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Russ Kick – RIP
“Rogue transparency activist” and comics editor Russ Kick has handed away.
Russell Charles (Russ) Kick III
July 20, 1969 – September 12, 2021
From The Washington Post obituary:
Russ Kick, a author, editor and self-described “rogue transparency activist” who pried unfastened authorities information, utilizing Freedom of Data Act requests to acquire missed paperwork and peek behind the scenes of official secrecy, died Sept. 12 at his residence in Tucson. He was 52.
His sister, Ruth Kick, didn’t give a trigger however mentioned he had been ill for greater than a decade.
Mr. Kick’s pursuits prolonged from “undeleting,” as he typically referred to as his doc gathering, to traditional literature, erotica, meals and historical meditation practices. “I can’t focus utterly on anybody factor for too lengthy,” he wrote in an online biography. “My private model is a large number.”
He additionally edited literary anthologies and the Graphic Canon sequence, for which he enlisted artists corresponding to Robert Crumb and Will Eisner to reinterpret literary classics as comics and visible artwork. By turns bawdy and poignant, the sequence marked a kaleidoscopic different to the large, doorstop literary anthologies printed by W.W. Norton. “Work that may usually put you to sleep will depart you awe-struck,” artist and writer Annie Weatherwax wrote in 2012, reviewing the primary quantity for the New York Occasions.
Russ followed up the 1600 page trilogy with volumes adapting children’s tales and crime stories.
Among the many comedian artists concerned are
Editor Russ Kick obtained the concept for The Graphic Canon trilogy when he was standing within the graphic-novel part of a Tucson, Ariz., bookstore. Selecting up a comic book adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, he was all of a sudden struck by the concept of creating a literary anthology that paired nice tales with nice visible storytellers.
Pulling texts collectively right into a coherent complete is second nature to a veteran editor like Kick. He’s greatest recognized for guides like Every little thing You Know Is Unsuitable and You Are Being Lied To, which he put out by means of the countercultural writer Disinformation. These and different books established Kick as a synthesizer of disparate, fringe authors and concepts. And judging from the evaluations he’s garnering for The Graphic Canon, Quantity 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Harmful Liaisons, it appears like this combining of latest comics artwork and the world’s greatest literature can be proving a winner. College Library Journal has referred to as the trilogy “startlingly sensible,” and Writer’s Weekly has dubbed it “the graphic publishing literary occasion of the yr.”
