Obituaries

Silver Age inking manstay Mike Esposito has passed away at the age of 83, according to numerous online sources. Esposito was best known for his collaboration with penciller Ross Andru on Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and hundreds of other books.

The Wildstorm blog has a series of tributes to colorists Jonny Rench who died over the weekend at the age of 28. Among those he worked with, Neil Goodge, Liam Sharp, Trevor Hairsine, and this from Gail SImone, whose Welcome to Tranquility series he colored:

Colorist Jonny Rench passed away this weekend of a heart attack at the insanely young age of 28, it was reported via Twitter. Rench was a Wildstorm mainstay and colored such books as The Authority, The Highwayman and many, many more. More of his art can be seen here.

The late John Callahan -- the paraplegic cartoonist who passed away last month -- is remembered with some excerpts from one of his cartoon collections.

Or at least that's what the poster says. Click for the full size version so you can see the single sinister spot of moisture on Yogi's nose—mucus? phlegm? or...something else???—and the light glinting off his vampire fangs. Brrrrrr. "Good things come in bears." How much did the people who sat around coming up with this slogan get paid?

It would have pleased Harvey Pekar, I think, that his passing yesterday was noted in every media outlet from the New Yorker to EW, and not just because they made a movie about him, but as a literary figure of worth and stature. Harvey's life's work was in showing that the ordinary was important, and a working class existence was not a prison but a journey through the profound and beautiful that anyone could experience if they took the time. He found that beauty in simple, quotidian things and experiences that others might have found trivial or mundane, but in the end his message was that what else is there? Life as it is lived is the most precious gift of all.

The Cleveland Plains Dealer is reporting that underground comics legend Harvey Pekar died last night. Pekar's wife, Joyce Brabner found him dead at about 1 am. Pekar had battled lymphoma previously, as chronicled in Our Cancer Year, but the cause of death is awaiting an autopsy. Pekar was best known as author of American Splendor, an autobiographical comic that adapted Pekar's lowly life as a filing clerk at the Cleveland VA into a journey of humor, drama and insight as memorable as any fictional hero, hiring artist friends such as R. Crumb, Gary Dumm, Frank Stack and others to illustrate his stories. American Splendor was an early self-publishing success story of sorts -- while its acclaim gained Pekar enough notoriety for him to become a semi-regular on the David Letterman Show (until erratic on-air behavior got him banned) he still had to work at the VA to rely on getting a pension and continuing to make a living -- indie comics was not a cash cow.

Although there has been no official confirmation, close family friends have reported that EC artist Al WIlliamson has passed away. The youngest of the EC artists, Williamson joined the legendary crew at the age of 20, finding kindred spirits in

Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres

, the group known as the "Fleagle Gang." All shared a love of classic illustration -- influenced by Alex Raymond and Hal Foster -- which found expression in a lush, romantic style based in classical drawing.

Linda Gold, wife of longtime industry figure Mike Gold and mother of Adriane Nash died yesterday morning of a heart attack., as reported by Glenn Hauman. Gold was a familiar figure at shows and a frequent message board commenter and her loss is felt in many places today.

Okay we're wrapping up our Beat Giveaway Frenzy with a special THREE BOOK DEAL. First up:SPECIAL FORCES by Kyle Baker, a dark parody of...

On Monday Mark Evanier reported the death of cartooning vet Howard Post. Post had worked as a writer and artist on just about every...

In regard to embodying his own dynamic artistic sensibilities, perhaps the only pop culture artist who could give Frank Frazetta a run for his money was Jack Kirby. These two poets of force and motion so intuitively understood the fantasies they were drawing that each established the style that would forever define their respective genres: the superhero in action for Kirby, the barbarian in action for Frazetta.