Tributes to the Late Harvey Pekar

Trailblazing autobiographical comics creator Harvey Pekar died last Sunday at the age of 70. Pekar was known for his long-running autobiographical comic American Splendor, which was adapted into a movie in 2003 starring Paul Giamatti. Some of the notable comics figures, blogs and media outlets sharing their tributes were PW Comics Week’s own Heidi MacDonald, Tom Spurgeon on The Comics Reporter, National Public Radio, Dan DiDio and Jim Lee of DC Comics—Pekar’s most recent publisher, Comics Alliance and The Comics Journal.

Webcomics Art Auction for Gulf

Artist and animator Carly Monardo of Cartoon Network’s Venture Brothers has organized an auction of art and comics from webcomics creators and pop artists to benefit the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of the BP oil spill. Featured contributors include Kate Beaton of Hark, A Vagrant!, Phil and Kaja Foglio of Girl Genius, Christopher Hastings of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Dean Trippe of Project Rooftop and pop artist Brandon Bird. Auctions end soon, so bidders are encouraged to hurry.

Sikoryak and Kartalopoulos MoCCA Talk

Comics creator R. Sikoryak and comics scholar and curator Bill Kartalopoulos will appear in a live discussion at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City. The event will take place at 7 p.m. on July 15 at the Museum itself. Admission is $5 and free for MoCCA members. More information is available on the MoCCA website. MoCCA is located at 594 Broadway, Suite 401, New York, NY between Houston and Prince streets.

Vietnamese Comics iTunes Scam

At the beginning of July, iTunes users began to notice that an astonishingly large percentage of the top 50 books on the iTunes app store – 42 out of 50, to be exact – were comic books in Vietnamese offered by the same seller, “mycompany”. Not only that, but the translated comics in question were pirated editions. Now Apple has confirmed that about 400 iTunes users had their accounts hacked and found that they had supposedly spent up to several thousand dollars each on these books. Apple representatives have assured customers that in the future, the program will ask customers to reenter their credit card information more often in the hopes it will prevent such fraud. Thuat Nguyen, the developer behind the apps, has been removed from iTunes entirely. The comics pirated as part of this fraud include Dragon Ball-Z and Case Closed aka Detective Conan.

Wally Wood's 22 Frames That Always Work—the Movie

“22 Frames That Always Work”, the classic cartooning guide by comics great Wally Wood has been translated into a live action short film. The video 22 Frames That Always Work was directed by Anne Lukeman and is available online here. Link courtesy of Boingboing.

Kirby Krackle's Wolverine Tribute Music Video

Comic book band Kirby Krackle has released a music video tribute to Wolverine entitled “On and On”, which can be viewed online here. More details can be found in an article upon the subject at Robot Six.

This Week @ Good Comics For Kids

This week School Library Journal’s blog Good Comics for Kids had reviews of Arata: The Legend Vol. 1&2, One Fine Day Vol. 1, a preview of the new comic Disney Hero Squad: Ultraheroes Vol. 2, the 7/08 listing of comics suitable for all ages and a new feature – The Reading Pile.

This Week @ The Beat

This week PWCW editor Heidi MacDonald’s blog The Beat covered the death of Harvey Pekar, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross taking on some of Jack Kirby's recently discovered pitches, the 2010 Harvey award nominees, a new comic in the New York Times from Art Spiegelman, Diamond's market share and top 10 comic sales numbers, manga publisher Tokyopop joining free online video streaming site Hulu, the question of who is the biggest villain in comics today, Bryan Lee O'Malley's online lettering lesson, and she also hosted a preview of the new biography of Vince Colletta – the most controversial inker in comics history – as well as a guest column by Yen Press’s Rich Johnson on graphic novels at the ALA.