SMOKE SIGNAL 44

Gary Panter is an American cartoonist, illustrator, painter, designer and part-time musician. Panter's work is representative of the post-underground, new wave comics movement that began with the end of Arcade: The Comics Revue and the initiation of RAW, one of the main instigators of American alternative comics. The Comics Journal has called Panter the "Greatest Living Cartoonist".

Smoke Signal is an Eisner-nominated comics tabloid published by Desert Island in Brooklyn. For the first ten years, Smoke Signal was a submission-based anthology with multiple artists in each issue, edited by Gabe Fowler with occasional guest editors. Starting with issue thirty in 2018, Smoke Signal has shifted to a series of solo artist issues, which has changed the project significantly. The recent issues feel more like artists’ books in the form of a newspaper, and the featured artists receive an honorarium for their work.