Legal | DragonCon co-founder Ed Kramer is seeking to have his December 2013 conviction for child molestation thrown out, insisting he was forced into a plea deal by prosecutorial misconduct. His attorney Stephen Reba also claims that Superior Court Judge Karen Beyers ruled in 2009 that Kramer could determine whether he was healthy enough to stand trial, something she deemed unlikely. With the trial suspended, Kramer -- who was accused of molesting three minors -- was permitted to leave Georgia under conditions that included he not be alone with anyone under the age of 16. He was found in a Connecticut motel room in 2011 with a 14-year-old and subsequently extradited back to Georgia.
Reba claims that Beyers colluded with Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter to improperly reopen the case and denied Kramer the medical accommodations he needed to stand trial, forcing him into a plea deal. Porter has been removed from the case, as he is now a witness, and Reba wants Beyers removed as well. Nonetheless, Porter said the case is not going to go away: "The only way it will die is he’ll have to die or I’ll have to die and even that might not stop it.” [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Creators | Josh Neufeld and Michael Keller discuss their online graphic novel Terms of Service: Understanding Our Role in the World of Big Data, an exploration of privacy and data collection in the digital world. [PRI's The World]
Comics | Henry Jenkins of the Annenberg Innovation Lab posts audio of his conversation with Scott McCloud and a roundtable discussion about the future of comics, both of which were part of the Geek Speaks series at the University of Southern California. In his conversation with McCloud, Jenkins revisits some of the predictions made in Understanding Comics, and points out that a number of them, such as webcomics increasing the diversity of both the types of comics available and the audience for them, have come true. [Confessions of an Aca-Fan]
Creators | Howard Shapiro talks about his new graphic novel The Hockey Saint, a story about a young man who is a top-notch hockey player. "I love sports,” Shapiro said. “But the over emphasis, and the over analysis of sports, the idea of the athlete being a brand — I wanted to write about that. There's much more important things in the world, which Jake exhibits through his charitable acts. I wanted to come up with a character who's not a cookie-cutter, not what people perceive these guys as.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]
Creators | Musician Eric Michener of the band Fishboy discusses his latest project, An Elephant, an album and graphic novel about a ghost elephant seeking to avenge its death; both are based on the true story of Topsy, an elephant who was executed in public in 1903 to demonstrate the efficacy of electrocution as a method of execution. [Denton Record-Chronicle]
Creators | The local newspaper profiles Jacques Nyemb, the creator and publisher of Not So Super Comics, who will be a guest at the N.C. Comicon in Durham, North Carolina. [The Herald-Sun]
Creators | An exhibit in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, celebrates the World War I cartoons of local artist Bruce Bairnsfeather, who was an officer on the front lines of the war and drew his cartoons, literally, in the trenches. [Stratford-upon-Avon Herald]
Conventions | Heidi MacDonald presents a press release from India giving some facts and figures on the growth of comic conventions there. [The Beat]
Conventions | This year's Air Capital Comic Con, in Wichita, Kansas, will be twice the size of last year's inaugural event, and will feature 27 creators, including Jim Rugg. [The Wichita Eagle]