Trina Robbins

With Trina at the Cartoon Art Museum in 2023.

I'm very sorry to hear of the death of cartoonist Trina Robbins and add my condolences to the many that her partner, artist Steve Leialoha, is surely receiving now. I didn't know her well but we met and spoke a few times--including at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, where I think she and Steve made a point to show up for every special event, and once when I interrupted their breakfast at San Diego Comic Con for a lovely brief chat. 

Trina and Steve when they came to see me talk about A Fire Story at the Cartoon Art Museum in 2019.

Trina had an interesting and unusual career, successfully transitioning from Underground comix in the 1960s and 1970s to mainstream comics, notably Wonder Woman, in the 1980s until now, while keeping a foot in both worlds and remaining well-respected in both. Not many creators could pull that off. 

She was just one of those people whose personality was a beacon of light: happy to be there, happy to meet you, happy to see you again, happy to discover a comic she'd never seen before. I don't know if Trina was naturally humble or just mastered the conversational trick of asking the other person about themselves, but she always reflected the spotlight onto others. 

I've met a number of old pros who welcomed me to the comics community with open arms, treating me like a peer even when they'd never heard of me or seen my work. It's a classy quality that the most accomplished and secure creators pull off with grace. Trina will always be at the top of my list.

A gallery of just some of Trina's work. She had a huge bibliography in both fiction and historical nonfiction.

Dr. Glen Erickson

Oh. I just learned that one of the important mentors in my life, Dr. Glen Erickson of UC Davis, died in 2021. I caught a mention of him in an alumni newsletter and looked him up.

I majored in physics at Davis but my real passion was astronomy, of which Davis offered very little at the time (in recent years the school has become a cosmology powerhouse!). I clearly remember when Dr. E. came into my freshman astronomy class and asked if anyone wanted to earn half a credit helping him with a little project. I sprang out of my chair faster than a meteor.

For the next year or two, we spent long nights in the small campus observatory doing photometry on an object called Nova Vulpecula. By measuring the brightness and color of a variable star over time, you can deduce a lot about its age, size, fate, etc. Every quarter I wrote up a little report and got my half credit. Dr. E. never published our research. I think he just liked doing it.

In retrospect, Dr. E. was incredibly patient with me, especially when I took his "Mathematical Methods for Physicists" course my junior year, which was deliberately designed to separate the wheat from the chaff who maybe ought to reconsider their life choices. I struggled. He helped. I passed.

At the same time, I was involved in the Astronomy Club, for which he was the advisor, and we spent a few evenings peering through the Lick Observatory's historic 36-inch refractor (life-changing!) and doing more photometry at UC Berkeley's Leuschner Observatory. I also ran the university's public viewing program and TA'ed astronomy labs on the roof of the physics building.

I earned my degree, graduated, and kept in touch with Dr. E. for a few years but then drifted away, as students and teachers do. That would have been the end of it except 25 or so years later, when a UC Davis physics professor I didn't know contacted me out of the blue and asked if I'd like to speak to a weekly seminar he held on the general subject of "What You Can Do with a Physics Degree."

I wasn't sure I was the right person for the job. I've never worked in physics, never done real research. I was an environmental chemist for 12 years, but that was mostly pushing buttons. I was an odd choice; he assured me that odd choices were just what he wanted.

So I went, along with Karen and our daughters, who were UC Davis students at the time. And who did I find when I walked in the door but Dr. E., then a retired professor emeritus. He saw my name on the schedule and came!

The first thing he did was pull out a framed caricature I'd drawn of him and posted in the astronomy library 25 years earlier. I remember clearly: it had hung there for a week or so and then one day it disappeared. I figured someone had tossed it. But Dr. E. had taken it himself, kept it in his home office, and now, decades later, wanted me to sign it.

That meant the world to me. I'm glad my wife and kids were there to see it.

I told the seminar about how I used physics in my brief career as a newspaper reporter, taking on any story remotely science-tinged (including the Challenger disaster) and writing a weekly astronomy column. I talked about how I drew on my physics background to pitch stories to the producers of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," and "Voyager." I never sold one but learned a lot about character and story structure that has served me well. I talked about my environmental chemistry career, which was really just physics (heavy metal spectroscopy), and my subsequent career as a science writer specializing in renewable solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.

