Last Update: March 23, 2026
Brian K. Vaughan and Dune – Newsweek MSN
Brian Doherty has died: wrote books on pop culture and underground comics comics and the Burning Man festival. – NY Times
Mr. Doherty produced an eclectic body of work that had as a common thread his fascination with how bands of outsiders on the cultural and intellectual fringes infiltrate the mainstream. He was especially interested in movements with no central authority. Besides libertarianism, he wrote books about 1960s underground comics and the Burning Man hippie-art-tech festival in the Nevada desert..."
Chuck Dixon profile – MSN Just the News
"Todd McFarlane changed comic book history with these comic book covers" – Comicbook
Lego releases Tintin Destination Moon rocket ship model – Gamespot
And Amazon is already selling it
Is there an end to the Absolute Comics story lines? Apparently nope – Inde News
Remembering the "legend of Sam Kieth" – Bleedingcool
Death of The Maxx creator Sam Kieth – MSN Variety
Born on January 11, 1963, Kieth began his career in comics at the age of 17, publishing his first work with Comico. He worked on numerous projects, including "Wolverine" in Marvel Comics Presents and "The Hulk." In 1993, he created a series exploring themes of identity and reality for Image Comics titled "The Maxx," which was later adapted into an animated series for MTV's "Liquid Television" and became globally recognized. Kieth's work on the series also led to a line of action figures produced by Todd McFarlane.
Sam Kieth,my old friend since 16 and comic art genius has passed away.
— Kelley Jones (@kelleyjonesart) March 22, 2026
He was instrumental in bringing me to DC and changing the course of my career. He also introduced me to my wife ( a cute little blond he described her as)and changed the course of my life
God rest his soul.
Frank Miller draws Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's #300 cover – Gizmodo
"Incredible transformation" of She-Hulk - building a Jennifer Walters from scratch – MSN Daily Motion Video
Titan Comics' June slate "lots of Conan" – Bleedingcool
Marvel's May 2026 slate of books – Bleedingcool
Gene Luen Yang and why "the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles matter again"
Story at Esquire Magazine
Tatjana Wood Obituary – The Comics Journal
More about Tatjana Wood
The new Spider-Man trailer
No wonder he's depressed!
Digital comics platform GlobalComix gets new investment money while posting 20% month-to-month audience increases – Forbes
Just when things seemed to be quieting down in the multibillion dollar digital comics space, GlobalComix today announced a series of big moves fueled by an infusion of $13 million in new capital..."
In the Facebook bio Backderf writes "...in Tatjana's time, floppy comics were printed on shitty newsprint. The printing was garbage. The color resolution was low..."
I don't want to directly rebut Backderf's statements, afterall its just a lead up to praising Tatjana Wood's work, which is quite worthy of praise.
Comic Book Coloring
Rather, I want to address the corollary: how the distance of time, along with a misplaced self-assurance born of 21st-century printing and digital technologies (and perhaps the spirit of the age itself), leads many people to spurn the look of old newsprint comic books. But how many 21st-century “recolored” reprints of those books are actually inferior to the original “shitty” newsprint versions? Too many.
In reprints on high-quality paper, the black lines are firmer and crisper, and the color laydown is perfectly flat, free from the chronic out-of-registration problems of old gravure presses. Yet this technically superior application often makes the final images of reprinted comics appear flatter and less alive than before.
All too often, those crisp black lines are not derived from scans of original artwork, but from digitally filtered scans of printed newsprint pages, where the color is stripped away and the remaining black ink is then digitally "improved." In the process, defects from the original printing are amplified, pushing the reprinted image even further from the original line work.
Then there is the older method: reprints derived from the Greg Theakston process, in which color was chemically removed from printed comic pages to isolate the black line art. That art was then photographed on a PMT/stat camera (20th century) or scanned (21st century) and treated as "original art" for recoloring, with the new colors simply mimicking the placement of the old ones. Like many modern digital approaches, this method ignores a crucial fact: the original colorists understood how ink would behave on the paper.
They knew how much ink the paper would absorb. They anticipated dot gain, the way those iconic, tiny halftone dots would spread once printed. They compensated accordingly, sometimes laying in heavier color because they knew the cheap paper would absorb a portion of it. These were not accidents; they were informed production decisions.
