Joe Wos won't be designing the maze of booths that will make up Steel City Con in Monroeville next month, but he surely could have.

The 46-year-old Penn Hills cartoonist features mazes in a lot of his work — including hand-drawing one that was 140-square-feet with more than 100 illustrations in 2012. His work will be on display as one of the featured artists when the Steel City Con comic book convention opens April 7.

Joining him at the Monroeville Convention Center will be hundreds of celebrity guests and comic book artists — folks he calls his “heroes.”

“It's an absolute thrill, especially to get that kind of recognition in your hometown,” Wos said. “When you're at these comic cons, you've got a fan base you get to meet. It's equally a thrill because I'm a fan. These are my heroes. These are the people I grew up loving and viewing as inspiration. It's just a great honor to be included among them as a guest.”

Wos is the founder and former executive director of ToonSeum, Pittsburgh's museum of comic and cartoon art, and has been a visiting resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., the past 13 years.

But don't try to pigeonhole him just as a guy who draws cartoons. Here's how he describes himself on his website: “Cartoonist, illustrator, writer, author, performance artist, graphic facilitator, storyteller, keynote speaker, consultant, pop culture historian, master maze maker, actor, curator and a whole bunch of other stuff.”

Wos is a regular contributor of stories and opinion pieces to the Tribune-Review and other newspapers. He wrote and illustrated a book, titled “The Three Little Pigsburgers — As Told in Pittsburghese” and this year will release a children's book, “A-Maze-Ing Animals: 50 Mazes for Kids.”

“He's really creative. He's an awesome storyteller. Joe's a very unique person,” said Alexa Loveridge, who worked as Wos' assistant for two years at ToonSeum. “His passion has always been mazes. I think it's cool that he's being recognized for his passion.”

Wos grew up in Braddock and has been drawing for as long as he can remember.

“My parents caught me drawing on the walls with a crayon when I was 4 years old,” Wos said. “They didn't yell. They didn't scream. They just put paper up on the walls and said, ‘Go ahead.' I never looked back and have been drawing ever since.”

Wos said he loved the comic strip “Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz so much when he was young that he set his sights on becoming like the famed cartoonist. His first professional gig was drawing caricatures at a church festival in Braddock at 14.

He said he likes the artistic freedom of his job — especially when performing live at an event such as Steel City Con.

“With cartoons, there's no wrong way to do it,” he said. “Anyone can look at a tree and draw that tree. Cartoonists create a new kind of tree. My approach to cartooning is to always try and do something that no one else is doing. It's easy to be the best when you're the only one who's doing it.”

Michael DiVittorio is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-871-2367 or mdivittorio@tribweb.com.

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---