Tom Spurgeon, R.I.P.

The comic art community is struggling today to process this piece of bad news: The passing of comic book/strip journalist Tom Spurgeon at the age of either 50 or 51 depending on which news site you believe. Tom's own news site, The Comics Reporter, always got this kind of thing right and I hope someone will continue it. I also hope others will try to emulate what he did there, which was to be smart and perceptive and responsible. He was the best at which he did.

I think I first came to know Tom in the mid-nineties when he was editor of The Comics Journal, a post for which he collected an awful lot of Eisner Awards. He walked that narrow, sometimes difficult line of taking comics seriously without forgetting that they were, after all, comics. After leaving that position, he wrote a lot of very fine articles about comics and three books: Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book (written with Jordan Raphael), Comics As Art: We Told You So and The Romita Legacy, saluting John Romita Sr. I recommend them all to you, not just for what you'll learn about their subjects but what's there to learn about how to write about comics.

He was generous with his time and talent, and I can't imagine anyone who knew the man or his work who isn't saddened by this news.