I think it went well. Everyone seemed happy. My host took me, my family, and Dr. E. out to lunch.

I again began to almost apologize for not being a model physics alumnus. I didn't go to grad school, didn't continue in the field, never contributed to answering the great questions of science. Dr. E. sat back and twinkled.

"You're a very successful physics graduate," he said. "You made physics a part of everything you've done. You integrated it into your life. You are exactly what I always hoped my students would become."

Well.

Wow.

Holy moley.

I'd spent the previous 25 years feeling like a mediocre student who'd more or less wasted my degree--kind of a physics failure, really--and Dr. E. turned that perspective around 180 degrees in half a minute.

I, in turn, said how much his support, encouragement and friendship had meant to me, and I could tell that meant a lot to him. If you have a mentor who changed your life, and I hope you do, take the time to thank them while you can If you can be a mentor, do it.

As a cartoonist, I've long considered my physics education my "secret sauce." It's an unusual background (but not unique, Jim Ottaviani!). It colors all of my books to one extent or another, and wait until you see my next one: a real science-palooza! Physics has never been something I do, but it is the lens through which I see the world. It's kind of who I am.

Dr. E. gave me that. I'll always be grateful.

EDITED TO ADD: I KNEW I had this photo someplace! I just had to dig for it (through the few small boxes of old photos we saved from the fire).

This is Dr. Erickson and I on the roof the UC Davis physics building on Picnic Day 1986. Picnic Day was (and still is) a very popular open house held in the spring. Former students return, prospective students explore, everyone throws open their doors and puts on a show. I had graduated by then, but was working in the area and still came back to campus from time to time.

I forget the details on this telescope. It was old and historic, maybe an Alvan Clark? It's obviously been set up to project an image of the Sun on the white screen at the bottom of the business end.

Some of my happiest times happened on that roof.

Robbie Robertson

Singer-songwriter Robbie Robertson died at the age of 80. I was a casual fan who knew his greatest hits, was aware of some of the drama that broke up The Band, and had a lot of respect for his artistic integrity. Safe to say he never sold out. 

I never spoke to, corresponded with, or breathed the same air as Robertson, but I did have an opportunity to work with him a while back. He wanted to write a graphic novel--an insider's history of rock-and-roll kinda thing--and needed an artist. I was asked if I wanted to pitch. As I recall, I doggedly sketched and doodled and drew through a long weekend, and on Monday reported back that I had nuthin'. I couldn't crack the nut. Robertson's concept was fine, I just wasn't the right person for the job, and said so. 

I guess his graphic novel never happened. I don't regret declining. The prospect of committing to 200 pages of art you have no idea how to do would be a special kind of torture, plus I had ideas of my own I wanted to focus on. But sometimes I think it would've been very cool. I bet Robertson would have told a hell of a story.

EDITED TO ADD: My editor, Charlie Kochman, tells the rest of the story on Facebook, much of it new to me. It's better than I told it. Click on that embedded link to read it.

Yeah, the story I tried to develop art for was Robertson's Billy and Mojo idea. I'd forgotten that it was meant to be a children's book, probably because I don't really write or draw differently for children and adults. Deciding which shelf it goes on is someone else's job. 

The nut I couldn't crack was integrating Billy and his cat Mojo into the story. I couldn't just draw Billy meandering through history saying, "Gee, Mojo, here we are at Sun Records!" "Golly, we're on Abbey Road, do you think we'll see any Beatles?" That would have been a terrible comic. But I couldn't think of any other way to do it. Maybe nobody else could, either, and that's why it didn't happen in that form, although Charlie describes how it morphed into a later and very different Robertson book.

To hear Charlie tell it, I never really had a shot anyway. Which is fine. I had fun playing in Robertson's sandbox for a couple of days, which is all it was meant to be.

Paul Giambarba

Just a couple of days ago, I was extolling the virtues of a good obituary. Now I'm writing one, knowing it won't be good enough. I just learned from his son, Andy, that my friend Paul Giambarba died on Monday. He was 94.

