Via John Stangeland at Atlas Comics in Chicago: Rich Vitone, an early and frequent contributor to the Jack Kirby Collector, passed away at age 56.

Despite numerous phone conversations with Rich, and many articles for the Kirby Collector, I only got to meet Rich in person once. It was after a Chicago Comic-Con in the 1990s; we drove over to his comic store and my wife Pam and I spent a delightful afternoon chatting with him. I remember asking, “Rich, why don’t you ever actually go to the Con, since it’s right here in town?” His response was, “I do comics all day, every day; why would I want to spend my free time at a comic convention?” But this curmudgeonly response wasn’t really genuine, since Rich was a devoted Kirby fan, especially of Jack’s Golden Age work—and he spent much of his free time writing some of our most interesting and informative articles on Kirby’s work.

It’s a big loss, for me, and for Kirby fans everywhere.

Check it out; latest issues of Alter Ego and Back Issue are both now shipping. Subscribers, you should’ve already gotten your links to the FREE digital edition of each issue a week or so ago, and the copies are in the mail, and on the way (and with the US Postal Service’s track record, they’ll hopefully be there before the next issues ship).

Tomorrow, Jan. 16, is a pretty important day around Casa de dos Morrows. It’s (not necessarily in order of importance, except for the first one):

Pam and my 23rd wedding anniversary

20th anniversary of the day we started TwoMorrows Advertising (our original business before we added publishing to it in 1994)

Pam’s parents’ wedding anniversary (I believe it’s 64 years; have to check)

Pam’s godmother’s birthday (she’d be, if I recall correctly, 124 tomorrow if she were still with us; alas, she ONLY made it to 103)

As you can see, January 16 is pretty significant to us. I, naturally, have sprung for a babysitter, and I’m heading out for a night on the town! (And to clarify that last statement, yes, Pam is going with me…)

So tomorrow, I hope you’ll all go out and have a little fun in honor of the occasion. Enjoy the day!

Mike Sekowsky rocks, and rocks hard. If you don’t agree, you’re simply wrong, wrong, wrong.

Case in point: over the last two weeks, I dug out my collection of Sekowsky Wonder Woman comics (#178-196, plus two reprint issues in #197-198), and pored over the luscious Sekowsky/Giordano art (and yes, Dick G’s inks were a big part of what made the art so lovely). I haven’t read those issues in a few years, so it was almost like reading them for the first time. And my opinion still holds; these are some of the best comics of the 1970s, or any decade.

I was never a fan of Wonder Woman, and apparently neither were most readers of the day, since they made the commercial decision to make a drastic change in Diana Prince from costumed/super-powered heroine in an invisible robot plane, to powerless/go-go-boots wearing/martial arts master, who hung out with an intriguing Asian mentor named I-Ching. Sekowsky not only drew those issues, he edited and scripted most of them (after a kick-start on the dialogue by Denny O’Neil). There’s not a bad issue in the batch, but a few really shine above the others. They guy could not only draw, he could WRITE!

I’ve long loved Sekowsky’s work, but have known so very little about him. Since I was on a Sekowsky high from all that reading, I queried Mark Evanier (who knew Big Mike and worked with him later in the animation field before his death in the late 1980s), and Mark graciously spent a solid hour on the phone talking about the multi-talented creator, filling me in on the history of perhaps the most under-rated artist in comics history. (Thanks, Mark!)

These Wonder Woman issues were always sort of a joke with my fellow comics fans as a kid, but only those who never actually read them. Shortly after Sekowsky was taken off the book, she reverted back to her super-powered, costumed self, and she got, frankly, boring again. But I see that some wise person up at DC finally decided to reprint all those Sekowsky issues in a series of trade paperbacks a year or so ago. You can find them on Amazon.com and other places, and I heartly recommend you get ’em.

Me, I’ve got the originals, and would never part with them. I’m about to dig out all his issues of Adventure Comics (with Supergirl stories), Metal Men, and Showcase I’ve got socked away in boxes, and re-experience all that fun stuff too. And then, I’m going on a new crusade to track down as much of the Sekowsky material from that era I’m missing as possible. Under some inkers’ brushes, the work lacked the polish that Giordano brought to the work, but the storytelling was always first-rate.

Here’s to “Big Mike” Sekowsky, a true gem of comics Silver Age!

After an absolutely fabulous two solid weeks without touching a computer or generating a single e-mail, the TwoMorrows crew is back to work today, fully recharged and energized! I’ve just finished plotting out our publishing schedule more or less through April 2011, which’ll see a number of exciting new books, as well as increased frequency and the addition of color to our current magazine line.

Thanks for everyone’s patience while we were closed the last couple of weeks, and I hope you’re having a Happy New Year. We’re working diligently to get caught up on answering voice and email messages that came in while we were on vacation, and will be spending this week frantically shipping all the orders that accumulated. And hey, maybe I’ll even concentrate on more frequent postings here this year. (Soon as I get the new Jack Kirby Collector to press, that is…)

The Fox News station in San Diego ran a really nice feature on Shel Dorf, my friend, and founder of the San Diego Comic-Con. It’s here:

http://www.fox5sandiego.com/news/kswb-shel-dorf,0,658394.story

In case you haven’t heard, Shel passed away this week. Shel was a big supporter of the Jack Kirby Collector from its early days, and of course a close friend of the Kirby family. My wife Pam and I had the privilege of visiting Shel at his home after a San Diego Con in the mid-1990s, and man, what a treasure trove of comics memorabilia he had there. (Shel lettered for Milton Caniff, and he had a lot of comic STRIP material around; maybe more than comic BOOK material.)

