Many people have written eloquently about Howard Cruse in the last week since his death, Andy Mangels, Denis Kitchen and Chip Kidd among others. What I want you to know is something personal about Howie beyond the work and the public life—about friendship, family and love. I lived with my maternal grandparents from the time [...]
DC Comics Before Superman: Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's Pulp Comics, published by Hermes Press will be premiered at this year's San Diego Comic Con July 19-22nd. Here's a glimpse at how it all came together. In 1934, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had the idea to create comic books consisting of all original scripts and art as opposed [...]
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s Superman! Truth, justice and the American way and George Reeves flying across the black and white screen of an early 50’s television set is indelibly printed on my brain. Like so many other children of that era, I pinned the requisite towel to my tee shirt and [...]
I left the Gulf Coast in 1968 to attend school in what seemed to be far away Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham-Southern College is a liberal arts school in every sense of the word. It is liberal and it has a strong arts community. We used to call the local John Birch Society for a laugh because [...]
The Setting I’m glad to know that Comic Con is staying in San Diego. Although I’m new to the Comic Con scenario, I have come to love going out to San Diego. There’s just something about California—the sunshine, the palm trees, boats bobbing on the Pacific—the whole postcard setting that makes it so enticing. The [...]
What is it that drives us to search for ourselves in the photos and stories of our ancestors? I've always loved detective stories from the time I was a little girl in Mobile, Alabama. I would take the younger siblings and ride the bus downtown on Saturday mornings and we'd go to the movies for [...]
When I was growing up in the early 50's in the Gulf Coastal town of Mobile, Alabama it was a little shabby and run-down at the heels. There wasn't a lot of money floating about due to the poverty that had been entrenched in the south for a long time so my childhood still retained [...]