I met Paul as a professional cartoonist on a private cartooning forum nearly 20 years ago. He had deeply personal experiences with cancer, including the death of his beloved first wife, Ruth, in 1978, and he thought I'd done a good job on Mom's Cancer. But cartooning was the least of Paul's talents and professions. He was a hugely influential graphic designer, author, editor, publisher, photographer, painter, printmaker, typographer, illustrator and more.

In 2006, Paul visited my hometown, where he had lived years before. We had a long lunch. Paul refused to take my money. We talked about art, careers, families, people he'd known and jobs he'd done. He was a great raconteur. I will always treasure that lunch, and we kept in touch afterward.

My lunch with Paul.

I don't really know where to start with a life and talent so large, so I'll start with Polaroid.

Beginning in 1958, Paul was Polaroid's art director for 25 years. He designed the angular rainbow-striped graphics and packaging that looked terrific stacked on a shelf and instantly branded Polaroid as more exciting, youthful and modern than its stodgy yellow-and-black competitor, Kodak. Paul's campaign was a breathtaking success. Huge! Revolutionary! Decades later, Apple followed his playbook to persuade you that Apple computers were cooler, edgier and hipper than stuffy old PCs. If you believe that, thank (or blame) Paul because he did it first. 

Paul Giambarba created that. If you're the right age, one look at those boxes really takes you back.

Some of Paul's design sketches for Polaroid

At the same time, Paul turned his photographer's eye to pushing the capabilities of the Polaroid camera--not a high-quality optical instrument by any measure--into something that could create art. While kids were snapping instant pics of each other at the beach, Paul figured out how to make the camera sing, and literally wrote the book teaching others how to make the most of it. If you ever see Polaroid prints hanging in galleries or museums, as I have, thank (or blame) Paul for that, too. 

When I said "Paul literally wrote the book," I meant "literally" literally. That's his son Andy on the cover.

Overlapping his Polaroid years, Paul and Ruth moved to Europe in 1955, an adventurous time to explore the Continent and an artistically fertile, inspirational period for Paul. With Ruth as his favorite model and muse, Paul pursued art and photography while embodying the best of Midcentury Modern graphic design in his work.

Ruth, 1959.

Greeting card collage, 1969

A few years back, Paul offered some of his prints for sale. I always loved this graphic, done as a poster for a 1972 sailing regatta in Italy, and asked to buy a small print of it. Paul refused to take my money (again) and sent me this beautiful piece, which hangs on my wall.

Following his Polaroid years, Paul was a design consultant for Tonka Toys and other corporate clients. As a cartoonist and illustrator, he was a regular contributor to Sports Illustrated, This Week, True and Spy magazines. Paul and his work were written up in many trade publications, and his list of awards from advertising, art direction, design, and graphic arts organizations is long.

Paul lived the last decades of his life on Cape Cod with his second wife, Fran. He told me that after traveling the world he felt the most at home there, and the region inspired him to do more art and write more books. Paul remained very active in what for other people might be retirement, and was remarkably open to new technologies and ideas. In particular, he embraced Photoshop--having spent most of his career doing paste-ups, layouts, color separations, typesetting, etc. the laborious, manual way--and, as he had with Polaroid half a century earlier, really pushed its capabilities to serve him instead of the other way around. 

Fran and Paul in 2008, photographed in their home by my cartoonist pal Mike Lynch.

Paul published many books of local interest through his own Scrimshaw Press.

Scratchboard art.

In more recent years, Paul enjoyed a well-deserved Renaissance of sorts, as Polaroid suddenly became hip again and people got very interested in the man who'd made it hip in the first place. Through a group called The Impossible Project, which set out to manufacture modern Polaroid film, he became the subject of documentaries and art exhibitions. The company even produced a special line of film named after him. It was a nice, graceful cap to a career he was rightly very proud of.

Have you ever in your life been this cool? Me neither.

What a tremendous honor and privilege it was to know this man--a 5-and-a-half-foot giant from the Golden Age of illustration and design. I'm sad he's gone but Wow, what a life! How lucky he was to find two great loves in Ruth and Fran, enjoy a wonderful family, and be celebrated for a career doing what he loved. 

