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November 20, 2019


Tom Spurgeon, 1968-2019

By Douglas Wolk

Tom Spurgeon, the writer and editor of The Comics Reporter, died November 13, at
the age of 50. For the second half of his life, he was an extraordinary presence
in American comics, as a chronicler of the medium and the industry around it, a
critic, a convention organizer, and a nexus point for the comics community.

Born December 16, 1968, Spurgeon grew up in a media-immersed household in
Muncie, Indiana: his father was a newspaper editor and reporter, and his mother
ran a public-relations business. In high school, Spurgeon was his class
president; in college, at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, he was a
lineman on the football team. According to the cartoonist Dan Wright, his friend
for over 40 years, Spurgeon initially planned to go to law school after he
graduated, but decided to attend Illinois' Garrett-Evangelical Theological
Seminary instead. He never went into the ministry, but the pastoral impulse
stayed with him.

After several years at seminary and a brief stint working for QVC in
Pennsylvania, Spurgeon moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1994, to become the
managing editor (and later executive editor) of The Comics Journal. Eric
Reynolds, then the magazine's news editor and now the associate publisher of
Fantagraphics Books, says he and Spurgeon bonded quickly, and remained close
ever after: "He was probably my best friend in the comic book business. He was a
really good conceptual thinker, and had a really good eye for hiring talent for
the Journal, but he was also a procrastinator. I was the reporter, and more
detail-oriented than he was. But we complemented each other really well."

The Journal won four consecutive Eisner Awards for Best Comics-Related
Periodical, from 1996 through 1999, and Spurgeon quickly gained a reputation in
the comics community as a mensch and a wit. ("He pretty much won Halloween every
year," Reynolds recalls. "One year, he was Big Boy, from Bob's Big Boy--he
somehow made an actual giant hamburger that he took to a party.") Spurgeon could
be difficult, and liked to argue, but seems to have rarely fallen out with
anyone for good. If he challenged you, it probably meant he trusted you to rise
to the challenge.

In that spirit, he convinced a number of his friends to make creative and
professional leaps. As Dan Wright was approaching 30 and working as a graphic
designer, he says, "I told Tom that I wanted to do something beyond a provincial
approach to art. Tom said, 'you know, Dan, you should think about syndicated
cartooning. You might have to learn how to write, but you've got the chops to do
it.'" After Spurgeon mailed Wright books of classic comic strips to study,
Wright developed a Christian-themed funny animal strip, initially titled Bobo's
Progress and later Wildwood, and brought Spurgeon in to write it with him. It
was syndicated by King Features from 1999, the year Spurgeon left the Journal,
to 2002.

Spurgeon collaborated on the 2003 biography Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of
the American Comic Book with Jordan Raphael, who had met him as a summer intern
at The Comics Journal in 1995. Once the book was published, Raphael built this
web site as a vehicle for Spurgeon's writing, funded by advertising. The Comics
Reporter launched October 11, 2004, with Spurgeon's thoughts on a recent
bestseller chart, an annotated pointer to a news announcement, an obituary for
Christopher Reeve, and some slyly worded links to stories elsewhere ("Edmonton
Paper Celebrates Four-Page Graphic Novel; Dave Sim Develops Face Tic").

The Comics Reporter is where Spurgeon really made his mark, and he continued to
post here almost every day for the rest of his life: news items, reviews,
commentary, provocations, announcements of comics shows, and birthday
congratulations to seemingly everyone associated with the medium. Some of his
best writing here was personal writing, about the intersection of comics with
his own life. In his interviews, he asked tough, complicated questions that
almost invariably drew out long and thoughtful answers. Even his service
journalism (holiday shopping guides, tips for enjoying Comic-Con International)
was often a delight to read.

Spurgeon had strong opinions--his writing could flicker from withering dismissal
to infectious awe in a few lines--and open eyes. He had a bottomless reserve of
knowledge about and enthusiasm for every kind of comics he could get his hands
on, including newspaper strips and editorial cartoons. When he mentioned
creators on The Comics Reporter, or linked to their work, they felt seen and
championed. In particular, he made a habit of advocating for promising
cartoonists who were just starting out, connecting them with gigs and raising
their profile. He reserved some of his most stinging comments for his
assessments of his own work, including The Comics Reporter; nonetheless, it won
Eisner Awards for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism in 2010, 2012 and
2013.

While The Comics Reporter was running, Spurgeon continued to write elsewhere,
sometimes about comics and sometimes not. (For a while, he wrote business
articles for a pharmaceutical trade magazine edited by his friend Gil Roth.)
Spurgeon began work on an oral history of Fantagraphics Books, We Told You So:
Comics as Art, in the mid-2000s; it spent around a decade in limbo before it
finally appeared in 2016, co-credited to Michael Dean. ("That book was a great
testament to our friendship," Eric Reynolds says, "because I think it would have
ruined a lot of less strong friendships.") He also wrote the text for the 2011
art book The Romita Legacy, about the artists John Romita, Sr., and John Romita,
Jr., but noted in 2013 that he'd "never seen a copy of that Romita Legacy
book--long story, all my fault."

