The Sunday Spotlight: The ‘It Always Ends. That’s What Gives It Value’ Edition
by Richard Bruton
Another week passes, another Sunday is here, so, it’s time to where out the weekly collection of news and things that caught my eye… it’s The Sunday Spotlight…
Sadly, so sadly, we start with a trio of comic creator deaths…
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R.I.P. Tobias Taitt, author of Black…
Sadly, we lost another creator last month, the very talented Tobias Taitt, who died on 16 September 2024, aged 57.
As Soaring Penguin posted at the time:
‘Umar Abdullah Tobias Taitt, the writer on Black, has passed away. Umar Abdullah Tobias Taitt – with heavy hearts, the community mourns the passing of Umar Abdullah Tobias Taitt, who returned to Allah on Monday, 16th September 2024.’
Taitt’s debut work, Black, with art by Anthony Smith, was published by Soaring Penguin Press in 2022 after its serialisation in David Lloyd‘s great digital anthology, Aces Weekly.
Taitt described it, quite rightly as well, as ‘an uncompromising true story of a boy growing up in a series of institutions in 70s/ 80s Britain. That boy happens to be me. When I was three years old my mother killed my uncle, was sent to prison, and condemned me to spend my early life in a series of bleak children’s homes. But the highlights of my early years are as memorable as the low points. And the people that helped me, both black and white still shine brightly to me. I’ve worked closely with Anthony Smith to bring my past alive in a way that will hopefully resonate with people young and old. This is our way of contributing a small slice of history that may otherwise have been lost. But let me state clearly, this is no sob story or misery memoir. It’s a celebration of my life and British history through the power of words and pictures.’
Black was powerful, expressive, honest, telling of Taitt’s young life in England, second-generation Windrush immigrant, brought to the UK by his mother who was looking for a better life. Sadly, she never found it. And in his young life, nor did Tobias. Care homes, a life of crime, imprisonment. But eventually Taitt put his life together, everything he went through building a strong character, all of which can, and should, be seen in the pages of Black.
Sadly, it was a life cut short. We send our condolences to Tobias’s family, friends, colleagues, and all who knew him.
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R.I.P. Kevin J Taylor, erotica artist and frequent collaborator with Joseph Michael Lisner…
Sadly, very little known about this one as there’s precious little online about the sad death of the artist at a young age, or any real social media presence. But Kevin J Taylor‘s death was reported by his friend and frequent collaborator Joseph Michael Lisner on his Instagram. Another sad loss, gone far too young.
Taylor’s work included providing art and inks for Lisner’s various Dawn titles over the years, and his own work, including Model By Day and Fang for Sirius in the 90s. Model by Day was subsequently turned into a TV movie starring Famke Janssen in 1994. His later work covers erotic comedy starring his characters Jill and The Girl.
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R.I.P. André Jobin (Job) Co-creator and writer of Yakari…
And finally, in this trio of sad news posts, news came in of the death of André Jobin, forever better known as Job. Born in 1927, Job was a Swiss-born comics writer best known for the environmentally aware, humanist, and always charming all-ages western comic series Yakari, which he wrote from 1973 to 2016.
Originally a journalist, Job met Derib, the artist he would forge a comics career with, when he hired the artist for Le Crapaud à Lunettes, the children’s magazine Job founded in 1964.
After hiring him in 1967, Job and Derib’s first comics work together was The Adventures of the Owl Pythagore the same year, followed in 1969 by Yakari, the series he worked on until writing his last volume in 2016.
Job passed away on 8 October 2024, at the age of 96.
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Marvel and DC lose the trademarks to ‘Super Hero’ and Superheroes’… quite bloody rightly…
One of those weird trademark things that’s been in existence for decades now – since 1966. Marvel Comics and DC Comics have long held the trademark for ‘Super Hero’ and Superheroes’, meaning that, in theory, no other publisher can used the terms. Which may comes as a surprise to those of you who are well used to many, many publishers making superhero comics for quite a while now.
