News

Just a quick note -- DC sales figures for August are, as you have seen, VERY late this month due to actual work for Marc-Oliver. He assures me he IS working on it, however, and we're hoping to have it finished imminently. Thank you for your patience.

A big birthday shout out to the Beat's own sainted mother, who is celebrating a special birthday today. My mother's art and cartooning and continuing interest in everything from MMORPGs to webcomics has always been an inspiration to me, and it's probably a huge reason why I've ever reached toward success in any endeavor. Thank you, Suzu.

One of The New Yorker's most iconic cartoonists, Leo Cullum has passed away at age 68. The NY Times obituary has an associated slide show, and proves that some New Yorker cartoons will actually make you laugh out loud.

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.

In Portland, OR and Flemington, NJ.. Celebrate the season and please give to help stop domestic violence.

As you may recall, I lost my camera at this year's SPX. Soon after, Jen Vaughn, bless her heart, started a fund raising drive to buy me a new camera, and -- mostly I'm sure because of Jen's enthusiasm -- folks had donated about enough for a more than decent digital camera.

Over at iFanboy, Josh Flanagan continues this week's succession of toilet metaphors for the monthly sales figures with "Q3 Comic Book Sales Are in the Crapper". We don't agree with Flanagan's overall distress -- there is no need to "cross fingers" that comics will get through this rough patch. Let's get one things straight in all this mishegoss: comics will continue on in some format either like or unlike the one we have today. Period. People have been proclaiming the death of comics for over 50 years and something new always comes along. The particular aspect of the present day comics industry that you or I are involved with may not make the jump but something else will. Them's the breaks.

That aside, the article is interesting for the comments section, which doesn't go for the knee-jerk complaint that big events are killing comics.

There seems to have been a recent rash of comics show crimes, what with a daring theft at NYCC. Alvin Buenaventura reports that two copies of the rare and valuable KRAMERS ERGOT were stolen from his booth at APE. Let's call this one a brazen heist.

Anyone setting eyes on the Library of America's gorgeous new Lynd Ward boxed set will immediately add it to the Christmas wish list. (It's the first time a graphic novel has been added to the list on classic works.) But the pioneering graphic novelist is getting a new honor -- Penn State is naming an award after him, The Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize (also the Lynd Ward Prize for the Best Graphic Novel of the Year). Ward's daughters donated a collection of his wood engravings, original book illustrations, and other graphic art donated to the Penn State University Libraries, establishing an association. The prize of $2500 will be announced each spring and be presented to the best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, published in the previous calendar year in the United States by a living American citizen or resident.

With her How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less soon to come out (and getting solid advance reviews) cartoonist Sarah Glidden is embarking on another journey to the Middle East, with hopes of turning it into another non-fiction comic. And she's funding part of the travel via Kickstarter with a project called "Stumbling Towards Damascus". For the project, she'll be working with the Common Language Project, a Seattle-based group of journalists who travel to under-reported on areas. For this trip they'll be journeying to places affected by the Iraq war, including Syria, Turkey and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Glidden's larger hope is to follow in the tradition established by Joe Sacco, whose "comics journalism" in the Middle East has won multiple awards.

Cuyahoga country coroner Frank Miller has issued a report on Harvey Pekar's July 12th death and ruled it was from natural causes, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. However the cause of death was given as an accidental overdose of fluoxetine and bupropion (commonly sold as Prozac and Wellbutrin.) Pekar suffered from high blood pressure, asthma and clinical depression, and was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.

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: