And Now, in Comic News
By Dan Brown I want to touch on three pieces of comic news in this week’s column. ITEM ONE: There’s sad news on the local comic scene. Tim Morris, the final owner of the Comic Book Collector, has died. In a statement on social media, his family said he passed away at University Hospital after suffering a second stroke on January 21. As you may know, the Comic Book Collector was founded in 1979 by Eddy Smet. It was the first of its kind in London, and possibly the first comic specialty store in all of North America. Smet ran it until 1986, when it passed to other hands, then Morris took it over in 2001. I wrote about the Dundas Street mainstay and Morris for the London Free Press when it shut down in 2017. He was a self-described “huge geek.” “For many, that shop wasn’t just a store,” his family posted. “It was a home base, a gathering place, a spark.” I have a special place in my heart for comic-store owners. Most of them are real characters, providing the cultural hothouses that foster new generations of comic and graphic-novel fans. Morris was also a big backer of the indie comic scene. “Each store has its own flavour, its own thing,” he told me in 2017. Morris also loved gaming. “A true pop-culture king, Tim was one a kind,” his survivors said “He leaves behind a space no one can fill, and a legacy of joy, curiosity and community that will live on through the countless people he welcomed, inspired, and made feel at home. He was a true natural 20.” ITEM TWO: There’s sad news on the international cartoon scene. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, died on January 13 following a prostate-cancer diagnosis last year. Adams was known for spoofing cubicle life in the 1990s. Besides the engineer his newspaper strip was named after, Adams was also responsible for creating characters such as the pointy-haired boss, Alice (the employee who was more competent than any male co-worker, but never got any credit), Wally (the co-worker with no scruples), Dogbert, Catbert, and Ratbert. Many of the articles about Adams noted controversial comments he made in a 2023 livestream. I’ll leave it to you to look them up and make up your own mind. Many on the left side of the political spectrum hated him for correctly predicting that Donald Trump would win the U.S. presidency in 2016, conveniently forgetting that Adams described his own politics as being to the left of Bernie Sanders. All I know for sure is he made corporate life bearable for many of his readers, including me. I learned more about office politics from that strip than any other source, except for one sales person I befriended during my career as a journalist. ITEM THREE: There’s good news on the global comics scene. Named after the King of Comics and his wife, the Jack & Roz Kirby Awards will be given out for the first time next month. They recognize exciting new creators as well as those who (like Jolly Jack) have blazed a trail in the industry for others to follow. I know you may be thinking: Don’t comics already have enough awards? I get that concern, with the Eisners and Harveys in the U.S. and the Doug Wright Awards and the Joe Shuster Awards in Canada. But the bottom line for me is anything that calls attention to the excellent work being done in the field of comics is a positive thing. Besides, with names like Adam Kubert, Rob Salkowitz, and Jim Steranko on the advisory board for the Kirbys, I think they’re in good hands. They will be handed out at the Original Art Expo in Orlando, Fla. The event runs from February 20-22. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
