History

Following the shock at his death, a well-justfied outpouring a remembrances of Dwayne McDuffie flowed out yesterday. A few words kept appearing over and over: respect and honesty. In a business where pettiness and jealousy are motivations far more than we'd like to admit, McDuffie seemed to rise above all that.

The history of pop art in one lesson.

As tweeted by Dave Gibbons, Pat Curley recounts the very beginnings of comics fandom -- a historic confluence of Julius Schwartz, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas -- and shows that even then the feedback loops of fandom and editorial were closely aligned:

Hard to believe it's been a decade since this, one of the very earliest of internerd memes. Someone set us up the bomb. Then this was piquant and fresh. Now it's Tosh.0. Luckily the internet is being used for more useful things, like toppling dictators. UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, the original flash was made by BadCRC of Tribalwar.com.

Joanne Siegel, the widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and inspiration for the Lois Lane character, passed away today at age 93. Her death comes only a few days after Jerry Siegel's childhood home in Cleveland, OH was restored and the streets in front of it honorarily renamed Joe Shuster Lane and Lois Lane.

Talk about informed, could you have a better guide to the history of comics logos than the lettering master himself, Todd Klein? His research into the history of comics is as extensive as it is informed:

TwoMorrows has been publishing its series of artists spotlights, Modern Masters, for some time, and they're up to volume #25 and Jeff Smith by...

Even our congressmen are getting bitten by the graphic novel bug, as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is signed with Top Shelf to co-write...

David Brothers is blogging Black History Month, spotlighting great cartoonists George Herriman and Jackie Ormes, thus far.

Tarpé Mills is a name well known to comics historians, not only as one of the best of the female cartoonists of the war years, but as the creator and artist of Miss Fury, one of the first successful superheroine characters, which ran for nearly a decade as a sunday newspaper strip. It was a lively blend of outre characters, adventure and naughtiness. This April Dean Mullaney's Library of American Comics is reprinting the best of the strips in a deluxe volume complete with an introduction by comics historian Trina Robbins. Mullaney provided a desception of the volume and this preview for our Anniversary week:

While we're spotlighting creators issues and outlooks here at Anniversary Week at The Beat, here's an oldie but a goodie: The (Sad) Saga of Black Lightning’s Creation by Daniel Best which presents documents and drawings from writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor von Eeden, the team known to have created Black Lightning's first appearance. There's some dispute over how the two should be credited -- Isabella claims sole creative credit due to having come up with the character all on his own and described the costume and so on -- but von Eeden has drawings but...we'll we won't get into that here. von Eeden doesn't want the creator's credit--or the royalties that come with it -- but has his own opinions. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. As is well known, Isabella had the foresight to keep a piece of the character he had created independently of DC editorial -- a move he thinks backfired…

A couple of interviews out now clarify controversial comics news stories of the past and more recent past; both are a reminder that what you read on CBR or Newsarama is rarely the whole truth -- and that's it's not always our business to know the whole truth.