught Graphic Storytelling at the Community College or Aurora (CCA), held classes at his local libraries and done work (be it character design, penciling, writing, inking, coloring, and/or lettering) for companies such as: Arcana, Faber-Castell, Bluewater comics, Big Dog Ink, Creature Entertainment, 215 Ink, What the Flux media, Speakeasy comics, 12 o’clock comics, ICCW, Red Leaf comics, Shatterday comics, Facepalm studios, 803 studios, Knightshift studios, Viral Narrative and BAP gaming, among others. 

Zach often signs his work with the pseudonym XaqBazit and in 2013 became the Creative Director of Cosmic Times. You can see some of his work on Deviant Art or follow his process/read his thoughts on his candid blog - VitaminZ.

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Chris Faulkner is a young writer making his way into the world of comic books.

Since high school Chris has had an interest in writing and has kept his imagination sharp by daydreaming and writing for himself and his family. Now, after collecting comics for many years, he has made his move and has decided to test the waters and write on a professional basis. 

Aside from his collaboration with Cosmic Times he has an upcoming story, entitled "The Gathering", in the anthology comic series "Unleashed" by Calkline Studios.

Chris is currently writing his creator owned mini-series "Souled" for Cosmic Times.

Nathan Hill has written comic book scripts for Terminus Media, Atlantis Studios, World Financial Group, Galactic Press, and now Cosmic Times. He lives, works, and reads too much in Atlanta, Georgia. Sleep, however, still remains something of a challenge.
Nate is affiliated with Cosmic Times through PaperLab Press.

Currently residing in Climax, GA, DJ Strong was born and raised in Blountstown, FL. He started writing in the early 2000's with his friend, Trixie River.

Shortly after graduating Blountstown High School, in the mid 2000's DJ wrote video game reviews for a Florida-based news paper, The Jackson County Floridan, but downsizing saw the cut of his column.

In the Summer of 2010, DJ wrote an entry titled "Letter to an Imaginary Friend", which is first in a series of short stories on DeviantArt.com that he and Trixie wrote, collectively called "The Boy Who Did Not Exist and His Imaginary Friend".

Shortly after "Letter" was released, production began on DJ's first venture into comics, "What I.F.", (art by Jeramy Hobbs) based on that first entry.

Collecting comics since the mid 90's, and being a self-professed 'comic nerd', DJ hopes to continue writing comics beyond "What I.F." in the future.

Connie Voss graduated from Iowa State University with a major in Mathematics and a minor in English.  She has always had a love of literature, but did not have exposure to comic books until recently.  When asked to edit some of Martin’s projects, she took this on with much enthusiasm and discovered a new love of comics.

Connie lives in southern Florida and works by day in the computer industry.  She plans on continuing to use her talents to assist Cosmic Times as it grows into a major production company.

Jeramy classifies himself as a Florida native, small town good ole boy.
Growing up it was hard to find comics in his town so he ended up reading more issues of wizard than comics. The first comics he ever read came in the form of a boxed pack of the Death and Return of Superman issues. Jeramy credits Jame's O Barr's The Crow with changing his life. He still has the copy he bought when he was 15.  

Just like publisher Martin Pierro (though many years later) Jeramy went to college at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and his BS in illustration and animation. At the time animation was the closest thing he could find to comic art at that school. There he met the love of his life Cyndi Foster, who is also an artist and animator.

Together Jeramy and Cyndi have been doing various freelance works for several years. They are currently working on an all ages web comic called oops at oopscomicadventure.com. Jeramy’s first published work was the comic series TRASH (for What the Flux Comics).

Jeramy mostly likes to focus on the realism and slice of life aspect of comics, but is not apposed to fantastical elements. He really loves to focus on characters, and tries to make them seem real as if you could run into them in a store or on the street. “I think a lot about the characters before and after the story as well, what books do they have on their shelves or what movies do they like. Those thoughts are present when I draw them.” He lists Strangers in Paradise as his favorite book ever sighting Terry Moore as his biggest influence.

Jeramy currently lives in Orlando with his wife and three “stupid” cats.

Mervyn Mckoy is a commercial artist for Paper Lab Studios, and has a bachelor’s degree in Media Arts and Animation. He’s skilled in both 3D and 2D animation, and his work in the field includes building, rendering, game concept design, and asset creation. Whether it’s a character sheet or a t-shirt, Mervyn is always up for the challenge.

In their coverage of the 2012 Florida SuperCon Johnny Tie Studios mentioned Mervyn Mckoy and his book Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew comparing his talent and style to that of Frank Quietly. Click HERE to read the entire FSC article.

Lucid Element Entertainment's Ron Kerronian also caught up with Mervyn at Florida SuperCon to talk about Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew, click - HERE to read the article and watch the video.

At the 2012 Baltimore Comic Con Marvin sat on a panel about Kickstarter explaining the trails and tribulations that lead to Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew, Surfer Forever recoded the whole thing and shared it on the What Are You Reading Comic Book Show. Click HERE to hear the panel or use the players below.

Mervyn is affiliated with Cosmic Times through PaperLab Press.

Cristhian "Crizam" Zamora was born in Montevideo, the capital city of the small and beautiful South American country Uruguay. He currently lives in Carmelo, Uruguay with his wife Betty.

He started to develop his craft at an early age, drawing sketch's of the images he saw in comic books. He refers to those comics as "the most perfect artwork that I had in front of me at that age". Through the years his work has taken him in may different directions. He has worked in oils, acrylics and various other forms of artistic expression, but in the last few years he has returned to his first love of comic book art.

Crizam likes high quality comic books, classical music, chess and has found his spiritual way in Gnosticism.

