CR Sunday Magazine

A Few More Things on the Passing of Jay Kennedy

* a collective memory entry rounding up links related to Jay Kennedy and his passing on March 15 can be found here.

* Bill Griffith wrote in to say a Zippy tribute strip to Kennedy will run on April 9. He sent along a copy and it's sweet and sad. I thought about excerpting it here, but I don't want to aggravate King or make a presumption on Griffith's behalf. I regret not mentioning Zippy the Pinhead in the CR obituary. While the strip was at King Features before Kennedy got there, Kennedy was an ardent supporter, was actively involved in its editing and promotion from his first days inside the offices which meant he had a 20-year relationship with the strip, and it's no secret that the strip being there was part of King's appeal to Jay, something Griffith mentions in his April 9 installment.

* two personal essays about interacting with Jay Kennedy have been added to the CR site: the great underground comics historian Patrick Rosenkranz recounts a funny and revealing series of encounters here; a section that was going to be included in this site's obituary about what Kennedy was like as an editor, later excised, has been expanded and made its own entry here.

* another regret I have is that in my obituary I didn't find a place to emphasize his enthusiasm for politics and journalism, which multiple people mentioned and which were passions that Kennedy held without making him a strident or off-putting person, a major life achievement in and of itself. He was one of the few comics lifers with an obvious well-rounded perspective that fed and did not diminish his interest in the form.

* I hope now that ten days have passed and because of Kennedy's interest in journalism that he won't mind if I suggest two future stories related to his passing for which you should keep an eye out: how King Features moves on personnel-wise, and the eventual fate of Kennedy's world-class collection.

*****

Five Link A Go Go

* the Washington Post offers a stupendously content-heavy Tom Toles archive.

* the folks who post to the Engine look at a week's worth of largely inarticulate (that goes double for me) postings about 1970s comics and begin listing comics from that era that are valuable and/or worthy of rediscovery. It always interests me that those discussions still involve a lot of reclaiming or rehabilitating childhood memories and perspectives, whereas discussion of 1970s films by film buffs of the same age probably wouldn't spend as much time pointing out the good elements of The Apple Dumpling Gang or The Bad News Bears.

* Abhay Khosla's running commentary on the month in comics is always worth a read, even though he hates on me a little bit, by association, and it made me cry in a sitting with my back against a row of lockers around the corner from the high school dance sort of way.

* a pair of people people have written in to mention that Ralph Steadman did one of those shows on C-Span through Book TV.org in January, and that it's likely something that many people may want to keep an eye out for via their local listings if it works it way through the broadcast schedule once again.

* one thing about accidentally dropping The Watcher's web site from your permanent links page -- like Santa, he knows about it immediately. This mention will hopefully remind me to add it back in.

*****

Go, Look: Koren Shadmi



*****

First Thought Of The Day
Last night, on the way home from the movies, we stopped by Wal-Mart to pick up a package of bandages that no one else in town carries. And there were a lot of young people there. Young people that had apparently come to Wal-Mart on dates.

panel from a 2006 Zippy
 
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