Comic bookstores going the way of regular bookstores?

"Will Amazon Do To Comic Shops What It Did To Book Stores?"

by

Lauren Davis

April 10th, 2014

io9

Big news today in the comics publishing world: Amazon has purchased Comixology, the largest retailer of digital comics. So what does that mean for your local comic book store?

Amazon is certainly already competing with brick and mortar comic book stores; they sell both physical comics (often with sizable discounts on trade paperbacks) and Kindle editions of comic books. But the Comixology purchase means that Amazon is looking to be the major player in digital comics distribution (especially when it comes to single issues of comics), and that digital comics may be seeing a much wider audience than they've enjoyed through Comixology and other platforms so far.

Comixology is already a significant concern for comics retailers. Some shops have opted to work with it, participating in the platform's storefront affiliate program, which enables retailers to sell digital comics from their brick and mortar stores. And, as publishers have increasingly made digital editions of their comics available the same day as the print comics, Comixology has seen growing financial success. Apple announced that the Comixology app for iPad and iPhone was the highest-grossing non-game app of 2013.

So what does Amazon's acquisition mean? For now, all Comixology CEO David Steinberger is just saying that Comixology will become an Amazon subsidiary and continue to operate as its own platform. But with Amazon behind Comixology, chances are that we'll be seeing digital comics getting into the hands of more and more people. Hopefully, that means more people reading comics overall—and more creators seeing their comics purchased and read even if they don't have a print distributor.

But as with prose books, not everyone is going to want to make the switch from paper to digital. Some people simply prefer the experience of reading on paper, and many folks collect single issues of comics—although it will be interesting to see if the latter changes with the rise of digital comics. And there's a social aspect to comic book stores that is distinct from what you see in a bookstore. The weekly ritual of going to the shop on Wednesdays to discuss the latest issue with your fellow readers won't be replicated by the mere availability of digital comics. Still, it will be interesting to see what Amazon plans to do in the digital comics space and how retailers feel about the purchase.

It will also be interesting if we see competitors in the digital comics space rise in the wake of this announcement. Comixology is the top digital comics platform; its major competitor, Graphicly, switched its focus to ebooks instead of digital comics alone. This purchase means that Amazon has essentially created a digital comics monopoly, but the field of comics is populated by creators who are incredibly sophisticated when it comes to the digital space. Many cartoonists have had immense success releasing their comics on PDF—often using Kickstarter as a preorder system—as well as through platforms like Comixology and Amazon. As Amazon moves more into the digital comics space, the reactions of those creators—whether they find Comixology/Amazon useful going forward—could have a major impact on the landscape.

"Amazon Buys Digital Comics Company ComiXology"

by

Graeme McMillan 

April 19th, 2014

Wired

Well, there goes the digital neighborhood. ComiXology, the leading digital comics platform responsible for the sale of more than 4 billion pages of comics in 2013 alone, has been purchased by Amazon.

The buyout (which is expected to close in the second fiscal quarter of 2014) had been rumored for weeks now—ComiXology’s eleventh-hour sponsorship deal with the recent Emerald City Comic-Con being seen as “proof” by many—but official confirmation came in the form of an open letter on ComiXology’s site this afternoon in which co-founder and CEO David Steinberger wrote that the sale makes ComiXology’s “crazy goal” of turning everyone on the planet into a comic reader “more possible than ever before.”

“ComiXology will retain its identity as an Amazon subsidiary and we’re not anywhere near done ‘taking comics further,’” the letter continued. “We’ve only just begun.” In a separate statement, Amazon’s VP of content acquisition and independent publishing David Naggar said that the two companies “share a passion for reinventing reading in a digital world.”

Details about the deal were undisclosed, unsurprisingly, but the initial announcement left questions about the buyout that remain unanswered, including the fate of ComiXology’s self-publishing platform Submit and whether or not the purchase will impact ComiXology’s relationship with Apple.

