Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) was the legendary cartoonist and creator of the iconic comic strip Peanuts . A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) are two of the most successful animated television specials of all time, winning multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards. His archives are located at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. Gene Kannenberg Jr. earned his PhD at the University of Connecticut with a dissertation on text and image in American comics. He is an occasional adjunct professor in art and art history at Columbia College in Chicago, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Comic Art.

Previously he was chair of the International Comic Arts Festival. Kannenberg has published numerous articles on comics art, including an essay in The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life . Kannenberg creates abstract comics with asemic text, some of which were exhibited at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. He lives in Evanston, Illinois, where he works at Northwestern University Libraries. Chip Kidd is a graphic designer and writer and editor at large for Pantheon. A three-time Eisner Award winner, he has written and designed more than a dozen books on comics, including Only What's Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts .