Too many obits lately. The New York Times has published one about Russ Heath.
About a half-dozen folks have written to me to ask some version of this question: With the passing of Russ and of Marie Severin, is there anyone left who worked on the classic EC comics? The only one I know of is Angelo Torres, who collaborated with Al Williamson on a few of the stories Al drew. Angelo also drew one story solo for EC but it was nixed by the Comics Code and not published until many years later. Angelo is 86 and more or less retired in 2010 after a 41-year stint drawing for MAD.
I have not yet finished the long piece I said I was going to post about Steve Ditko. I will.
Turning to News of the Living: I have a flurry (i.e., two) e-mails asking to know about conventions where I might be showing my face. At the moment, the next ones are not until March of 2019. March 7 through 10, I'll be at the San Diego Comic Fest and then WonderCon in Anaheim, which runs March 29 to March 31.
I don't do a lot of conventions because most of those that ask just want me to sit behind a table and sign and sell stuff and (a) I don't like to sell stuff, including my signature, and (b) to me, there is nothing more boring than writing your name all day…or waiting for someone to come by and ask you to write your name. Maybe if you had a dish of tapioca pudding and you sat there for a few days, watching it and never turning away so you could see the pudding age and slowly pull away from the sides of the dish, that might be more boring than signing your name over and over. But I haven't tried that yet so I'm not certain.
Lastly: As you might imagine, I get a lot of e-mail and I don't get around to answering all of it. I try to answer the ones that most seem to need it — and that would include those that ask questions that can't be answered with two minutes of Googling. I also try to answer questions I can answer briefly. "Can you tell me all about the relationship between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby?" is not a question I can answer when I have a free moment. It's about a 100,000 word reply which you'll get when I finish the book I'm writing now which I won't finish if I reply to questions like that. (We're hoping for Christmas of next year.)
Generally speaking, I don't answer — or move to the bottom of the pile — the ones that aren't signed with anything that resembles a real name. You know who I am and I think it's a common courtesy, if you write to someone and expect them to read your message and perhaps reply, to tell them who you are. I keep getting questions from "Socrates" and I finally wrote to the guy and just told him, "I don't answer questions from people who hide behind handles."
His reply was "Everyone on the internet knows who Socrates is." Well, I don't unless it's that philosopher who died in 399 B.C. from eating cole slaw. (Don't believe that crap about him drinking hemlock. Why would he drink hemlock when cole slaw would do the job far quicker, plus you can get a delicious corned beef sandwich to go with it?)