There is undoubtedly the potential for this partnership to bring ComiXology (and comics in general) to a wider audience, but also the potential for the company to disappear within the wider Amazon hierarchy. Will ComiXology end up being the next IMDb, Audible.com or Zappos, or go the way of CDNow, Telebook or Yap?

[Note: An earlier version of this story asked whether or not the Amazon acquisition would impact ComiXology’s relationships with publishers. Representatives for both Marvel and DC told WIRED that there would be no change, with a DC Entertainment statement going on to say that the company was “confident that Amazon’s purchase of ComiXology will make both our partners that much stronger and allow us all to continue to enhance and build the fastest growing segment of our publishing business as we bring our digital comics and graphic novels to our fans all over the globe.”]

Deceased--Gary Arlington

Gary Arlington
October 7th, 1938 to January 16th, 2014

"No Longer of This Planet: Gary Arlington (1938-2014)"

by

Patrick Rosenkranz

January 21st, 2014   

THE COMICS JOURNAL

The “patron saint” of underground comix died last week at his home and by now has hopefully moved on to cartoon heaven. But he was always a procrastinator and might still be hanging out in funny book limbo.

Gary Arlington started what might have been the world’s first comic book shop in San Francisco’s Mission District in 1968. The San Francisco Comic Book Company began inauspiciously in a small storefront on 23rd Street, where he offered duplicate copies of his EC Comics collection for sale. By a twist of fate, the store became ground central for the explosion of underground comix that began that same year with the publication of Zap Comix #1 by an unknown artist named Robert Crumb. Arlington soon began to sell Zap along with his vintage comics and new Marvel and DC titles.

Cartoonist John Thompson soon discovered the store and brought Crumb and Rick Griffin and others around to meet Arlington. It was one of the first stops Gilbert Shelton made when he rolled into the Bay Area in a garishly painted ’56 Plymouth in 1968 with a load of freshly printed Feds ‘n’ Heads in his trunk. He traded a box of comics to Gary for a ’59 Chevrolet, which he later drove to New York and back, bringing Kim Deitch and Trina Robbins with him. Art Spiegelman’s first meeting with Bill Griffith, like many other cosmic comix liaisons, happened at Gary Arlington’s store. All the latest comix titles were there, along with fanzines, underground newspapers, and high walls covered in bagged EC and other vintage comics.

“It was a thrill when new books would come out all the time,” recalled Gary Arlington in later years. “I was the first one selling them. Even Ron Turner came to me to buy them. I was the only ball game in the world. It was wonderful. I wish it could happen to everybody. When it was all happening, it was magical.  One artist would say to another, I need eight pages for something I’m working on, and it would happen.”

Don Donahue, who published the first issue of Zap, also began printing the small sized Snatch and Jiz comics that same year and brought some to Arlington to sell under the counter. “The first time I heard of Gary Arlington, he was this guy who used to call up Crumb once in a while, this crazy guy who owned this comic book store,” recalled Don Donahue. “Gary was this straight-looking guy who was about 30 years old. Whenever he came around, everybody used to hide the dope. But he was really into old-time comic books. He was starting to get into underground comic books too.”
One day Gary Arlington brought Rory Hayes by to meet Donahue. “Gary came around with this guy, this pale little kid. He was dressed in a black suit and overcoat.” Arlington discovered Hayes and had published his first comic work, Bogeyman Comics, in 1968. “He was a weird kid who came into the store,” said Arlington. “He brought in some of the comic books he had drawn, he and his brother in pencil. We just got together and drew this book with the Bogeyman telling these stories. I dreamed up the cover. A lot of people think it’s just a pile of garbage, but I think it’s one of the most unique things that’s ever been published.”

In 1970 Arlington published the anthology All Stars, with a beautiful Rick Griffin cover showing a desperate, strung-out addict, beset by smut, dope and instruments of violence, pleading for divine help. A hood, antlered figure, bearing a flail and the image of Jesus, enters the room, while the devil calls from below. He later published Griffin’s cryptic mystical masterpiece, Man From Utopia.

