Joe Zabel is a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 artist living in Cleveland Heights. He is best known for his work illustrating American Splendor

American Splendor

American Splendor is a series of autobiographical comic books written by the late Harvey Pekar and drawn by a variety of artists. The first issue was published in 1976 and the most recent in September 2008, with publication occurring at irregular intervals...

, by fellow Clevelander Harvey Pekar

Harvey Pekar

Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.Pekar described American Splendor as "an...

. Under the company names Known Associates Press and Amazing Montage Press, Zabel has also published his own series of mystery comics, The Trespassers.

Zabel broke into comics in 1977, helping to draw a promo ad in an issue of Power Comics' Cobalt Blue. He began illustrating for American Splendor in 1985, usually inked by Gary Dumm

Gary Dumm

Gary Dumm is an Ohio-based comic book artist known particularly for his work illustrating the comics of Harvey Pekar. From 1977 until Pekar's 2010 death, he worked on Pekar's autobiographical comic series, American Splendor, where he appeared alongside such notable comics artists as Robert Crumb,...

, and was a regular contributor to Pekar's comics until 1997, illustrating many covers along the way. Zabel also had his work published in anthologies like Duplex Planet Illustrated, Negative Burn

Negative Burn

Negative Burn is a black-and-white anthology comic book published beginning in 1993 by Caliber Press, and subsequently by Image Comics and Desperado Publishing...

, and Real Stuff.

Beginning in the 2000s, Zabel turned away from printed comics and begun making online digital comic strips. Zabel's Fear Mongers horror webcomics

Horror comics

Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. Horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the imposition of the self-censorship Comics Code Authority contributed to...

 was used, along with Penny Arcade

Penny Arcade (webcomic)

Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic...

, Fetus-X and American Elf

American Elf

American Elf is an online comic strip diary created by award-winning cartoonist James Kochalka.Many critics consider these strips to be Kochalka's most significant work. American Elf has won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic Series and Outstanding Online Comic.-Style:Each strip usually...

, as an example of using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and theorist on comics as a distinct literary and artistic medium...

's 2006 book Making Comics.

Zabel is also a comics reviewer, having been published in such venues as The Comics Journal

The Comics Journal

The Comics Journal, often abbreviated TCJ, is an American magazine of news and criticism pertaining to comic books, comic strips and graphic novels...

, Subliminal Tattoos, Indy magazine, and iComics.com. He is the editor-in-chief of The Webcomics Examiner, an online magazine of webcomics reviews and interviews.

External links

• The Webcomics Examiner
• Joe Zabel interview, ComixTALK (Jan. 2006)