Our 2025 Darkness Artist is…(drum roll please)…John Bivins! An award-winning visual storyteller, John is a native of the Quad Cities area who now calls the Twin Cities home. John makes comics and teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Dakota County Technical College.

John has literally been an artist his whole life (“I was just a kid who never stopped drawing”) with an abiding love for schlocky ‘80s horror movies. In other words, he gets the whole Darkness aesthetic.

You can find more of his work on Instagram or Bluesky, buy it from his webstore, or congratulate him in person the next time he’s at Grumpy’s NE.