Well, Dave Berg has been dead for another day without most comic book news sites paying any attention. In the next day or so, DC Comics will have its press release out and the mainstream media will start issuing obits, so we may see a little more coverage on web pages that purport to cover the field. And then again, we may not. Several webmasters wrote to me on the topic, most of whom seem to have studied Missing the Point with Ari Fleischer. One said there's no problem here because his site can always post a link to the obit I post…something he has, by the way, not done in the last 24 hours with regard to Mr. Berg. Another merely offered to post my obits on his site. Both, of course, failed to grasp the concept that — and I'll say this again, this time in boldface and caps — I DO NOT WANT TO BE THE ONLY PERSON COVERING THIS KIND OF THING. I think it's too important to be up to any one person, especially if I'm that one person. I especially don't like the fact that reporting on the death of an industry veteran is of so little importance to some that they figure they can just hope someone else does something.
Rick Veitch, who runs www.comicon.com, was one of the few web guys to write to me and express the feeling that more should be done. Significantly, Rick has one of the few sites that does some actual reporting and digging…though he is of course limited by finances and the fact that he has a busy career as a comic artist. It seems to me that there are a lot of folks out there who care about the history of comics enough to want to write about them for little or no money. If nothing else, they could at least make a little noise about this problem. Quite a few people wrote to me to say, "Thank you for reporting the death of Dave Berg." I'd have preferred they take that time to write to one of the news sites and ask, "How come you're covering new X-Men costume designs instead of the death of Dave Berg?"