History

Preliminary voting is in on this year's Eisner Award Hall of Fame and the judges have selected Mort Meskin and Spain Rodriguez for automatic inclusion.

In the tradition of advocacy cartooning through the ages, the NY-based political comics anthology World War 3 reminds us that the late Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, wasn't always a beloved avuncular figure. Contemporary cartoons from Eric Drooker, Steve Brodner and Tom Keough take on Kach's handling of the homeless, affordable housing and police brutality.

In case you missed last night's PBS documentary on Superheroes, you can watch it above—or at this link if the embed isn't working. The program includes Wizard World all-star festival of folks like Lou Ferrigno, Burt Ward, Adam West and Lynda Carter talking about playing superheroes. They are all veteran charmers, and when we have a spare 53 minutes, we plan on watching the whole thing. A supporting webpage has background and stills—such as the above one of Julie Newmar as Catwoman—and some extra videos.

Art comix publisher PictureBox has announced a new line: Ten Cent Manga, which will be curated by manga exert Ryan Holmberg (you can read some of his insightful manga writing at The Comics Journal.) We're told the line will include "famous titles by superstars, as well as single-artist volumes and anthologies of comics by forgotten geniuses."

Research for Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story has dug up a lot of long-forgotten dirt, but here's a particularly sad one:Marvel selling art by Romita, Sinott, Kane, Sal Buscema and more to a Winnipeg art gallery for $1000:

And oh how yore they are. Alan Light, founder of The Buyer's Guide/Comics Buyer's Guide is one of the most organized flickr users we've ever encountered and he has a couple of sets from the history of TBG/CBG that those reminiscing about the now cancelled publication might enjoy.

In a brief, statement, publisher F+W announced the closing of CBG, the Comics Buyer's Guide today. The magazine's 42 year run will end with issue #1699, one shy of the farewell #1700 that the collectors it appealed to would have liked. The cause of death was the usual suspects:

Via Midtown Comics, A recent letter from Steve Ditko. A recent letter from Steve Ditko to one of our customers. He asked Steve what he...

Quite a few remembrances of underground pioneer Spain Rodriguez, including this round-up of reactions from his peers at TCJ. Here's Gary Panter's imagined history: SPAIN...

I am very sad to report that an email has been sent by Ron Turner: It is with great sadness that I inform you of...

Via Millarworld -- in case you have been sleeping and missed Grant Morrison's thoughts on Alan Moore. We don't know the credits for this, but it's pretty awesome.

Johanna Draper Carlson finds a SF book from 24 years ago that predicted the kind of soul-stealing succubus that many fear wit a narrative involving a SF convention: