History

Okay he was only the head of Marvel for six months during Ron Perelman's murky march to bankruptcy—in fact he was the guy in charge when Marvel filed—but former Marvel CEO Scott Sassa has been canned from his current gig at Hearst after steamy texts from a Las Vegas stripper showed up somewhere they shouldn't.

Cartoonist Nate Powell (left) along with Rep. John Lewis and writer Andrew Aydin—all collaborators on the upcoming graphic novel March—walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma AL, March 2013, where in 1965 600 marchers protesting for civil rights, among them Lewis, were tear gassed and beaten with clubs by police.

Via Sean Howe's invaluable Marvel tumblr, this photo of future Marvel editor in chief Jim Shooter at age 14. At that age he sent a spec script to DC editor Mort Weisinger and was hired to write the Legion of Superheroes at that age. While the world of superhero comics was not quite as harsh as it is now...it was still probably no place for a boy, as Howe writes in MARVEL: THE UNTOLD STORY:

Well here's a must do: a chance to see Carol Tilley, the heroic professor who proved Dr. Fredric Wertham was a fraud, in person with Paul Levitz, David Hajdu, Craig Yoe, Sharon Packer and Danny Fingeroth at a talk celebrating Wertham's 118th birthday on March 20th. I

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Blog has a nice post onJackie Ormes, creator of Torchy and the first African-American woman cartoonist of note. And she did get note in her day:

As Dave Sim noted the other day, Wendy and Richard Pini, creators of Elfquest, the pioneering indie comics fantasy, held on to all of their artwork. And now they are bequeathing it to Columbia University's archives. The PR below explains all you need to know, but we should note that Columbia's tireless librarian and comics-scholar Karen Green has been busy indeed.

Poisoned Chalice Part 3: Marvelman Falls The actual work on the Marvelman titles was done by various artists, and Mick Anglo goes into quite a bit...

The other day we were joking about 80s comics weirdos/iconoclasts/content creators like Bob Burden and Steve Lafler -- post-underground cartoonists who turned out sizable, notable bodies of work that appeared mostly in serial form, mostly based around very strong characters. It's a format that has all but vanished. But here's another near legendary practitioner of the same, Canadian legend David Boswell, creator of Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman. Boswell has just put all of Fleming's adventures online in a pay-what-you-wish format, which most people will take to be free, but be a good sport and drop a few bucks, won't you?

Throughout the month of February, the Ohio Art League is showcasing a comic art exhibition curated by Ken Eppstein, creator, publisher and chief muckity-muck of Nix Comics, a local comic book publisher. Not only has Eppstein put together a delightful display showing the process in which a comic has made, he’s also arranged for three presentations about the past, present and future of comics in Columbus.

A must read and a must-read for masochists top our linkage today, both returning to topics that were much on the minds of anyone in comics about 30 years ago — oldies but goodies. First and most importantly, library professor Carol Tilley has been going through Dr. Fredric Wertham's notes and found out that he was, to use a technical term, full of hooey.

Superman, co-created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, first appeared in Action Comics #1 in June 1938, published by Detective Comics Inc, a fore-runner of National Periodical Publications and DC Comics. Virtually overnight it became a huge seller, and is running to this day, with uninterrupted publication for well over seventy years. A vast amount has been written over the years on the history of Superman, and by people substantially more qualified than I, but one claim, that Superman was based on the character of Hugo Danner, from Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1930), has some relevance to the larger story of Marvelman and, although I decided that it might be too far back to start this series of articles, if you’re interested in reading what I have to say about it, you should go read this article, and then meet us back here.

If you read only one think piece on comics by a great cartoonist today, you should read The Literaries by Eddie Campbell. The piece spins off of the current discussion on the place of EC comics which I mentioned the other day. Campbell's response is specifically to Ng Suat Tong's declaration that EC comics were mostly well-drawn pulp.