Go, Read: Ryan Sands On The Passing Of Jerry Fellows

Ryan Sands returned to the Same Hat blog this week with a fine post on the passing of manga/anime fandom pioneer Jerry Fellows. Fellows was part of a trio that made one of the first 'zine-style reactions to a Japanese comics and cartoon property. Sands does a fine job of tracing what Fellows did, why this is important, and what specifically fascinates him about people like Fellows.

One of the things I've found slightly unfortunate in comics is the reduction of careers and contributions to personal relationships, perhaps most frequently finding expression in the "I met that guy at a con in 1994 and he was nice" stand-ins for more considered appreciations of the careers of cartoonists and industry members that pop up everywhere when someone of note passes away. This can be a terribly difficult thing to negotiate, because there's a razor-thin line between wanting a different approach to our appraisal of lives and careers and denigrating in some way the people whose primary contributions were in the fan community, people that are not only sons and daughters and mentors and friends to people that might be reading but folks who did important things that are just a bit harder to track than more standard career accomplishments. I think Sands provides a model for a way to approach the life of this kind of contributor, and I was grateful for the chance to learn about him.
 
posted 5:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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