Jason Thompson was born in
San Francisco, California, on October 13, 1974, and lived in
Healdsburg, California, for most of his childhood and adolescence. He first became an anime and manga fan in 1991, joining his college's
anime club Thompson created his own
webcomic,
The Stiff (2001 onwards), which he describes as a "manga-influenced romantic comedy" and "a horrendous, gruesome horror story", influenced by indie American comics and Japanese horror manga. It was planned to be 1000 pages long, and was published on
Girlamatic between 2003 and 2006 as one of their launch titles. As of 2007, Thompson wrote for
Otaku USA. Thompson is the author of
Manga: The Complete Guide (Del Rey, 2007), which he conceived in 2000. As an appendix to
Manga: The Complete Guide, he posted daily reviews of manga on Suvudu.com, beginning in November 2009 for a year. He made a
cameo appearance in
Hiro Mashima's
Fairy Tail. Thompson is the creator of the
graphic novel,
King of RPGs with Victor Hao, which he describes as a fusion between
shōnen manga and tabletop roleplaying games. It was released in January 2010. He had previously submitted a pilot of the series to
Tokyopop's
Rising Stars of Manga competition, but later decided to take the concept to Del Rey, who matched him with artist Victor Hao. and was also published in print in 2012 by Northwest Press. In November 2011, Thompson successfully raised money on
Kickstarter for a hardcover release of the graphic novel
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories, featuring his 122-page Kadath story (made from 1997 to 1999), as well as three other stories from the Dreamlands series:
The Strange High House in the Mist (a comic adaptation of the
eponymous story, made from June 2009 to January 2011 which he initially started to write about lesser-known manga that he discovered around his home. ==Bibliography==