Herein lies the contradiction: modern digital printing is superior in nearly every way, but only when used properly. When it isn’t, the result is, for modern comic books, too often over-colored work with a chaotic palette that obscures the line art. In reprints, the problem is compounded by misunderstanding: the coarseness of the old printing is now grotesquely exaggerated, while the finer line work is distorted or lost entirely.
How often have you looked at a new reprint of an old comic and realized the original “shitty” newsprint version is actually more subtle, and, in effect, better? And how often have you struggled to read a modern comic because the digital color is too dense, too dark, or so visually busy that the underlying drawing is hard to distinguish?
In the end, superior tools lose their superiority when used poorly. Reprinting old newsprint comics is not automatically improved by the use of 21st-century technology. The challenge of remaking these works, whether to improve them or at the least to maintain them, is a very real hurdle. Too often, that hurdle is ignored, out of a failure to understand what was actually achieved on newsprint.
Richard Fairgray profile – CBC.CA
Using comic books in nursing education – BC Campus
ADVERTISEMENT: You will see Amazon links on this web site because I am an Amazon affiliate. If you buy something rom them they might throw me a few coins and then I'll buy a comic book.
Graphic designer Orijit Sen and the comic book world of reading in India – MSN The Print
Sen reflected on comic subcultures in the 1990s, sharing personal anecdotes from his own journey as a comic creator....."
Superman #75 "Death of Superman" original art coming up to auction – Freep
Comics Connect Auction schedule
Examinging the IDW profit margins "...the decrease in royalty expenses, and decrease in creative costs as a percentage of revenue..." – Bleedingcool
Okay, so what character is Scarlett Johansson playing in the Batman II movie? – MSN Bam Pop
Autumn books list from Titan Comics – Comicsbeat
Spider-Man: Brand New Day to get five-weekend theatrical window in 2026 – Comicbookmovie
Over million views of video of child in India discovering father's old comics collection in trunk – Timeslife
North Yorkshire with a lifelong passion for comic books is set to sell his collection - anticipating a return of more than £62k. – Yorkshire Live
The four bids for replacing the Angoulême Comic Art Festival in 2027 – Bleedin' Cool
Sale of British comics collection returned a huge six-figure sum – MSN UK Chronicle
...over 40,000 comics, 20,000 pieces of original artwork, nearly 900 bound publisher volumes and a vast amount of memorabilia..."
Tatjana Wood Obit – NY Times
Anyone who laid eyes on a DC Comics cover from 1973 to 1983 was likely seeing an example of Ms. Wood’s work. She colored nearly every cover for the company, whether the image was for a horror title, a war comic or a superhero adventure. She also provided color guides for the engravers to follow on interior pages. In the days before computer-assisted production, that involved a painstaking process of creating hand-applied dyes and indicating color combinations — denoting the percentage of cyan, magenta or yellow to be used..."
...Karen Berger, who edited Swamp Thing, wrote in an email about Ms. Wood: "Her magnificent and evocative palette was a perfect fit — she was an integral part of the magic of that groundbreaking series. She loved coloring ‘Shvampy,’ as she called him in her thick, gravelly German accent."
The Times profile/obit of Tatjana Wood is a great overview, with several large examples of her work and a couple of photos of her, along with quotations from various comics folks who knew her. She had a truly long career in comic books, and if you'd paid much attention to the industry, hers was a name that came up again and again across the decades.
More about Tatjana Wood
TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman discusses comic books using martial arts – MSN UPI News
Eastman, 63, described how he studied [Bruce] Lee and other martial artists' fights to learn "the logic of how to stage a fight scene." The comics were first published in 1984, let to an animated series and then the first 1990 movie. "Watching those early martial arts film, certainly the Bruce Lee films which were so inspiring, but the martial arts film, to me I really embraced the idea," Eastman said. "A hit creates this, a punch creates that and a kick creates that..."
Mike Mignola at the London Book Fair
Story at Bleedingcool
University Archives website auction includes rare comic books among 445 lots to be sold – Free P
Lot 163 is the vintage issue of DC Comics’ Superman No. 12 (September-October 1941), encapsulated and graded by CGC with a Universal Grade 6.5. Estimate: $1,500-$2,400. This is one of over 25 lots in the March sale featuring Golden Age comic superheroes such a Batman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman and others, offered singularly as well as in dealer’s lots..."
