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SGMS 2009 Speakers and Guests

C.B. Cebulski is just a guy lucky enough to be working in comics. After a decade of editing in the Japanese, European and American comic book markets, Cebulski is now finally discovering what life on the other side of the desk is like as a freelance writer. He can't complain so far as he's written for Marvel on such titles as the X-Infernus, Wolverine and the critically-acclaimed Loners series. On the creator-owned front, Cebulski publishes the vampire tale Drain and Wonderlost, his lauded autobiographical anthology, through Image Comics. He also serves as Marvel Comics' international talent scout, always on the hunt for the best and brightest new artists around the world. When not traveling or creating comics, C.B. spends his time trying to beat the world record on Dig Dug. No wonder he sucks at meeting his deadlines.

Crispin Freeman is a prolific voice actor who has been portraying characters in animation and video games for 10 years. He's played such famous roles in anime as Alucard in Hellsing, Prince Turnip in Howl's Moving Castle, Togusa in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Rude in Final Fantasy: Advent Children. He's currently portraying Itachi in Naruto and Hagi in Blood+ for Cartoon Network. He's also directed and starred in the anime shows Scrapped Princess, Strawberry Eggs and Space Travellers. He's adapted scripts for Pokemon, Night on the Galactic Railroad, Boogiepop Phantom, His and Her Circumstances and Witch Hunter Robin. In video games he's voiced such characters as Superman for Justice League: Heroes, Winter Soldier and Dark Colossus in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Albedo in the Xenosaga Trilogy. He also does voice matching for video games and provides the voice for Orlando Bloom's Will Turner for all of the Pirates of the Caribbean video games as well as Kingdom Hearts II where he also played the voice of Setzer. In domestic animation he's worked on Disney's W.I.T.C.H series playing the characters Sylla and Mr. Riddle. He also played Electro in the new Spiderman series for Warner Brothers. He's very happy to be back at Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits!

Marc Hairston has been an invited speaker at every Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits workshop because of the popularity of his presentations. A fan of animation and storytelling since childhood, Hairston is a professional space physics researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas investigating space weather phenomenon using satellite data. In this capacity, he has worked with NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the National Science Foundation. Hairston's undergraduate degree was in physics and English in an attempt to bridge the two disciplines, and it was his anime hobby that finally allowed him to get back to his interests in the humanities. In 1999, he and Pamela Gossin co-taught the first mainstream literature course at a U.S. college that included anime and manga as part of its required texts. He has written numerous articles for Animerica magazine and has also given talks about anime at conferences sponsored by the Society for Literature and Science (now the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts) and the Popular Culture Association. His dream is to someday meet Hayao Miyazaki in person.

Megan Maude McHugh is the owner and designer for her clothing line, Megan Maude. She began as an Ebay seller, offering custom pieces, and later moved on to open the website Supert3ch.com, which served as a lolita and dollfie clothing shop and also featured her infamous Gloomy Bear hoodies. Drawing inspiration from Japanese lolita fashion, historic western designs and vintage illustrations, she began fleshing out her new line. In December 2007, she debuted a small collection at the New York Anime Festival for the TOKYOPOP Gothic & Lolita Bible Fashion Show to much success and went on to show again with TOKYOPOP on the main stage at the New York Comic Convention. In 2008, her line was featured in the American Gothic & Lolita Bible, published by TOKYOPOP, as well as in Gothic Beauty Magazine.

Dr. Susan Napier, the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Studies in the Department of Asian Studies in the College of Liberal Arts, first chanced upon manga a dozen years ago when a student showed her a Japanese comic book, or manga. Rather than the children's entertainment she expected, Napier found herself drawn into an intricate storyline and richly detailed art. Not too much later, Napier happened to be in London when the anime Akira was released there. Seeing this film led her to write a paper to present at a conference on Japanese popular culture, which in turn led to writing her third book, Anime: from Akira to Princess Mononoke (Palgrave Macmillan), a book that was published in 2001. The book is in its fourth edition and already has been translated into Japanese, and will soon be translated into Korean. [From An Anime Explosion by Robin Gerrow, The University of Texas at Austin website: http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2004/anime.html] In her work, Napier explores the cultural influence of anime and manga globally. She is graduate of Harvard University and was a researcher at Ochanomizu Women's University in Tokyo. In additional to teaching classes at Princeton and the University of London, she served as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. She is currently a Professor at Tufts University in Boston. Napier has written two books on Japanese literature, one focusing on Oe Kenzaburo and Mishima Yukio and the other on the history of Japanese fantasy literature. Her latest book, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West has just come out in recent months.

Samantha R. Sangster (working name Samantha Rei) has been designing and sewing clothing since she was 13 years old. With inspirations stemming from historical fashion, fairytales and Japanese youth fashion, she has created a line that fuses all of these things. She began her line and Web site, Blasphemina's Closet, in 2000, making one-of-a-kind pieces, custom projects, and high-end items. Samantha draws her inspiration from such young adult fiction as well as fairytale and children's stories. Her style has been influenced by her hero Alexander McQueen as well as designers Vivienne Westwood, H. Naoto, Colleen Atwood, Takuya Angel and Victorian Maiden. Samantha's line embodies sweetness and innocence. With modest hemlines and flattering colors, she wants women and girls to reclaim their femininity. With her menswear line, she wants men to feel like "well-dressed warriors". To date Samantha has been part of several fashions shows, has run the SGMS fashion show for three years and has won two awards. She has also been featured in Shojo Beat magazine, Minnesota Women's Press, Five For Magazine, Pacific Rim Magazine, RX magazine and has an upcoming interview in the Gothic and Lolita Bible.

Tomoko Taniguchi was born in Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan. She spent one year in Ann Arbor studying English and graduated from the English Institute program at the University of Michigan. After returning to Japan she entered a contest held by a monthly horror magazine that was looking for new cartoonists. She submitted a 40-page story and won first prize. It was her debut as a professional cartoonist. Her first shoujo story, An-pan-balance won the Silver Medal at the 4th Omacomi Manga School Contest and was published in the monthly magazine Omajinai Comics. An-pan-balance was later released in the manga Let's Stay Together Forever. The title story of that book was her second published story. She has had a total of nine tankoubans (Japanese graphic novels) published under the MB (My Birthday) Comics label in Japan, including Call Me Princess, Aquarium, and Princess Prince. Tomoko has been published in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the U.S.A. and Mexico. She also drew for Marvel Comics as the first shoujo manga artist as a special project for Valentine's Day. It was controversial because Marvel fans were not familiar with her very shoujo girlish style. However, many American Marvel fans loved it, and also Japanese Marvel fans were so pleased to see Japanese shoujo manga with Marvel. She and Matt Forbeck have helped write some of the books in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Drawing Manga Illustrated series, especially the Shoujo edition which includes her illustrations.

Also appearing:
Verssen Werks--the devilish duo do AMV!