Beyond his work with Cosmic Times, Cristhian has worked on a project titled "Waiting" for Chris Yeoman and is currently working with Black Snake Studios on their new series RIP.

James Whynot attended the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where he studied Sequential Art and Illustration. He got his start in the art world in high school by making flyers and merchandise for Metal bands in the South Florida area.

After high school he decided to pursue his dream of being a comic artist and writer. Since he loved reading comics as child and still today. In college James was torn between being a penciller or an inker. After being noticed by DC comics for his inking talent, he now concentrates his time to mostly inking. Now James has returned to South Florida where he lives with his cat Byshoo and does work for various comic companies.

His major influences as an artist have been Norman Rockwell, Jim Davis, John Byrne, and Todd McFarlane (who drew the previously mentioned HULK issue). His favorite writers include Peter David and Stephen King. Much of his work has been doing freelance art locally and on the internet, and designing logos for area businesses. He has self-published a few comics on his own and illustrated a few children’s books. Instead of the industry standard of Mountain Dew Ken mostly runs on Mello Yello.

He is a huge fan of Science Fiction, ‘80’s movies, and R&B music and has settled back home in Bay City with his wife, Nola; daughter, Emily Charlotte; shoes, Converse Hi-tops; and a cat named Bartleby

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Dawnson is affiliated with Cosmic Times through PaperLab Press.

Kevin "ZiG" Zeigler was born in a small little town of Columbus, IN in the middle of WWIII. Jumping straight out of his mother's womb, he began to draw pretty pictures and started perfecting his craft of storytelling. He doodled his way out of high school and fought pirates as a space cowboy on Venus. Fresh off the presses from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) he earned a BFA in Sequential Art and just entered the world of freelance comic book artists. He currently resides in Savannah, GA living as a one man jug band. He lives alone with his mustache and four roommates.

Robin Bassett, grew up in New York, where she trained to become a Graphic Designer, but after graduating high school she went on to pursue a Painting degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). It was at SCAD that she met comic book artist (and now husband) Zach, before moving to Texas to earn a Le Cordon Bleu certificate in Pattiserie and Baking from the Texas Culinary Academy (TCA).

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Born and raised in South Florida, Jeff Dekal spends much of his life producing illustrations bordering urban and uncanny. The introduction to graffiti while he was in high school gave the first serious meaning to Jeff’s art and is also where he adopted his alias, Dekal. After being educated about art history, he was inspired to stray from the characters and letters of graffiti and focus more on figurative art. Jeff’s figures can sometimes exist in an untouchable state because that status is nonexistent in this world. We are vulnerable in many ways and can be touched at any moment. Since Jeff has the ultimate control of his art though, he would rather see his figures in a timeless state as opposed to a mundane everyday type of situation.

Jeff is an accomplished artist and has done work for the Miami based comic company Creature Entertainment. Recently he was picked up by Marvel Comics and has started doing covers for Journey into Mystery.

“My artistic vision comes from the people I have encountered as well the experiences I have come across, not my college education. My four years attending the Ringling School of Art & Design were not spent studying the masters of illustration or practicing the techniques the instructors had given me. My four years in college were mostly spent recovering from a four year depression while trying to learn to love, appreciate and communicate with people.

I had found peace in my passion through philosophy, traveling abroad to several countries and understanding life and culture with an open mind as well as an open ear. Then I began to realize art is something that comes from the heart and mind, the hand to execute is just the vessel the technicality is just a vessel and being talented is just a vessel, these things mean absolutely nothing. Sadly those are the only lessons school could offer me, useless information about technical prowess that every art school in the nation is feeding thousands of students. True art and passion is about the idea, you can't teach someone to have heart.

I began to feel more comfort about being an outcast for my different ways of thinking, and working as well as the goals and dreams I wanted to achieve. At the very end of my senior year of college I left school and have no intention of returning to finish. Its my way of making a statement by saying: "What's more important, robotic humans earning pieces of paper that cost thousands of dollars to obtain after fours years of conveyor belt education that does NOT guarantee anything? Or, self actualization through nomadic intellectual curiosity?". The worst thing anyone can do is to give up on a dream that was previously started, and I can tell you right now I will not stop.”

Classically trained, Daniel Mann uses both illustration and traditional techniques to achieve images that border surrealism. He primarily uses oil paintings for extensive projects and covers, but is also fluent in watercolors, charcoal, ink and pencil drawing.

He is currently working for Kid Domino on titles such as “Two Worlds”, and “Dire Destiny”. Some of his clients include Cosmic Times and Post Mortem Studios. You can currently buy prints of his work as well as commission artwork from the Kid Domino website.

Atula Siriwardane is a Sri Lankan comic book artist with experiences in Painting and Advertising. While still in high school as a science student he was published in Sri Lanka. For the last 5 years he has been a full time comic book artist working as a penciler, inker and an occasional colorist. He likes to work in different genres and styles while his favorite genre is Sword and Sorcery/Fantasy.

Atula has worked on many comic projects for several companies while working with Cosmic Times including "Brawn", "Prophets of the Ghost Ants", "Taryn" from VaVaVaVoom! - Issue 2 as well as "The Lonely - Graphic Novel".

Larry E. Watts lives in sunny Florida with his wife Sarah and their young son Lew. Larry began his artistic career in 1996, initially focused on advertising and apparel design. His design and illustration work has won several ADDY awards and has been featured in campaigns for clients such as Anheiser-Busch, Phillip Morris, Genet Records, E-One, & Victor DeSouza.

Although Larry considers himself a "newcomer" to the comic book field, his work has been featured on many indie-projects. Larry's published works include projects done for Alterna Comics, Insomnia Publications, KnightShift Entertainment, Top Shelf 2.0. and IDW Most recently Larry has been working on Zenescope’s Robyn Hood.

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