But anyway, to cut a long story short, the the US Patent and Trademark Office cancelled those trademarks – see this Reuters article for all the details – after a cancellation request from Brit comics creator SJ Richold after DC threatened legal action over his Superbabies comics. Richold, quite rightly, didn’t back down in the face of the big, big, big company, saying that Marvel and DC can’t ‘claim ownership over an entire genre.’
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Celebrate a master of the form – Comics Journal had a Harvey Kurtzman week…
Harvey Kurtzman was a genius. An absolute genius. Writer, artist, editor, publisher, and so much more. Everything he’s ever touched in any form in comics should be considered essential reading. It’s that simple.
Whether it was creating, writing and editing early MAD magazine, Little Annie Fanny for Playboy, his revolutionary work at EC Comics with Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, the playing with the form brilliance of Hey Look!, or his pioneering early graphic novel, Jungle Book – just some of what was a career in comics that produced so many unique and inventive and glorious things.
To celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday on 3 October, The Comics Journal had a whole Harvey Kurtzman week, plenty of really well-written stuff, celebrating a true great. Go read. Start with Paul Karasik’s piece on Hey Look!, from which this visual is lifted…
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Jules Feiffer at 95: ‘Doing the Best Work of My Life’ – interview at Print…
And speaking of comics geniuses as we were with Kurtzman, here’s another one, the quite incredible Jules Ffeiffer.
Well, Steven Heller at Print talks to the now 95-year-old Feiffer – yet another of those comic greats, an artist whose work is always spellbinding and magical in the way every stroke is such a sublime thing.
Ffeifer has a new book out, a graphic novel for children, Amazing Grapes, of which the two chat. Here’s the opening of Heller and Ffeiffer’s chat…
‘Jules Feiffer is 95, and his most recently published book is a graphic novel for children titled Amazing Grapes. It is a fantasy about a trio of siblings and multi-dimensional time and space travel, aided and abetted by various degrees of menacing monsters. Each episode in this complex story exposes the kids to untold dangers as they search for their mother, who is stuck between dimensions. It is a chaotic amalgam of characters and narrative twists, and Feiffer—who has written and illustrated conventional children’s books, among novels, plays, screenplays and all manner of imaginative endeavors—has yet to embark on a project as unique as this. He is 95, but making this book keeps him, he says, ‘7 years old’.
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Alexa Frank announced as 2024 winner of The Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation – English…
The recently concluded Lakes International Comics Festival (LICAF) played host to the Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation – English, for 2024, celebrating the essential work of translators in getting the best comics the world over into the hands of as many readers as possible.
This years winner is Alexa Frank for her translation of 沖合の雷 (Offshore Lightning) by Saito Nazuna, translated from Japanese, published by Drawn & Quarterly.
Alexa Frank is a translator, writer, and editor who lives in New York. In 2019, she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship, through which she researched and wrote at Waseda University in Tokyo. She is the translator of a wide range of Japanese manga, ranging from “alternative” or “literary” manga to cozy romance, fantasy, and cat manga.
Juliette: Or, the Ghosts Return in the Spring (Juliette: Les fantômes reviennent au printemps) by Camille Jourdy, translated from French by Aleshia Jensen, published by Drawn & Quarterly was announced as runner-up. Inside the Mind of Sherlock Holmes (Dans la Tête de Sherlock Holmes) by Cyril Lieron and Benoit Dahan, translated from French by Christopher Pope, published by Titan Comics and The Cliff (La falaise) by Manon Debaye, translated from French by Montana Kane, published by Drawn & Quarterly were both Highly Commended.
This is the second year of the awards, created in honour of Sophie Castille, international rights director and V. P. of licensing for Mediatoon, cofounder and director of Europe Comics, who died unexpectedly in 2022.
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Lion’s Tooth Love and Rockets Book Club hosting a virtual event with Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez – 17 October 2024…
Happening on 17 October, The Lion’s Tooth Love and Rockets Book Club of the Lion’s Tooth book store, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is having a virtual event with Jaime and Gilbert.
Hey, you really don’t need more than that, do you? Register here to watch it live.
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