Arlington started a mail order business to sell underground comix across America and around the world, using the name Eric Fromm. “Before I opened the comic book store, I put out a retail mail-order list of straight comics,” said Arlington. “I picked the name Eric Fromm off of a pocket book cover, and I got a post office box and everything. I had absolutely no response at all from this list. I kept the post office box and I kept the name, but I never did sell straight comics through the mail.  I didn’t want the name Gary Arlington or the San Francisco Comic Book Company associated with selling dirty books through the mail because I didn’t want to get busted.” Kim Deitch drew a character who resembled chicken magnate Colonel Sanders to represent Eric Fromm in the catalogs.

When Ron Turner came around with the idea of starting a comic book called to promote ecology, Arlington introduced him to several cartoonists, starting with Greg Irons, who agreed to edit the first issue of Slow Death Funnies and draw the cover, which showed a voracious monster devouring it’s own planet. It was distributed on Earth Day, 1970 and was the first publication of many from Last Gasp Eco-Funnies.

Arlington also kept track of new talent whose work appeared in the comic fanzines, and especially liked Richard Corben, whose sexy, airbrushed sword-and-sorcery tales would soon startle and delight the underground audience. He asked Corben to submit some work to Skull. An animator living in Kansas City, Missouri, Corben had no previous contact with the underground, but he quickly embraced this new outlet for his fantasy tales of lush and lusty heroes and heroines. Arlington traded him some EC Comics for his first story, “Lame Lem’s Love,’ which appeared in Skull #2.

Gary Arlington had a hand in editing and promoting several more comics, but considered himself more of an idea man than a publisher. Fortunately he had lots of ideas. Most of them revolved around the love of his life, EC Comics. His vision of EC rising from the ashes like a cartoon phoenix was not the craziest of his ideas. In fact, it was a highly infectious concept, especially to the cartoonists who read ECs as kids and remembered when their favorite comic books had been sacrificed in the war on juvenile delinquency.

Arlington was the inspirational force behind Skull Comics, said Irons, who was introduced to old EC horror comics at the San Francisco Comic Book Company. “Gary had this great idea for a horror book and he had the title. He had this great piece of paper. It was the cover for the first Skull. It had ‘Skull’ written on the top in ballpoint pen and it had a little square where the picture was supposed to go. That was all. It was incredible, man. I instantly had this vision looking at this piece of paper of the first cover of the first Skull. So I rushed right home and drew it, and took it back to Gary Arlington, and he said, “Oh boy!’ Then I rushed home and did the story. I talked to some other people after I finished the story and asked them to do stuff.” Dave Sheridan, Fred Schrier, Jaxon, and Rory Hayes also contributed to this first issue.

Arlington proposed a new comic title to George Metzger and Rick Shubb, called Brain Fantasy. “He was going to publish it and do all that jazz and he wanted it right now,” said Metzger. “I got an idea and got Robert Inwood going, and we both sat down and did our stories in as short a space of time as possible.” When they brought the art to Arlington, he told them he didn’t have the money to publish it. “He didn’t have anything other than enthusiasm,” said Metzger. “He wanted it right away. It didn’t mean he could produce it right away, but he lusted after it.” Last Gasp published the first issue of Brain Fantasy in 1972.

Arlington published a series of single-page drawings called the Nickel Library, which included underground artwork, reprints of classic strips, and brand-new EC Comics covers. After his first few EC look-alikes came out, copyright holder William Gaines demanded that those drawings and printed pages be destroyed.

I last interviewed Arlington in 2010 when a rumor started on Facebook that he was already dead. “I don’t know where that came from, but it’s a stupid rumor,” he insisted. "It’s a waste of paper and a waste or print and a waste of time and a waste of energy, because that hasn’t happened yet and it’s not going to happen for a long time.”

I wanted to ask him about Don Donahue for an upcoming book on the Apex Novelty founder and counterculture archivist, but his memory was shot and his attention span was short. I called three times over several weeks but couldn’t get any useful details from him. He barely remembered me.

