Hey everybody, it’s your Friendly Neighbourhood Previously Editor, with news updates from the past couple of weeks.
A lot’s been happening, and not all of it is great. Not to start on a downer, but we lost some industry greats recently. Chris ‘Chance’ Brown shared the news that veteran artist Ramona Fradon had passed away at the age of 97. She was in the midst of drawing new work and her loss hit the WWAC team pretty hard.
Enric Badia Romero, artist for Modesty Blaise and creator of Axa, has also passed away. He was 94. I remember reading Modesty Blaise comic strips in the newspaper when I was a child, so this is upsetting news.
Outside of comics, Star Trek fans mourned the passing of Kenneth Mitchell, who had played multiple roles on Star Trek: Discovery, and voiced several characters on Star Trek: Lower Decks. Mitchell was diagnosed with ALS five years ago and one of his character arcs on Discovery explored life with a disability. Mitchell was 49.
Our thoughts are with the loved ones and friends of all those who were lost.
It was the last week for ShortBox, the small publishing group started by Zainab Akhtar that gave up-and-coming creators a place to share their stories. This is a huge loss for the comics industry.
If you’re in Portland, Oregon, on April 13, Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men are holding a live event. You may even bump into WWAC’s Nola (an X-Men fan), and Kate (not much of an X-Men fan)!
Comics writer James Tynion IV is opening a new production studio, called Tiny Onion, reports Forbes. Alongside Tynion as CEO, Eric Harburn will be Director of Editorial, Courtney Menard is Director of Production, and Jazzlyn Stone is Director of Communications. The studio will focus on creator-owned content, including developing their stories, packaging, and promotion.
We now have the full cast for Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four film. Announced on Valentine’s Day with a rather lovely piece of artwork by Wes Burt, Marvel confirmed that Pedro Pascal will be Mr Fantastic/ Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby has been cast as Invisible Woman/ Susan Storm, Joseph Quinn takes on Human Torch/ Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (COUSIN!) will be playing Ben Grimm, aka the Thing.
If you’re one of the people who crowdfunded Tales from the Quarantine, or was excited to read it, you may be interested in Broken Frontier’s multi-part series about why that anthology disappeared despite promises of it being shipped.
I’ll conclude with some WWAC news. Kat Overland, whose been WWAC’s Small Press Editor, is now the Features Editor. Congratulations, Kat! And, in some personal news, your Previously editor is now also the Managing Editor at WWAC! I’m delighted and excited for the direction WWAC is going.
That’s it from me, at least for now. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks! Take care of yourselves.
