History

Dara Naraghi has been running a features on his blog called Indie Cover Spotlight where he goes through his longboxes and pulls out the amazing, unlikely, and just plain forgotten indie comics of yore, say, like this cover of something called STAR RANGERS by Dave Dorman, a loving tribute to Fredric Wertham.

Well here's a new Kickstarter campaign for a comics memoir by former DC staffer Scott Young which promises some first-class lid ripping including the legendary comics scandal known as "Compgate":

Daniel Best is at it again, this time with the decades-spanning story of Joe Simons's stolen artwork and a subsequent investigation by the FBI:

As a lagniappe to the current "All Things Alan Moore" wiki currently going on in our comments, here's Pádraig Ó Méalóid with a little-remembered crossover between the Watchmen and the Question...that took place all the way back in THE QUESTION #17, June 1988. Think of it as "The Five Doctors" of this particular timeline.

My—hopefully—last post on Before Watchmen and Alan Moore and the role of the comics creators.

When you get a flyer for a $395 scholarly compendium on comics, you think it must be some kind of scam. Then you see it was edited by Bart H. Beaty and Stephen Weiner and you decide you want it badly.

Our feverish maunderings about old comics did draw one great link, from Jamie Coville, this interview with DJ Arneson, who was the editor for Dell after Western pulled its licenses and the company essentially started a comics company from scratch in 1962. It's a fascinating look at the business away from Marvel and DC. And it also provides a glimpse into a long ago Shangri-La before...approvals:

While looking for a comics cover for a sick alert, I realized that the heyday era of the doctor comic was definitely the early '60s. Licensed comics were such a big deal then, especially for Dell/Western. They licensed just about anything. The BEN CASEY and Dr. KILDARE comics were based on popular TV shows of the time. Dr. KILDARE lasted about 9 issues, BEN CASEY 10, although it did spin off into a comic strip which was written and drawn by Neal Adams.

Reporter Michael Dean's long, investigative reports are one of the things we most miss about the old print Comics Journal, but he's back with a look at MoCCA, both the festival and the museum:

To mark the first ten years of his stint as Executive Editor at DC, Dan DiDio ran down the top ten highlights of his years there on his Facebook page. It's an interesting list that tells you everything you need to know about the last decade in superhero comics publishing.

Lew Stringer debunks the idea that Beano and The Dandy invented the speech balloon with a look at some older comics., like this 1917 cover of Picture Fun No. 428, which uses word balloons AND the then-current wads and wads of text, as originated in The Yellow Kid.

George Tuska's version of ROADHOUSE.