Life was never as exciting for him after the heyday of the underground but Arlington owned and operated the San Francisco Comic Book Company for almost four decades. Poor health forced him to hand over the running of the store to other people, and it finally closed down in 2007. Arlington had heart bypass surgery soon afterwards. When the ambulance took him home, he wouldn’t let the attendants in his apartment. In fact he wouldn’t let anyone into his place because it was such a mess. A few days later he had another heart attack and fell down and bent his leg at an unnatural angle. It was a week before anyone checked up on him and found him, almost dead, lying on a pile of pillows with comic books and newspapers stacked around him. While he was in the hospital Ron Turner organized a work party of people to go in and clean the place out. They salvaged his treasures – Carl Barks paintings, original EC pages, underground art – scattered among wall-to-wall boxes and heaps of newspapers and obscure publications permeated with cat urine and makeshift litter boxes.

“Wilson, Spain, Mavrides, my son Colin, Charlie Wylie, and three or four more did the cleanup that took forever,” said Turner. “We all got sick from the dust of decaying cats, feces, paper and mold, even when wearing masks.”

Arlington then moved to an assisted living apartment at 225 Berry Street near AT&T Park and used a wheelchair to get around. Last Gasp published a book of his paintings in 2011 called I Am Not of This Planet.

He died in his apartment on January 16th from complications of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and his crushed leg. He was 75.

"Gary Arlington, a Force in Underground Comic Books, Is Dead at 75"

by

William Yardlet

January 30th, 2014

The New York Times

Gary Arlington, who died this month at 75, did not open the San Francisco Comic Book Company because he wanted to create a place where the city’s underground comic artists could meet to mine one another’s unusual minds. He really just needed money, and he hoped to make some by selling thousands of comic books he had been hoarding in his parents’ basement since he was a little boy.

“I was virtually starving,” Mr. Arlington was quoted as saying in the 2002 book “Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution,” by Patrick Rosenkranz. “I made nothing. I was sleeping on somebody’s couch. I said, ‘I’ve got to do something.’ ”

Soon after he opened the store in 1968, it became clear that Mr. Arlington had created much more than a curious retail operation. In walked Robert Crumb, whose influential Zap Comix was first published the year the store opened. There was Art Spiegelman, who would go on to win a special Pulitzer Prize for “Maus,” his graphic novel about his family and the Holocaust. There was Don Donahue, who printed Zap; Ron Turner, who founded the comics publisher Last Gasp; and so many others who shaped the beginning of underground comics (“comix” to their devotees, with the “x” sometimes signaling their rating).

At first they came to browse Mr. Arlington’s enormous collection, particularly the 1940s and ’50s horror and science fiction titles from EC Comics like “Tales From the Crypt,” which were his obsession. Soon they came just to see who else may have stopped in. Browsing turned into talking and creating and collaborating. Some would draw right there in the shop, with Mr. Arlington offering ideas and guidance and helping some artists find publishers.

For all its importance as a gathering place, the shop did not offer much room. Behind a storefront on 23rd Street in the Mission District, it occupied less than 200 square feet and was filled to the ceiling with comics, books, artwork and miscellany.

Many people say his store was the first they knew of, anywhere, that was devoted exclusively to selling comics. And while he might not have set out to cultivate a scene — “at first he was such a straight-looking, ordinary schlub,” Mr. Crumb said in a telephone interview on Wednesday — he loved watching it blossom.

“It was kind of a validation for his existence that I’m sure he never expected to get,” Mr. Crumb said.

To Mr. Spiegelman, Mr. Arlington “was definitely at the right place at the right time.”
“San Francisco in the ’70s was the Paris of the ’20s for the underground comix scene,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “I guess Gary’s shop was a very sleazy, hole-in-the-wall version of Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon by default. Gary was hardly an obvious magnetic personality, but he was an obsessive and he really genuinely cared about this subculture.”
Gary Edson Arlington was born on Oct. 7, 1938, in San Jose, Calif. His parents, Alfred Arlington and the former Dorothy Hazen, moved to Hayward, where they ran a lumber company. After high school he enrolled at the College of San Mateo and received a two-year degree in 1959. He worked several jobs and spent two years in the Army before moving to San Francisco in the mid-1960s.

