Romics 25th edition 4 to 7 April 2019
Born in Tasmania, Hanselmann now lives in Seattle in the United States. He has been recounting and illustrating comic book stories since he was a child. His beginnings as a comic book artist were on his Tumblr page “Girl Mountain”, where he started posting the comic strip adventures of Megg the witch and her friends, finding growing success with the public and being discovered by Fantagraphics, king of the independent US publishers, who collated his web stories in several anthologies. In Italy, two of these were released, Megahex and Special K, published by Coconino Press-Fandango. They were both New York Times bestsellers and were followed in the United States by Worst Behaviour and One More Year. The protagonists of his stories are Megg the witch, Mogg the talking cat, their friend Gufo and Werewolf Jones, a group of loser, confused and inconsiderate characters who struggle unsuccessfully with depression, drug use, a complicated sex life, poverty, lack of ambition and their complex relations with each other. Translated into 13 languages and loved by both critics and the public alike, the author was nominated three times for the Ignatz Award and twice for the Eisner (2017), the prestigious award dedicated to the American Will Eisner, one of the most important comic book artists of all time. His work has received the approval of true masters of underground counterculture such as Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes. A pop character with a strong personality, Hanselmann loves to dress up as a woman and says he is “happy despite some panic attacks, and always confused about his sexual identity”.