Here are more examples of his expansive work, mostly nicked (as are many of the images above) from Paul's blogs and portfolios. What a gift.

Watercolor, Montauk Lighthouse

Watercolor. Look how he painted the smoke from that boat! Simple but elegant design work.

Kenneth Starr, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills

Donald Rumsfeld

Collage. The cover to a Spanish textbook.

A cartoon I don't know much about but think is great in its characterization and detail.

Photo of writer and artist Edward Gorey and his cat, 1981.

Photo of historian and writer David McCullough, 1980.

Ruth.

Dame Edna

Dame Edna Everage has written an "uncharitable" obituary for comic actor Barry Humphries, recently published in the Daily Telegraph. I'd normally let it pass unremarked, except that I really appreciate a good obit and (at the risk of ruining the joke) Humphries and Dame Edna were the same person, Dame Edna being Humphries's internationally famous drag persona. Dame Edna's obit of Humphries is brief but as catty, sassy, and brassy as the Dame herself. 

Obit writing can be an art. I wrote some obits way back when I worked on a newspaper and don't claim I was any good at it--I was perfunctory at best--but it made me appreciate writers who do it well. In particular, "The Economist" magazine often featured back-page obits that were masterworks of grace and style. I can't find a version that isn't behind a paywall, but read the first two grafs of this obit of watchmaker George Daniels and tell me you don't wish you could have known that man. 

I also want to note Humphries's passing because several state lawmakers have tried or are trying to ban drag performances in the presence of children. Those states include Tennessee, North Dakota, Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, Texas, West Virginia, Nebraska and South Carolina. Woe to anyone in those states who stages a performance of Shakespeare's "As You Like It," whose heroine Rosalind dresses as a boy, or runs a revival of "Some Like It Hot" or "Tootsie."

I'd have trusted Dame Edna with my children more than I'd trust 99.44% of the public servants writing and passing those laws. She was lovely.

Al Jaffee

Cartoonist Al Jaffee, best known for his decades of work on MAD Magazine, died today at the age of 102. That's a good long run but, somehow, not quite long enough. 

I was a fan. Aside from sharing that quality with everyone who knew his work, I only have one Al Jaffee story and one small insight into why he was widely beloved. 

At 2008's Comic-Con International in San Diego, I was scheduled to sign books at the Abrams booth right after Al. I showed up early. My memory is that surprisingly few people came to meet him. Fewer than a dozen. So he and I had about half an hour just to chat.

I don't remember many specifics of our conversation. I know I asked a lot of questions. But what I won't forget, and the small insight I have to offer, is that Al made me feel like a peer who deserved his full interest and attention. He was more than polite, genuinely curious about how the whole graphic novel thing worked because maybe he'd like to take a swing at it someday (while pushing 90!). He was great.

In my experience, the very best creators, the ones who have every right to stand atop Olympus and scowl down on mortals, share that generosity of spirit. Jerry Robinson, Gene Colan, Nick Meglin--all gone now--treated me like that. I doubt any of them had the faintest idea who I was or what I'd done, but there wasn't a hint they felt I didn't deserve to sit at their table. I was a cartoonist, so let's talk shop.

My big takeaway from meeting Al Jaffee: Be like Al. I do my best. 

(Photo by Editor Charlie, who published both Al and me and introduced me to most of the Olympians I've met.)

Don Rubin

Don. Photo by Peter Maresca.

My friend Don Rubin died last week, and it took me a few days to think of something fitting and good enough to say about him. Don built his reputation as a game designer and puzzle maker, creating brainteasers and graphic/textual/artistic entertainments of enormous complexity. He published many of them over the decades.

He was also in the comics business, working as an editor for publisher Peter Maresca, from whom I nicked this photo of Don because I couldn't find a good one of my own. Maresca is respected in comics circles for his oversized collections of meticulously curated and restored classic comic strips, and Don had a hand in producing those. He was driven to get it right, and could recall with great passion an instance or two when (apologies to Mr. Maresca) he thought Pete hadn't taken his guidance the way he should have. He loved and cared.