Betty Finnegan, his sister and only immediate survivor, said he died of heart failure on Jan. 16 in San Francisco. For the last several years he used a wheelchair as he dealt with health problems, she said.

Although he had been more of an idea person than an illustrator in the early years of underground comics, he drew frequently late in life, each day making a new, primitivist self-portrait. In 2011, Last Gasp published a collection of his drawings and excerpts from years of his diaries, titling it “I Am Not of This Planet: The Art of Gary Edson Arlington.”

If the San Francisco Comic Book Company felt like a glorified storage space, there was a reason. Mr. Arlington’s parents had died in the early 1960s, and he and his sisters eventually decided to sell their house across San Francisco Bay in Hayward.

“All the comic books were in the basement, and Gary needed a place to put them,” Ms. Finnegan, said. “So that’s when he opened the comic book store.”

In the early years, customers had to ask for some of the more provocative titles by name. Mr. Arlington stored them under the counter.

“It was a thrill when new books would come out all the time,” Mr. Arlington said in “Rebel Visions.” “I was the first one selling them. Even Ron Turner came to me to buy them. I was the only ballgame in the world. It was wonderful.”

Ye ole comic books from the British Library

"Comic exhibition to inspire 'generation of naughtiness'"

The British Library launches largest exhibition of comics in the UK, in the hopes of inspiring
children to be "naughty"

by

Hannah Furness

January 22nd, 2014

The Telegraph

 The British Library is to launch the largest exhibition of comic books in UK history, as the curator claims they want to inspire children to be “naughtier and more rebellious”.

The library will use this year’s show to elevate the status of comics as a research tool, arguing they should be given the same weight as primary sources as the greatest works of literature.

The exhibition’s curator, John Harris Dunning, told the Telegraph the display of seditious comics is intended in part to inspire the next generation to be “rebellions, troublesome and naughty”.

Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK will display more than 200 comic books from 1825 to the modern day, including one 1970s work focusing on an obscenity trial.

It is just one of the exhibitions announced for the British Library in 2014, alongside Terror and Wonder, a collection of Gothic literature, the personal archive of author Hanif Kureishi, and archives from the First World War.

 The latter, entitled Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour, will contain personal poems, diaries and letter written by those in the trenches, who used humour and art to see them through the war, as well as a handwritten draft of Rupert Brooke's The Soldier.

Roly Keating, the chief executive of the library, said of the comic book exhibition: “I think it’s fair to say, if we’re being honest, we haven’t necessarily devoted to that sector of our collection the scholarly and curatorial effort we’ve devoted to some of the higher culture parts.

“I’m delighted to say that this year we are addressing that, putting that to rights with a vengeance.”

Adrian Edwards, internal curator at the library, added the comics should be “taken seriously as a research tool”, in line with the great works of literature and “any other primary source”.

Among the works on show will be The Trials of the Nasty Tales, a comic relating to the “Nasty Tales” series which stood trial for obscenity in the 1970s.

John Harris Dunning, comic book expert and co-curator of the exhibition, said he hoped the show would encourage a new generation to continue the rebellious spirit of their predecessors.

“One of the messages is that we’re trying to teach kids to be rebellious,” he said. “There’s such a huge tradition of rebellion in comics, whether it’s about religion, gender, politics, it’s really strong.

“One of the key focuses of this exhibition is sedition and rebellion, and I think British comics have got an incredible legacy of that,” he said. “They’re really rebellious in terms of gender, in terms of sex, in terms of politics, the portrayal of society and race, and I really want that to be highlighted, particularly for the next generation.

 “We want kids to be more rebellious and naughtier, and we hope we’re going to teach them that.