He was a delightful host that day, showing us all around the beautiful beach town he lived in. We got to have some very interesting conversations over the years, and Shel entrusted me with a lot of photos he took at Comic-Con over the years, with the hope that we’d help preserve them and publish them in our books and mags. With his passing, that responsibility hits home even harder.

My sense was that he was really astonished to see what his little “West Coast Comic-Con” morphed into over the years, being somewhat impressed by its current size and scope, but a little dismayed that it’d gotten quite so large. I know he had stopped coming the last few years, because he couldn’t handle all the walking around it required.

Y’know, this is a really weird time of life for me. I’ve been doing this publishing thing for 15 years now, and I’ve been blessed to make so many really nice friends while doing something I absolutely love. It’s just been the best experience, and for so long it seemed like they’d always be around, ready to pick up a conversation the next time we saw them (which, in many cases, would only be at the next year’s comic convention). But now, 15 years into this, each passing year seems to bring the loss of someone else that I didn’t really get to know well enough before they left us. For so long, this stuff was just fun, fun, fun for the most part. But losses like this really do temper it, I’ve gotta say.

I’m really glad I got to know Shel. But now I realize it wasn’t enough time to really *know* him, y’know? I just wish I had a few more Comic-Cons with him there, to get to know him even better. I really do miss him.

Thanks to Terrence Sanford for alerting me to the Fox piece on Shel.

Now through the end of November, all in-stock MODERN MASTERS books are on sale for just $10 each! Where else can you get that comics fan on your holiday gift list (or yourself) such an enjoyable present for ten bucks? Take your pick from volumes on these top artists:

Alan Davis
George Pérez
Bruce Timm
Kevin Nowlan
José Luis Garciá-López
John Byrne
Mike Wieringo
Kevin Maguire
Charles Vess
Michael Golden
Jerry Ordway
Frank Cho
Mark Schultz
Mike Allred
Lee Weeks
John Romita Jr.
Mike Ploog
Kyle Baker
Chris Sprouse

Sorry, our volumes on Arthur Adams and Walter Simonson are sold out (although we plan to do new printings of them soon).

WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Do you want us to add color to the print editions of our magazines ALTER EGO, BACK ISSUE, and DRAW! (with a corresponding cover price increase)? Or keep them black and white? Please CHOOSE ONE:

* Keep ’em black & white and stay $6.95 per issue
* Make 16 of the pages full-color, for $7.95 per issue
* Make the whole issue full-color, for $8.95 per issue

There’s two ways to vote. You can click here to go to our Yahoo group and vote in about 3 seconds (requires you to sign-in to a free Yahoo account if you don’t already have one):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/twomorrows/surveys?id=2918875

Or just send us an email with one of the three choices in the body of it. The email address is:

twomorrow@aol.com

Please let us know what you think; your vote will help us shape the future of our mags! Thanks for taking time to respond.

John Morrow, publisher

Now through October 31, 2009, all our “COMPANION” books are on sale for 30% off. This includes:

All-Star Companion, Volumes 2-4 (by Roy Thomas)
Batcave Companion (by Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg)
Best of the Legion Outpost (by Glen Cadigan)
Blue Beetle Companion (by Christopher Irving)
Comic Book Podcast Companion (by Eric Houston)
Flash Companion (by Keith Dallas)
Hawkman Companion (by Doug Zawisza)
Justice League Companion (by Michael Eury)
Krypton Companion (by Michael Eury)
Silver Age Sci-Fi Companion (by Mike W. Barr)
Titans Companion, Vol. 2 (by Glen Cadigan)
THUNDER Agents Companion (by Jon B. Cooke)

We’ve also just added a new, lower “flat rate” shipping option for international customers, making it much more economical for overseas readers to place larger orders.

The sale is only valid for orders placed online through the end of October, so click on the huge “COMPANION SALE” banner atop our home page for a listing of the books on sale.

Our half-price magazine sale ends tomorrow (Sept. 30), and what a sale it’s been! We put nearly 300 issues at 50% off, and have been overwhelmed with the response (to the point that we’ve been running about a week behind on shipping; we’ve managed to cut it down to about 3 days behind as of this writing, so thanks to all our customers for their patience!).

For a long time, we’ve been hearing from our international customers about how expensive shipping from the US is, but haven’t found a solution. We currently offer First Class Mail International service for packages weighing up to 4 lbs., and anything larger than that has to go by Priority Mail International (which is fast, but much more expensive). That’s all the US Postal Service offered us (they did away with “surface” mail more than a year ago)—or so I thought. A very savvy overseas customer mentioned “M-bags” to me the other day, and I honestly had never heard of them.

After some investigating, I discovered M-bags are ideal for overseas packages weighing at least 11 lbs. (you can ship less than that amount, but you get charged the full 11 lb. rate), and up to 66 lbs. They’re slow (6-8 week delivery, like the old “Surface Mail”), but much cheaper. So now, we’ve got a much less expensive international shipping option for packages larger than 4 lbs.