Bill Blackbeard

Very sad to hear of the passing of Bill Blackbeard recently. If that name doesn't ring any bells with you, Blackbeard was the archivist and historian who, almost single-handedly, saved the old newspaper comic strips of the early 20th Century from crumbling into dust. The vast majority of strip reprint projects from that era have used papers from Blackbeard's collection.

Among the 200 or so books he was involved with, there were a couple that literally changed my life. One was All in Color For a Dime, the chapter of which on E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre, written by Blackbeard, turned me into a Segar fanatic at the age of 12 and opened my eyes to the greatness of those early strips. The other one is arguably one of the most influential books on comics of all time - The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics - which actually allowed me, and a generation, to see these old strips, and read them, and (to those of us who eventually became cartoonists, which seems to be most of us from what I can make out) to learn from them.

Best of all was his name, though - like a Mickey Mouse villain from a Gottfredson adventure continuity. I feel blessed to grow up in a world where the premier comics historian on the first half of the Twentieth Century was called Bill Blackbeard.

PING! Mother Box PING!

May I draw your attention to a recent interview I did with the Ping! MotherBox Ping! blog - quite a decent-sized one as these things go. There's a bit of history plus some ill-conceived ranting! All good fun. Thanks to Brett Williams for the juicy questions.

Postpourri

A few random things to cover this time.

First, and I'm as surprised as anybody about this because I only found out about it by reading about it on the internet, it looks like Marvel will be re-issuing my old Muppet Show comics in some form or other. There you go - now you know as much as I do.

Second, there's an all-new, all-digital, all free issue of Tripwire available, including a nice fat piece on Boom! Studios and three, count 'em, three pages of comics by Yours Truly. So that might be worth a look.

Last but not least, I did a bit of logo design a few days ago. I'm quite pleased with it.

The Storyteller

This weekend, at long last, the Jim Henson's Storyteller anthology from Archaia Press was announced - and I'm delighted to report I'm contributing a seven-page story to it, based on a Scandinavian folk tale called "Old Nick and the Pedlar". I've also done an illustration for the cover, which I guess it's okay to reveal here. (This is actually an early version - the published one will have a few differences, as it's bounced back and forth between me, editor Nate Cosby and the Henson company a few times.)

While I've got your attention, I'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to everybody who took the time to look at my recent eBay auctions - especially-specially to the fan in Canada (you know who you are!) who picked up a whopping 25 pieces. The money raised should keep things ticking over until regular funds start coming in again. Very, very grateful to all of you.