“In the 80s or 90s, there is a huge amount of rebellion. They really shook things up.

“We’re trying to showcase that attitude and encourage the next generation of creators to be really naughty.

“So there’ll be a lot of surprising stuff, a lot of controversial stuff as well, and a lot of things the public will be able to engage with.”

The exhibition will run from May to August this year, with the Gothic literature show opening in October and the First World War archives put on display in June.
 
More than 50 diaries and notebooks belonging to author and playwright Hanif Kureishi have already been acquired by the library and will be held in its collection alongside contemporary writers including Wendy Cope, Graham Swift and former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion.

The writer, whose acclaimed work has included The Buddha Of Suburbia and The Black Album, said he was delighted that his work would be available to a "broad audience", adding he could not imagine it “anywhere else”.

It stretches from a teenage diary written in 1970 to the drafts for his forthcoming novel The Last Word, some of which are in a digital form.

Deceased--Jean Giraud

Jean Giraud
May 8th, 1938 to March 10th, 2012

"Jean Giraud, or Moebius, dies at 73; master comics artist"

Moebius' signature became shorthand for singular and strange visions in comics. The French artist also contributed to the look of films such as 'Alien' and 'Tron.'

by

Geoff Boucher

March 11th, 2012

Los Angeles Times

Jean Giraud, an enduring figure in European comics whose fantasy and sci-fi work — which he signed with his alias, Moebius — deeply influenced alien-world imagery throughout pop culture, has died. He was 73.

Giraud died Friday night or Saturday morning after a battle with cancer, according to a statement from his publishing house, Dargaud, which went on to say the comics world had lost "one of its greatest masters."

In his native France, where for decades comics have attracted an older readership, Giraud is considered his country's most important figure in cartooning. His signature creation is "Les Aventures de Blueberry," the Old West saga that debuted in 1963 and followed a peripatetic U.S. Cavalry lieutenant nicknamed Blueberry. The final edition was published in 2005.

Former French Culture Minister Jack Lang told Reuters on Saturday that Giraud's legacy is a singular one. "Moebius has become a comic-book icon," Lang said. "In the '70s and '80s he was the figurehead of this unique art form in France."

In America, however, he is best known for his interstellar visions, which reached these shores in the monthly R-rated pages of "Heavy Metal," the English-language version of "Métal Hurlant," a magazine Giraud helped launch in 1975. He made it a brand name with characters such as Arzach, the silent figure who glides above alien canyons astride a great, leathery bird, and the cosmically surreal story of "The Airtight Garage."

The signature of Moebius became invested with a mystique and, like Federico Fellini in cinema, became shorthand for singular and strange visions in comics. The artist's famous fans included Fellini, George Lucas, James Cameron, Paulo Coelho, Stan Lee, Hayao Miyazaki and Ridley Scott.

Scott brought in the artist to contribute to the look of the 1979 space-horror classic "Alien," and Steven Lisberger, the writer-director of "Tron," sought him out to pin down the digital dreams of that pioneering 1982 Disney movie.

"It's one thing to be talented and work hard enough to put your spirit and soul in your work, and it's a totally other thing to have a spirit and soul that is so beautiful and wise that it deserves to be put into art," Lisberger said Saturday. Giraud was "a very rare man, a true master, and his life's work is a masterpiece."

Giraud would go on to contribute art or design work on such 1980s films as "Willow," "Masters of the Universe" and "The Abyss" and on 1997's "The Fifth Element."

Still, he was a bit player in Hollywood and a superstar of the page and canvas. The subtle paradox that tugs at the eye of his audience is that everything portrayed — the landscapes, denizens, technologies and even physics — is totally alien but also completely unified in presentation and rendered with the confident precision of a surveyor who has walked every inch of a property.

Another celebrated Moebius fan, Rick Carter, the production designer who won an Oscar for his art direction on the 2009 film "Avatar," said the effect is unsettling.

