Passings | Brian Jacoby, owner of the Tallahassee, Florida, comic shop Secret Headquarters and a well-known presence on Twitter and comics discussion boards, died suddenly on Thanksgiving. The news was first released in a tweet from the store. His memorial service will be held Tuesday. [ICv2]

Editorial cartoons | Bob Staake's New Yorker cover showing a broken Gateway Arch in St. Louis, a commentary on the events in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, received a lot of attention just before Thanksgiving — and even more when it got around that syndicated cartoonist R.J. Matson had drawn a similar cartoon in August. Matson brushes that aside, however, pointing out that editorial cartoonists often come up with similar visuals: "Finding a good joke is like solving a puzzle and very often there is one very best solution to the puzzle. Any cartoonist worth his salt would kick himself or herself for not finding that solution." And when five cartoonists do it on the same day, he said, "we call it a Yahtzee." [The Washington Post]

Comics | Daniel Roberts looks at Marvel's move to increase the diversity of its comics, movies and television shows in order to attract a wider audience. [Fortune]

Creators | Randall Munroe talks about his webcomic xkcd and his new book What If?, in which he makes serious attempts to answer ridiculous science questions. [The Register]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon interviews independent creator, publisher and musician Zak Sally. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Danny Hakim profiles Suleiman Bakhit, a Jordanian creator who has set out to make comics that counter the prevailing mythology in the Middle East that, he believes, leads to terrorism: The jihadists, he says, "preach terrorism as a heroic journey ... The biggest threat in the Middle East is terrorism disguised as heroism." The Jordanian government initially supported his comics but cooled when one that was set 100 years in the future didn't depict the current dynasty as still in power; Bakhit shut down his publishing company but is in the process of starting up a new one. [The New York Times]

Comics | In a radio interview, Jason Rodriguez discusses the anthology he edited, Colonial Comics: New England, 1620-1750, a collection of history comics set in the colonial era. [NHPR]

Manga | Roland Kelts looks at the difficulties of bringing the iconic Japanese character Doraemon to American audiences. [Japanamerica]

Graphic novels | Laura Miller presents her picks for the best graphic novels of the year, including Climate Changed, Over Easy and Shoplifter. [Salon]

Comics | Lew Stringer notes the appearance of a new comics magazine in the United Kingdom, Football Galaxy. [Blimey!]

Reviews | Glen Weldon reviews Jill LePore's The Secret History of Wonder Woman: "With a defiantly unhurried ease, Lepore reconstructs the prevailing cultural mood that birthed the idea of Wonder Woman, carefully delineating the conceptual debt the character owes to early-20th-century feminism in general and the birth control movement in particular." [Slate]