For all of those people in New York who wish to attend Dave's memorial service, here's the details. Dave's memorial service is scheduled for Sunday July 19th at 12:30pm. It will be held at The Church of Scientology 227 W. 46th St. Manhattan, NY 10036. Phone 212-921-1210. Dave's family have requested that in lieu of flowers, donations to be made to the organizations that meant the most to Dave. At the top of the list is Hero Initiative . If you wish to donate in Dave's name, follow the link and go right ahead . You can find out more over at Dave's Facebook entry. the HERO Initiative are also planning a tribute. In this case they'll be running Dave's last unfinished work, details can be found here . Dave was working on the script and was getting ready to pencil the page when he passed away, Hero will be running the script along with a tribute by one of their staff members, so be sure to buy the book when it appears. I can't help but still mi

Everyone who has a passing interest in comic books knows the name Frank Miller. And if they don't know the name David Mazzucchelli then they should, or should be shot. Together Miller and Mazzucchelli created two of the finest story-arcs of the mid 1980s, first with their run on Daredevil and the Born Again storyline and then with the classic Batman: Year One, a story that redefined the mythos of the character and is still referenced and held as a benchmark today, 22 years after it's initial publication. Indeed, much like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen, Batman: Year One will more than likely never be out of print for DC as it still sells in numbers today. What isn't widely known is that Mazzucchelli wasn't the first choice of artist on the series. Despite working with Mazzucchelli at Marvel and creating one of the best series within a series seen there for decades, Miller approached a different artist to work on Batman: Year One - Trevor Von Eeden. At th

Not sure where I've scanned this one from - more likely an issue of The Comic Reader, where a lot of Fred Hembeck's art appears. Nice to see a colour Hembeck! 'Superheroes In Their Underpants!' Classic Hembeck - this print came with the first thousand issues of The Hembeck File (now reprinted in Fred's own excellent Essential Omnibus Archive volume). As with anything by Hembeck, this one is well worth a peek and I'd be curious to know who owns the original art these days.

These things are best written down while the memory is still fresh in the mind, plus it’s good therapy and helps put things on the record. This short interview with Dave was done back in February, 2009. Dave’s idea was to do an update to our first ever interview, done in 2004, to update where he was professionally, and because we both knew each other a lot better now. There was a lot that Dave wanted to talk about. What had triggered him was my short, but intense, confrontation with the ‘editors’ at Wikipedia over Dave’s entry on the site. Dave had approached me to write an entry for him on the Wiki with the intention of raising his profile, and possibly increasing his chances of getting more commission work. I had no problem with this, and hey – it was Dave – so I went to work and began to write his entry and posted the first draft on the Wiki site itself. It was promptly removed with the excuse given that Dave wasn’t ‘inherently notable’ as he was merely a comic book artist.

I hate this. Seriously I do. It's been no secret that Dave Simons has been seriously ill for a number of years now and it's with the heaviest heart of them all that I sadly have to report that Dave passed away tonight. He was 54 years old. In his career Dave worked with some of the giants of animation and comic books. He was one of the best inkers to work with Gene Colan since Tom Palmer, a fact that Dave was damned happy to hear, especially when that praise came from Gene. He worked with Bob Budiansky on one of the best runs seen on Ghost Rider in the books life, and beyond. He worked with almost anyone you care to mention. His attention to detail and apparent inability to turn in a bad job held him in excellent stead and made him one of the go-to inkers of his generation. His generosity to others was known amongst his peers and there's several inkers and artists who'll happily tell you that Dave helped them along their way and gave them a start in their c

This post will be absolutely no interest to anyone unless they've got even a remote interest in me and when I was born, which narrows the audience down to a handful. In fact I expect I could count that audience on one hand with several fingers left over. Over the past few years I've been buying a pile of these TV Guides, mainly because they can fetch handsome sums on the collectors market. The past few hundred that I've bought all come from the same collection and span the years from 1961 through to around 1991. Great collection, and, to be totally honest, I've made quite a few dollars from them. Still I've been seeking the one issue that we all look for - the magazine that comes from the date of your birth. This weekend I hit pay dirt. In the collection that I recently bought I found an issue that has the date of my birth - 25th of August, 1967. Finally I can see what was on TV at the moment of my birth, and what was on that day in general. A quick phone cal

It's now official. After months of hard work and preparation the official web-site for artist/writer Trevor Von Eeden is now LIVE!! On the site you'll find previously unseen art, a massive section devoted to the genesis of Black Lightning, scripts, pencil art and much, much more. Trevor has also supplied a lot of behind the scenes material in the form of memories and more, so visit and keep going back - more will be going up all the time.

I was very, very happy to get this one in the mail this morning. This is issue #6 of the Horwitz series, Strange Tales and the book is virtually a straight reprint of Journey Into Mystery #88. The best part about this comic is the cover - but then I believe that the Maurice Bramley covers are always the best things about the Horwitz books and this is no exception. The cover itself is not so much a Bramley swipe, but an adaption of the original splash page as drawn by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. The key, as it is with virtually all of Bramley's covers, is in the detail. You could argue, and probably quite successfully, that Kirby's original art is very dynamic, but it does lack the sheer detail that Bramley managed to insert into his cover - and if you think I'm joking then check out the detail, even down to the boots. The one aspect that does let Bramley down is the static pose that he's placed Thor in. His Loki works far better but this is still a splendid cove