"The inspiration I always felt from the art of Moebius was that I believed he truly saw the imagery he depicted and was actually not making it up," Carter said Saturday. "His imagery appears as if it was sketched from a real-life subconscious world/existence."

Even as Giraud's productivity narrowed in recent years, his stature in the creative community seemed to grow as young illustrators, digital artists and video game designers looked to his work as a key compass point. In October 2010 the Fondation Cartier Pour L'Art Contemporain in Paris launched a lavish five-month exhibit of Giraud's work that included small, humble sketches and majestic wall-sized pieces.

The artist visited Los Angeles while the exhibit was underway and, in an interview with The Times, said he couldn't put a name to the restless nature of his imagination or the persistent disdain for repeating his past accomplishments.

"I have no explanation, but I am interested in being alive.… Art is the big door, but real life is a lot of small doors that you must pass through to create something new," he said.

"You don't always need to go far. If you are in the space station Mir and you need to fix something, you go outside, but not too far. If you travel too far you'll die. Outer space is not human, but you can visit. You need to be a little bit out there but you need to stay close to human."

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in May 1938 (the month before Superman arrived in a small rocket from another planet in the pages of "Action Comics" No. 1) in the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne.

Although he had little formal training, his cowboy adventure tales were being published in Far West magazine by the time he was 18.

In his early 20s he became an apprentice of the Belgian artist Jije, best known for his work on "Spirou et Fantasio" and the western adventure that clearly informed "Blueberry."

The long journey from protege to titan left Giraud dizzy at times, and last year he said the adulation was a mystery in and of itself.

"They said that I changed their life," he told The Times. "'Your work is why I became an artist.' Oh, it makes me happy. But you know at same time I have an internal broom to clean it all up. It can be dangerous to believe it. Someone wrote, 'Moebius is a legendary artist.' A legend — now I am like a unicorn."

The artist's survivors include Isabelle Giraud, his wife and business partner.

Jean Giraud [Wikipedia]

Deceased--Sheldon Moldoff

Sheldon Moldoff
April 14th, 1920 to February 29th, 2012

"Sheldon Moldoff, Batman Comic Book Artist, Dies at 91"

by

Daniel E. Slotnik

March 8th, 2012

The New York Times

Sheldon Moldoff, who drew some of the most recognizable superheroes of comic books’ golden age without receiving recognition in his own right until decades later, died on Feb. 29 near his home in Lauderhill, Fla. He was 91.

The cause was complications of kidney failure, his daughter, Ellen Moldoff Stein, said.

Mr. Moldoff drew covers for the first appearances of the characters Flash and Green Lantern in 1940 and some of the earliest renderings of Hawkman. He also contributed to the first issue of Action Comics, in which Superman was introduced (though he did not draw the Man of Steel).

But he is probably remembered most for his work as a ghost artist on Bob Kane’s Batman from 1953 to 1967.

“He would get the script, give it to me, and I would lay it out, finish it, pencil it up and give it back to him,” Mr. Moldoff told The Asbury Park Press in 1999. “Now, being a ghost, you don’t say anything to anybody. You just work for your boss and that’s it. So Bob took all the credit.”

Mr. Moldoff used a distinctive cartoonish style that complemented the often-bizarre Batman plots of the 1950s and ’60s. He created some of the oddest characters ever to grace Gotham, like Zebra Batman, Ace the Bat-Hound and Bat-Mite. Among his hundreds of Batman covers is one showing Batman carrying Robin’s body for a two-part 1963 story called “Robin Dies at Dawn.” (The Boy Wonder pulls through.) But at a time when most artists went uncredited, Mr. Moldoff’s signature was never attached to the work.

With the advent of comic conventions and a growing comic culture, fans came to recognize Mr. Moldoff’s work in the 1980s, according to a blog by Mark Evanier’s blog, a comic-book writer and historian.

“The credits gradually were given to me,” Mr. Moldoff said.

Sheldon Douglas Moldoff was born on April 14, 1920, in Manhattan. By the time he was 17 he was submitting freelance work to Detective Comics.