For most of the early years of The Comics Reporter, Spurgeon was living in
Silver City, New Mexico, relatively physically isolated but a prolific
correspondent. "Tom kept in touch with everyone--people from kindergarten and
seminary and his college fraternity, and all the different lives that he'd
lived," says Caitlin McGurk, Associate Curator and Assistant Professor at the
Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. McGurk also credits her own career
path to Spurgeon's encouragement: "Tom took me seriously, and the fact that he
took me seriously meant that other people took me seriously."

In 2011, Spurgeon had a near-fatal medical crisis, about which he wrote a
remarkable essay on this site. His friends observe that his brush with death had
a profound effect on him, and that after he recuperated, he became more serious
about what he wanted to accomplish with his life. He moved to Columbus, Ohio, in
March 2015, to take a job as executive director of the annual convention Cartoon
Crossroads Columbus; he had friends waiting there to help him unload his U-Haul
truck full of longboxes.

Almost immediately, Spurgeon became a fixture of the city's comics community.
"Showing up was important to him," McGurk says. "Tom showed up to everything. If
there was an obscure Turkish comics scholar giving a brown-bag lunch talk on a
Tuesday, Tom would show up. At parties, he would find his place to sit for the
evening, and he would just hold court."

Spurgeon had a broad range of enthusiasms he could discuss with the same robust,
informed intelligence he brought to comics--history, movies, basketball,
theater, horse-racing--but he was most interested in the people he was talking
to. "No matter what the conversation was," McGurk says, "he would interrupt at
some point and say 'how are you doing, though?' Emphasis on the you. He wanted
to know about people's lives, even if he didn't know them very well."

In the Columbus years, Spurgeon wrote somewhat less for The Comics Reporter;
often, it was mostly links and images. One feature he took care to update,
though, was "Comics By Request," in which he catalogued and commented on
projects and creators in need of money. And, even more than before, he devoted
his gifts to watching out for comics creators' health and well-being. An
unrealized goal he often brought up with friends was starting a union for
cartoonists.

Back in 2012, Tom asked me if I would write a short obituary for him if he were
to die while The Comics Reporter was still running ("like if I got eaten by a
shark on my way to San Diego Con 2015," he wrote). It's strange to have words
that aren't Tom's as the first ones readers encounter at a site whose voice was
so completely and extensively his. It was a relief, though, to learn that The
Comics Reporter will be preserved by several different online archives. You may
be reading this a few weeks after Tom Spurgeon's death, or years later, or long
after everyone who knew him is gone. If you're coming to this site for the first
time, I urge you to explore it, so you can see for yourself why we have reason
to envy each other. You have our future, but we had Tom.

Photo Credit: Photo by Tony Amat Copyright 2013 SDCC
 
posted 5:00 am PST | Permalink
 


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November 13, 2019


The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events



By Tom Spurgeon
 
posted 3:25 pm PST | Permalink
 


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If I Were In NYC, I’d Go To This


 
posted 3:20 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 61st Birthday, Edd Vick!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 46th Birthday, Anders Nilsen!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 36th Birthday, Jen Vaughn!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 51st Birthday, Brad Mackay!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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November 12, 2019


If I Were In Seattle, I’d Go To This


 
posted 3:20 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* for no particular reason, to the left is a panel from the old
Claremont/Byrne/Austin run on late 1970s/early 1970s X-Men comics, with
Wolverine in his all-encompassing Fonz phase. Those were frequently effective
comics.
 
posted 3:05 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 72nd Birthday, Doug Murray!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 48th Birthday, Sara Ryan!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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November 11, 2019


Bundled, Tossed, Untied, Stacked: Publishing News


 
posted 3:25 pm PST | Permalink
 


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If I Were In Berkeley, I’d Go To This


 
posted 3:20 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* here's an interview with that nice man and skilled comic-book writer Brian
Michael Bendis about the current attempt to reboot Legion Of Super-Heroes.
That's one of DC's broadly appealing and easy to grasp concepts, and should be
something the company does well in the same way that the X-Men books should be a
strength for Marvel. I am a spectacularly bad customer for its standard mix of
nostalgic reverie for traditional square-jaw super-heroics and kids-culture
values of the broadest sort, but I sured like reading optimistic super-kid
stories when I was a young man and would imagine a lot of kids could make use of
something like that now that the future has become conceivably shorter and
potentially more depressing.

* finally: it's hard for me to figure out the benefit of making stand-alone
creative efforts into their own "universe" of stories. I know some people
believe these companies shouldn't be precious about this kind of thing, but it
always seems to dissipate some of the energy those wider storylines bring to the
table. Seems like sloppy resource management.
 
posted 3:05 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 67th Birthday, Carl Potts!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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November 10, 2019


Comics By Request: People, Places In Need Of Funding

By Tom Spurgeon

* names you may have heard of, at varying levels of initial success: Brian
Pulido, Chuck Dixon, Michael Jantze.

* here's another cartoonist of repute: Ted Rall.

* two long-running campaign followed by this site feature Larry Shell and Jim
Wheelock.