Don and I met not through our comics but through our wives, who worked together. Karen and Caroline compared notes--"Your husband makes comics? So does mine!"--and we hit it off. Don was a talker with East Coast energy and cadence. A natural storyteller. He had deeply penetrating insights into narrative and publishing, which made him someone whose word I respected and whose approval I sought. 

Don was one of only a half dozen or so people who've seen my current comics project. It's a bit odd and ambitious, and Don immediately got what I was doing and why I was doing it. "If this then that and then you can do this but what about that?" He was excited. I wish he'd lived to see it done. If it's ever published, he'll have an acknowledgment. 

I always thought that Don's great gift was seeing patterns that other people didn't. He found patterns in puzzles, stories, characters, graphics, current events. He looked at a series of panels from my new stuff and said "It's like music," which was in my head while I was drawing them but hadn't told anyone else. I once asked Don what inspired him to create a new type of puzzle. "Everything," he said. "Everything I do or see every day is raw material." His brain worked sideways from yours and mine, with wonderful results. 

Don and Caroline lost their home in the same fire we did. We didn't live near each other, the fire was just that big. I think it took a lot of wind out of his sails (as it did ours). They rebuilt like we did; the last time I saw Don was about a month ago when we brought take-out to their house for dinner. It's up in the hills, with spectacular views toward the west, and Don--who was very sick then--talked about the beauty of the terrain despite its fire scars. I'm glad that at least he made it back home to see many more magnificent sunsets. 

I'm heartsick for Caroline. For myself, I only wish I'd known Don longer and better, and had many more meals and talks together. He was the best.

EDITED TO ADD (Mostly so I hold onto it--here's Don's obit, which was published in newspapers nationwide):

April 6, 1945 - April 8, 2022 Donald Joel Rubin, one of the world's premier creators of games and puzzles, died of cancer at his home in Santa Rosa, California on April 8, 2022. Don was born April 6, 1945 in Malden, Mass. He graduated magna cum laude from Boston University's College of Communication.

His exceptional career evolved from teaching school in Maine, to serving as a creative consultant, scriptwriter, game designer, photographer, puzzler, research historian, contributing editor and writer. In the late 1980's his creation "The Real Puzzle" was first published in the Boston Phoenix, then The Real Paper, prior to its syndication in over 300 national and international newspapers and magazines through United Features Syndicate. The Real Puzzle generated so much fan mail that the U.S. Post Office gave Don his own zip code. Don became a mini expert in each field that was the focus of the weekly puzzle and attributed his creativity to a "poor diet and lack of sleep". He wrote many books including, "The Real Puzzle Book", "What's the Big Idea", "Those Incredible Puzzles", "Think Tank", "Brainstorms" and "More Brainstorms". His Parking Lot Puzzle has been called "one of the greatest puzzles of all time."

As print media gradually began to fade, Don refocused his creative genius on interactive games with original content working as a Senior Game Designer at Shockwave, Firemint, Ringzero Networks, and Electronic Arts. Don was a member of the Screen Writers Guild, with clients including Paramount Pictures, PBS NOVA, several Fortune 500 companies, and educational institutions. Don won numerous awards for editorial design, art direction, television and film design, photography, game design, advertising copywriting, and Web content development.

Although Don did not have children, he was an animal lover. At times he cared for many dogs, both his own and friends, bottle-fed a kangaroo, herded and fed cattle on an Australian working ranch, and back at home in Santa Rosa helped with the dogs, cats, chickens and bees.

Many friends sought out his keen intellect and insight into everything from current events, arts and cultural trends, to his astute reflections on everyday life. Don was a great fan of Samuel Beckett and could recite, "Waiting for Godot" in its entirety from memory, quoting recently, "I've talked with you about this and that, I explained the twilight, admittedly. But is it enough, that's what tortures me, is it enough." (Pozzo)

Don is survived by his wife, Caroline Judy, the former Director of General Services, County of Sonoma, and his brother, Harvey Rubin. A Celebration of Life event is being planned with details forthcoming. Please consider a donation in Don's name to HIAS at https://www.hias.org. 