Mr. Moldoff was hired as an assistant to Kane out of high school, but left to draw Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman and his own recurring character, Jon Valor, the Black Pirate. In 1953 he began working as one of the chief ghost artists on Batman, doing that work until 1967.

Later he worked with Kane on Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, a Batman-inspired cartoon featuring goofy animal superheroes.

His wife, Shirley, died 10 years ago. In addition to their daughter, Mr. Moldoff is survived by two sons, Richard and Kenneth; his brothers Albert and Stanley; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Sheldon Moldoff [Wikipedia]

Official website

Deceased--Les Daniels

Les Daniels
October 27th, 1943 to November 5th, 2011

"Les Daniels, Historian of Comic Books, Dies at 68"

by

Dennis Hevesi

November 14th, 2011

The New York Times

Les Daniels, one of the earliest historians of comic books — from the launching (off the doomed planet Krypton) of Superman in 1938 through the countercultural comix movement of the ’60s — and an author of horror novels, died on Nov. 5 at his home in Providence, R.I. He was 68.

The cause was a heart attack, said Diane Manning, his sister and only immediate survivor.

Mr. Daniels wrote 10 nonfiction books — among them histories of superheroes and of major publishers like DC and Marvel — and five works of fiction, all revolving around a globe-trotting, time-traveling vampire, Don Sebastian de Villanueva.

But he is perhaps best known, particularly among aficionados, for his 1971 book, “Comix: A History of Comic Books In America.” Starting with the days when pulp fiction fused with newspaper cartoons, Mr. Daniels documented how the golden age of comic books — pretty much starting with an infant placed on a rocket ship from Krypton to become Superman on Earth — evolved into a period of turmoil in the industry after a noted psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham, published “Seduction of the Innocent” in 1954. Focusing on the darker elements of the genre, horror and crime, Dr. Wertham saw comics as a cause of juvenile delinquency. His assertions were the subject of Senate hearings and prompted the industry to adopt a code of self-censorship.

In “Comix,” Mr. Daniels celebrated the underground movement that reacted against mainstream censorship with radical heroes like Mr. Natural, a mystic guru who bemoans the evils of the modern world, and Fritz the Cat, a sexually adventurous feline con artist. He profiled artists like Robert Crumb, the creator of those characters, and Art Spiegelman, a future Pulitzer Prize winner for his Holocaust-based “Maus,” as vital figures in the movement.

“Daniels made an important contribution documenting the history of an American art form," said Paul Levitz, a former president and publisher of DC Comics. “And this was 30 years before the Metropolitan Museum of Art began acknowledging comics as an art form.”

Mark Evanier , a comic-book writer and historian, said that before Mr. Daniels, “nobody thought to write the history of the industry,” adding that “back then, it was a sloppily run, disposable business that no one thought would exist for long.”

“He was a guy that publishers hired to come in and figure out the histories of their own companies,” Mr. Evanier continued, “and he produced major works upon which all future histories will be built.”

Besides “Comix,” Mr. Daniels’s nonfiction books include histories of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman — the first popular female comic-book character, who appeared on the cover of the first issue of Ms. magazine. For “The Complete History: Wonder Woman” (2000), Mr. Daniels won the Eisner Award, considered the Oscar of the comics industry.

He also wrote “Living in Fear” (1975), a history of horror in the mass media in which he offered a brisk tour of the genre, from Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” to William Peter Blatty’s “Exorcist.”

Leslie Noel Daniels III was born on Oct. 27, 1943, in Danbury, Conn., to Eva and Leslie Daniels Jr., and grew up in Redding, Conn. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brown University; the subject of his master’s thesis was the horror author H. P. Lovecraft.

It all might not have happened, Mr. Daniels’s sister said, had his mother not thrown out his comic book collection when he was 9.

“Even at that age he knew to a certainty that comic books would be his career,” Ms. Manning, a child psychologist, said. “Why do moms throw out comic books? I’ve been trying to figure it out all my life.”