Yesterday, this site's publisher Gary Groth wrote a quick note about Stan Lee.
Who —or what— was Stan Lee? Editor, hustler, hatchet man, corporate player, shill, writer, frustrated novelist, success, failure, catalyst, front man, self-parody, hack, exploiter, innovator. He was, probably, all of those things.
What he was, improbably enough, for at least one brief moment, and what he may have become if he had had the stomach for it, which he obviously didn’t, was a truth-teller.
Marc Bell is here with Day Three of his Cartoonist's Diary. Landlords and Halloween parties.
Finally, Annie Mok has a review of Kelsey Wroten's Crimes.
Crimes follows the creative and romantic exploits of Willa, a 30-year-old gay painter and barista, who has a crush on Bas, a 22-year-old poet who's dating Willa’s friend Simon. A meditation on grief, lust, point of view, and communication, the story begins with the death of someone close to Willa, with images of a coffin, and the internal monolog, “Putting people in boxes [...] and so begins my first year without you.” Confident brushwork, pacing, and writing marks this tale of loss and longing. The unruled borders underscore the sense of anxiety vibrating throughout the work.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Stan Lee. There has been an unsurprisingly and appropriately large outpouring of texts written in response to Lee's death, too many to include here. A few worth noting include Lee biographer Tom Spurgeon's initial thoughts, Jeet Heer's article at The New Republic, and Charles Hatfield's blog post.
Douglas Wolk collected some of Lee's cameos from Marvel comics, and Drew Friedman gathered the drawings of Lee he's made over the years.
—Etc. Vulture has the latest in a long line of articles about new Nancy cartoonist Olivia Jaimes.
