Headaches seem to be gone. Catching up on work. And my e-mail suggests I need to say this again…
This blog is often noted for its obituaries for folks in comics and/or show business. I never wanted it to be that way but when someone in those fields dies and I (a) knew them and/or (b) knew a lot of things about them that are not common knowledge, I feel I should write about them. Often, the news has reached me and not reached many others yet. Sometimes, it's someone who worked in relative obscurity and I think that if I don't write about them, no one will.
When I don't write about someone who's left us, it doesn't mean that I didn't hear they'd died. It doesn't mean I didn't like the person or don't care. It might just mean that I really didn't know them and that others who did are doing more than an adequate job of noting their passing. It's no reflection on them if I don't think I have anything interesting to say about them. Gahan Wilson, who died the other day at the age of 89, was a brilliant writer and cartoonist…and if you knew his work, you don't need me to tell you how good he was.
Sticking with this morbid subject: I said the other day here that the passing of our friend Tom Spurgeon has made me reflect on something. It was how, not all that long ago, a mainstream newspaper like The New York Times didn't note the death of almost anyone who'd written or drawn comic books, let alone someone like Tom who wrote about them. I said I couldn't think of anyone else in his category who'd been so recognized and then I got a message from Gary Groth reminding me the Times had noted the passing of comic strip collector/historian Bill Blackbeard in 2011, followed by a message from Dave Bryant reminding me that the paper had run an obit for Bhob Stewart in 2014. So I stand, as we all should stand at times, corrected.