Wayne Thiebaud

 

I emerge from the holiday to see that Wayne Thiebaud died at 101. I attended UC Davis between 1978-83, when Thiebaud was an active part of the art department and campus life. He, with artists like sculptor Robert Arneson, painter Roland Peterson and others, made Davis a respected center of the West Coast art scene. 

I didn't take a class from Thiebaud--I don't think he taught undergrads--but I know I attended the opening of at least one of his exhibitions, since attendance was part of my studio art classes' grades (I got the impression they weren't sure anybody else would show up). I'm sure I exchanged a few words with him that I don't remember. My first-hand impression confirms his reputation: he was nice, and he loved teaching. He was certainly a highly regarded artist but not quite the Great Thiebaud he would become, and it wasn't unusual to see paintings that now sell for multi-millions hanging in the Memorial Union lobby or the halls of the art building. 

I can't say how many students realized they were in the presence of a great artist--probably not many--but those of us who were aware of it really appreciated it even at the time. To me, he always represented what a university was supposed to be: not just a place you went to take some classes and get a diploma, but a community where it was perfectly ordinary to see a world-class artist (or writer or physicist) pedaling a bicycle down the street, contributing to an educational and cultural environment I didn't really appreciate until I left it. Aside from a lifelong love of Thiebaud's art, that's my takeaway from his life.

RIP Ms. Nicholas

Here's the best obituary I've read in a long time. The late Helen Nicholas of Petaluma, Calif. taught Home Economics for decades. Her obit concludes: "In lieu of flowers, please bake and enjoy Mrs. Foody's Petaluma Junior High Cinnamon Rolls with your friends and family..." and then proceeds to print the entire recipe! Fantastic! 

A good obit can be a treasure. "The Economist" magazine used to specialize in interesting, graceful obits of ordinary people who did extraordinary things (I still remember one about a watchmaker that made him sound like the Rembrandt of gears and springs). The fact that Ms. Nicholas's family marked her passing with a cinnamon roll recipe tells me more about her than another thousand words could have.

Mrs. Foody's Petaluma Junior High Cinnamon Rolls

Preheat oven to 425

Bake time 10-15 minutes

Rolls

2 C flour

1 T baking powder

1 t salt

¼ C shortening

¾ C milk

1T melted butter

Cinnamon and sugar mixture

Frosting

1 t melted butter

1 C powdered sugar

1 T water

1 t vanilla

Instructions

Stir flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Cut shortening into the bowl and mix until crumbly. Stir in milk with a fork. Roll out dough, spread melted butter over the dough. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar all over. Roll up and cut into 1 inch slices and place in a cupcake pan.

Frosting: mix all ingredients together and drizzle over warm cinnamon rolls.

I have no idea if these rolls are actually good. If anybody tries the recipe, please report back!

Guy Maniscalco

 

My barber died and I'm sad. 

Guy Maniscalco was 84-ish and had cut my hair for 21 years. He'd been a barber since 1962. Guy was East Coast Italian, old-school and charmingly profane. His favorite joke: "I'm gonna give you an 'orgasm haircut.' Girls are gonna see you walking down the street and have an orgasm."

Over the years I heard most of his life story. He left an abusive father and family very young, headed west as soon as he could, and in the 1970s opened a big (16 chair?) barbershop in San Carlos, south of San Francisco, where, to hear him tell it, he became the unofficial team barber for both the S.F. Giants and 49ers when they played at Candlestick Park. As he neared what for most people would be retirement age, he and his wife Mary sold that business and moved to the Wine Country, where he toiled in smaller and slower barber shops until finally winding up working for himself in a hole-in-the-wall he rented in an odd old commercial business park. Mary died about 10 years ago; Guy still marked every anniversary and talked things over with her urn on his mantel at home.

Guy was a friend, a good man, and the best barber I ever had, one who took a lot of pride in his work and moved with the kind of grace and efficiency you only get after you've done something a hundred thousand times. It was always a pleasure to watch such a skilled craftsman do the only thing he ever wanted to do. I'll miss him a lot.