* finally: people continue to donate to Gahan Wilson's care.
 
posted 3:25 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Go, Look: Children’s Rights At Cartoon Movement


 
posted 3:20 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Go, Look: Why It’s Got To Be Bernie


 
posted 3:10 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* this Gretchen Felker-Martin essay about the appeal of the Marvel movies coming
from elements of their creation that are less than exemplary has received a
great deal of attention and has something to say about that enormously
successful series of films. They inform the perception of the comics, at the
very least. It's interesting to read analysis tht makes a strong distinction
about elements unique to the film because I think the comics have a completely
different set of virtues.

* here's an excerpt from Daybreak, Brian Ralph's graphic novel that inspired a
TV show of the same now. I don't know anyone that recognizes the comic in the TV
show, but I know a lot of people that Ralph makes as much money as possible from
the show.

* J. Caleb Mozzocco on War Bears. Eddie Campbell on Screwball! The Cartoonists
Who Made The Funnies Funny. Leonard Pierce on This Is What Democracy Looks Like.
Noah Berlatsky on Wonder Woman Volume One: The Just War.

* finally: Bill Leak's son Johnnes will fill the cartoonist position at The
Australian.
 
posted 3:05 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 39th Birthday, Will Dinski!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 42nd Birthday, Derek M. Ballard!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 43rd Birthday, Steve Ekstrom!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Happy 50th Birthday, James Owen!


 
posted 3:00 pm PST | Permalink
 


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November 9, 2019


Go, Look: Bill Sienkiewicz Imagery


 
posted 3:30 pm PST | Permalink
 


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If I Were In Seattle, I’d Go To This


 
posted 3:20 pm PST | Permalink
 


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Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives









CR Reviews

• Pittsburgh
• Frontier #18 (Tiffany Ford)
• A Fistful Of Drawings
• Heroes For Hire #5
• The Beagle Boys #36
• VIEW ARCHIVES







CR News

• Do You Know Me? TCAF 2017 Exhibitors In Unidentified Photos
• The Collected Notes From The Comic-Con International Floor, 2013
• Ongoing Link List To Publishing News Stories From San Diego’s Comic-Con
International 2013
• Kim Thompson, 1956-2013
• Albert Weinberg, 1922-2011
• VIEW ARCHIVES


CR Interviews

• News Interview: Matthew James-Wilson
• CR Sunday Interview: Eric Reynolds
• CR Sunday Interview: Joe Decie
• VIEW ARCHIVES


CR Letters

• Michael Grabowski On Laundry Land As A Habit-Changer For Alt-Comics Consumers
• Jim Salicrup On Russ Heath’s Last Comics Works
• Brad Bartkus On People Having Beefs With The Lenticular Process
• Mike Catron On TCJ’s Long Ago Coverage Of Wally Wood’s Passing
• Ivan Brunetti On His Informal Lecture In Chicago, March 28
• VIEW ARCHIVES

Send e-mail to tom@comicsreporter.com

CR Commentary

• Welcome To Nerd Vegas: A Guide To Visiting Comic-Con International 2014 (The
Placeholder Edition)
• The Comics Reporter Planned Convention And Festival Schedule For 2014
• The Comics Reporter Group-Facilitated Reconsideration List, 2013
• Comic-Con Coping Guide 2013—180 Tips To Survive And Thrive San Diego Con
Weekend!
• Photos From The Matt Fraction Hawkguy Sandy-Relief Signing At House Of Secrets
In Burbank
• VIEW ARCHIVES


Bart Beaty's Conversational
Euro-Comics

• Conversational Euro-Comics: Bart Beaty On The Angouleme 2012 Program Sent Out
This Week
• Conversational Euro-Comics: Bart Beaty On Kolor Klimax
• Conversational Euro-Comics: Bart Beaty On The Recent, Slyly Revealing Diary
Comics Of David B.
• Conversational Euro-Comics: Bart Beaty On Recent Work From Lewis Trondheim
• Conversational Euro-Comics: Bart Beaty On Jean-Christophe Menu Leaving
L’Association
• VIEW ARCHIVES



CR Calendar, Dates, Events

• Forthcoming Comics-Related Events For January 2020 And Beyond
• List Of Columbus (Ohio) Comics Shops
• Crystal Ball: Scheduled Books and Major Releases
• VIEW ARCHIVES


CR Comics 101

• A Brief Overview
• Buying Comics
• Getting Published—Comic Books
• Making Mini-Comics
• Getting Published—Comic Strips
• Reading Mini-Comics
• test post


Collective Memory

• Ted Stearn, 1961-2019
• Batton Lash, 1953-2019
• Best Comics And Graphic Novels Lists For 2018
• Marie Severin, 1929-2018
• Harlan Ellison, 1934-2018
• VIEW ARCHIVES

Lists and Links

• Books About Comics
• The Comics Registry
• Comics Creators And Related, All On Patreon
• North American Comics Shows (Plus)


 

Original content ©2023 Tom Spurgeon. All rights reserved.
All bylined articles and art/statements utilized through Fair Use and are
©2023 their respective copyright holders.
Portrait of "Spurge" by Sam Henderson.
Logo courtesy of Eric Reynolds.