Someone has a gigantic Deadpool collection in South Africa – Guinness World Records
Stephen R. Bissette named "Vermont Cartoonist Laureate" – Sevendays VT
It's $1
Status of the $47 million in consigned goods that Diamond Distributors still holds
Story at Bleedingcool
The Trustee has signaled that he intends to use remaining estate assets on litigation and attorney's fees rather than paying creditors..."
Smithsonian Museum adds Action Comics No. 1 and Captain America Comics No. 1 to "permanent home at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History" – Smithsonian
UK Lakes International Comic Arts Festival 2026 "featuring the Maestro Bill Sienkiewicz" – LICAF
Absolute Batman is essential! – Comicbook
Classic Iron Man is back and it's perfect! – Comicbook
Klaus Janson profile – NY Times
For Janson, 74, the show represents how far the appreciation for comic art has come. "Sequential narrative deserves recognition," he said in an interview. "That’s part of my motivation for doing this exhibition and I hope that people walk away from the exhibit with a growing appreciation of what comics can do."
Collection going to auction with books from 6-decades – UK Yorkshire Post
However, after moving house and deciding he needed to refine his collection, father-of-two Mr Kitching has finally decided to sell most of his collection. Divided into 340 separate lots, the collection of more than 6,000 comics spans back to the early 1960s and includes rare first appearance issues for Iron Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four..."
Changing of the guard: Mike Richardson no longer at Dark Horse – Comicsbeat
Although seeing the head of a company depart after an acquisition is not a surprise, Richardson’s exit is still a shock because he is one of the foundational publishers of the modern comics era. Everything Dark Horse has done – and it is a LOT – are a reflection of Richardson’s vision and management. Just a few of them: Dark Horse supported some of the most important creator-owned titles – including Hellboy and Sin City, and recently the Black Hammer universe. Dark Horse also got into publishing manga way before any MOST other American publishers..."
Back in the 1980s, Mike Richardson, Chris Warner, Mark Verheiden (along with others) came out with a number of books under the Dark Horse label, coinciding with the “black-and-white explosion” of comics titles, when printing costs and distribution had simplified and fans were launching little companies one after another and getting them into shops.
Titles like Fish Police were popular at the time, and some very big winners moved beyond black-and-white printing, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The black-and-white boom eventually imploded, and shops were left with stacks of poorly drawn, mostly amateur looking books. But for a while, anyone with a good idea and some drawing and writing chops had a shortened pathway to getting noticed.
Dark Horse had all of those cards in their hands and played them well. Chris Warner by that time was a veteran Marvel artist, and Verheiden would soon be on his way to becoming a veteran comics writer and later a producer in Hollywood. Mike Richardson did something at that time, when Dark Horse was starting out, that all comic companies now do almost by reflex: pursue alternative media pathways for their comic properties into the broader non-comics market—by which we mean Hollywood. That transition happened quickly with The Mask movie, which Verheiden wrote and which was based on a Dark Horse title created by Richardson.
Mike Richardson "out" at Dark Horse – Hollywood Reporter
Note: for an interesting antecedent to The Mask, consider this 1973 Batman story from Detective Comics 437 featuring a "death mask" that brings out psychotic activity from anyone wearing it.
The "death throes" of the Diamond Distributors implosion – The Comics Journal
Behind the scenes of over-sized Artist Edition books with Scott Dunbier – The Comics Journal
The plan was to sell them direct to consumers because they're expensive, but they're also expensive to print. Eventually, with the help of Cliff Biggers, who runs some shops called Dr. No’s (and the former publisher of Comic Shop News) we came up with the idea of giving a courtesy discount to retailers. Not the full discount, but still a discount, because his argument was that retailers would want to buy these books for themselves. It was a much bigger success than we had thought. I think if we didn't make the initial announcement that it wouldn't be available through comic shops, there wouldn't have been the attention that was paid to it. And so because of that, the first Artist’s Edition, Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer, was really, for an Artist's Edition, a resounding success. It went into a couple of printings. The second book was the first Marvel book we did, which was Walter Simonson's The Mighty Thor..."
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