Tom Spurgeon

With Tom at last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Like many in the comics world, I'm stunned to hear of the death of Tom Spurgeon, the Comics Reporter--journalist, writer, editor and critic whom it seems everyone in the community knew and respected.

I can't claim Tom and I were close but he was an early champion of my work going back to Mom's Cancer, and his knowledge and passion for comics were unmatched. He loved to shine light on good work that deserved attention. Tough but fair and kind.

I think we'll hear a lot of stories in the next few days from people whose lives and careers Tom made better. I'm one of them.

Adam West

I like this behind-the-scenes photo because it's a happy reminder that West wasn't Batman, he was a working actor who played Batman for a couple of years and rode a Raleigh stingray around the studio lot between scenes. And got to hug Yvonne Craig. 

I had half a mind to write up something about Adam West, until NPR's Glen Weldon did it for me. It's worth a read.

The Batman '66 series hit me at just the right time--as it did Weldon, whose age must be within a year or two of mine--to make a difference. I also ran around the neighborhood with a cape, looking for crime to fight. It's no exaggeration to say that West's Batman, along with the same era's Kirk and Spock, and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts, were as important to the development of my interests, personality, and approach to life as people who actually raised me.

West was an indispensable ingredient in my primordial soup.

I'll always treasure West's performance for one thing: I took it deadly seriously when I was a child and only realized it was a comedy when I was a teen, when I loved it all over again. I've never seen anything work on two levels as wonderfully as that. (Maybe "Peanuts," which is funny when you're a kid and melancholy when you're an adult.) For a long time, comic book readers and fans dismissed West's Batman for mocking the medium, and we still suffer through every newspaper headline about comics beginning with a "Pow!" and "Bam!" But the show was so smart and charming that opinion eventually turned, and West ended his life as a celebrated pop culture icon.

Well deserved, old chum.

Richard Thompson

Cartoonist Richard Thompson died yesterday from Parkinson's disease at age 58. Michael Cavna wrote a good obit in the Washington Post, for which Richard did a lot of work. Richard was also the genius behind the comic strip Cul de Sac, which, when it retired in 2012 because Parkinson's had made it too difficult for Richard to draw, I called the best comic strip of the 21st Century. So far, it still is.

Unlike most people, I don't throw around the word "genius" lightly. To me it means something beyond "extremely smart and talented." More like "sprung full-blown from the brow of Zeus," doing things I don't even understand how any human could do. Richard did that.

The past couple of weeks I've been writing the Comic Strip of the Day blog while its founder, Mike Peterson, recovered from surgery. Mike came back yesterday, and for my final two posts on Monday and Tuesday I republished the testimonial I posted here when Cul de Sac closed up shop. I won't re-repost it again, but here's Part 1 and Part 2. Richard died on Wednesday.

The timing was coincidental but providential. I'd heard from people close to Richard that he was in very bad shape but didn't know he was near death. I reposted that piece partly because I wanted people to think good thoughts about him, and hoped he might see it and it would make him happy. Monday's Part 1 post got a Facebook "Like" in his name. He obviously didn't push the button but someone near him did, so I'm grateful for that.

I never met Richard but we exchanged some messages over the years. He was the same with me as he was with everyone: kind, funny, generous with his time and praise. I live 3000 miles away but always hoped I'd have a chance to take him up on the cup of coffee he promised, and I don't even drink coffee. I'm pretty heartsick and gutted by his loss.

Chris Sparks started Team Cul de Sac to raise money for Parkinson's disease research in Richard's name. I contributed a drawing to a tribute book published a couple of years ago, and the group is still active at comics conventions and online, doing good work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Check them out.

I recommend two good books: The Complete Cul de Sac, which collects all of the strips in Cul de Sac's five-year run, and the Art of Richard Thompson, which, if you're an artist, will either inspire you to work harder or give up.

In addition, Picture This Press will soon release two books as part of its Richard Thompson Library: The Incompleat Art of Why Things Are, collecting Richard's illustrations for Joel Achenbach's column in the Washington Post, and Compleating Cul de Sac. 

If you're curious what a genius looks like, watch this video. I'll miss having him in the world.