"If we can't get more John Rovnaks in this world, let's all support the John Rovnak we've got..."
-Stephen R. Bissette (www.srbissette.com)
Owned and operated by John P. Rovnak. Panel to Panel's history dates back to 1992 with the opening of a "brick & mortar" store called Comics Route in Manchester, VT. Devoted to the sales and promotion of small press comics publications, as well as the traditional mainstream, Comics Route gained a tremendous and positive reputation among the industry which allowed for its relationships with creators/publishers to grow.
This personal approach to retailing allowed for regularly scheduled creator signings and appearances, which culminated in the 1995 event A.C.E. (Alternative Comics Expo) the New England stop on Dave Sim's Spirits of Independence/Cerebus World Tour (which to this day is still talked about in many circles as being the most memorable stop on the tour).
Comics Route sadly closed it's doors in 1998, shortly before much of the comics industry folded in on itself after the speculator market busted, but remained a very small mail order/subscription operation in the years that followed.
In early 2006, the same business model which made Comics Route so popular in the 90's was brought to the world wide web in the form of Panel to Panel.Net. Offering friendly, helpful and personable service online, Panel to Panel fills a gap which has been left by many online retailers before them.
Our Mission To You: Panel to Panel is dedicated to providing the highest quality comic book retail experience, incorporating 15 years of great customer service, an expansive inventory and product knowledge. Panel to Panel is a charitable business looking to nurture the existing comics culture, while striving to generate and maintain interest from the literary, art and educational communities. Panel to Panel promises a focused and progressive outlook on the comics industry by offering publications and information both existing and exclusive to our store.
Contributing Artists and Writers
-Stephen R. Bissette worked a quarter-century in comics
as a cartoonist, writer, editor and publisher, winning
many industry awards. Best-known for Saga of the Swamp
Thing, Taboo, '1963,' Tyrant, and for co-creating the
character of John Constantine, his comics efforts
fueled many films, (CONSTANTINE, FROM HELL, TMNT II:
SECRET OF THE OOZE, etc.) and he completed the world's
second '24-Hour Comic,' invented by Scott McCloud as a
challenge for Bissette. He most recently created (with
his son Daniel) a comic integral to the narrative of
Lance Weiler's feature film HEAD TRAUMA (2006).
Bissette illustrated books (by Joe Citro, Neil Gaiman,
Joe Lansdale, Christopher Golden, Nancy Collins, etc.)
while forging a writing career in fiction (short
stories & the Stoker Award-winning novella Aliens:
Tribes) and non-fiction (co-authoring Comic Book
Rebels, The Monster Book: Buffy the Vampire Slayer;
writing articles/essays for many books and magazines
on cinema). He edits and writes Green Mountain Cinema,
a book series on Vermont films and filmmakers. He
worked with and/or lectured at Yale, Dartmouth
College, Duquesne University, Smith College, Marlboro
College, etc., and Middlebury College's Breadloaf
Young Writers Workshop. He currently teaches at the
Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Jct., VT,
and his papers reside in the Special Collections of
HUIE Library at Henderson State University in
Arkadelphia, Arkansas.
-Jean-Emmanuel Dubois is a pop journalist writing for: Roctober (US), Scram (US), Il Giaguaro (It), The Idler (UK), Nude (UK), Citizen K(France), Standard (France), Keyboard recordings (France), French magazine (France) & so on.... JED working on a book on bubblegum pop & sunshine pop for a french publisher + work on his own album (Beach Boys meets Kraftwerk) with lotsa friends and on his own label: Martyrs of Pop (records, magazine & DVD's) Visit: http://www.martyrsofpop.com
-James Kochalka is one of America's most prolific and influential indie cartoonists. His work always has a great depth of feeling, even at its silliest. Its warmth can thaw even the coldest hearts of the most cynical hipsters. He draws several hundred pages of comics a year and has more than ten published graphic novels, as well as had comics published in countless anthologies and magazines. His idiosyncratic work has begun to draw a strong following from around the globe, and has been translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and Portuguese. He has won several Ignatz awards, and has been nominated for several Eisner awards, Harvey awards, and the Firecracker Alternative Books award. He was born in 1967 and lives in Vermont with his wife Amy, his son Eli, and his cat Spandy, in a very old house called Cranky Manor.
-Jon Mathewson bought his first comic book, Walt Disney Movie Showcase #1 (featuring an adaptation of the movie "The Boatniks") in a general store in Bar Harbor, Maine in 1970. Soon after, he bought an issue of Tom & Jerry Comics, and tens of thousands after that. A widely published poet and historian, Jon manages the collections of a museum by day, and seeks out great comics by night. He is married with two children: a 6-year-old son who calls himself "the real Spiderman," and a 2.5 year old daughter who insists on being called "Superman." Jon thinks everyone should buy their comics through Panel to Panel.
-Mark Martin is an American cartoonist whose work is generally lighthearted humor and satire, illustrated in an energetic and elaborate style. His first major work in the 1980s was Gnatrat, a parody of Batman featuring a rat who dresses as a gnat to fight crime. He went on to work on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and created a long-running humor strip featured in Comics Buyer Guide, "20 Nude Dancers 20". As an editor, Martin created the anthology Hyena and briefly oversaw a humor section in Heavy Metal. He then moved toward working almost exclusively in children's comics, often for Nickelodeon's Nickelodeon Magazine, while producing other work for his Web site. His collaborations with long-time friend Jim Woodring include the children's series Tantalizing Stories, and several mini-comics featuring their characters Frank and Montgomery Wart. Martin is often mistaken for the race-car driver Mark Martin; this is a frequent subject of his comics in recent years.
-Eric Talbot is not one for bios. Simply stated, Eric Talbot has worked at Mirage Studios since the mid-1980's. Since then he has drawn, written, lettered, colored, and done just about everything that one can do to create a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic.
-Rick Veitch is a lifelong cartoonist who was an early contributor to Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal magazines. After collaborating with writer Alan Moore and inker Alfredo Alcala on the ground-breaking series Swamp Thing, Veitch both wrote and drew a long run on the title. He was also one of the founding artists on Moore's America's Best Comics line, co-creating Greyshirt for Tomorrow Stories. The character was later spun off into the graphic novel Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset.
Veitch's most recent graphic novel Can't Get No, garnered fulsome critical praise and was named by Publisher's Weekly as one of the best graphic novels of 2006.
Veitch is the co-founder , with Steve Conley, of the internet comic site Comicon.com. He lives in Vermont with his wife Cindy and their two sons, Kirby and Ezra.
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