Publishing | As the smoke settles around the turmoil at Platinum Studios, it appears that company founder and CEO Scott Rosenberg remains in his position following an attempt by President Chris Beall to unseat him -- and it's Beall instead who's been voted out. According to Deadline, Beall stands by his claims that Rosenberg has mismanaged Platinum and transferred controlling interest in the company to a shell entity called RIP Media without the approval of shareholders. Rosenberg denies the accusations, including that he controls RIP. The Beat has background on the whole mess. [Deadline]

Passings | Cartoonist Chris Cassatt, one of the contributors to the comic strip Shoe, has passed away following a short illness. He was 66. Cassatt started out in 1993 as the assistant to Shoe creator Jeff MacNelly and worked with him until MacNelly's death in 2000. After that, he collaborated with Susie MacNelly and Gary Brookins on the strip. In earlier days he was a photographer for the Aspen Times in Colorado and also created a local comic featuring a character named Sal A. Mander whom he had run in actual local elections. "After candidate Sal A. Mander was thrown off the ballot in an Aspen mayoral election on the shaky (in Aspen, anyway) grounds that he was not a 'real person,' Cassatt legally changed his name to Sal A. Mander and ran for Colorado governor in 1978, finishing fifth in a six-candidate contest," the newspaper writes. The following year, he mounted a write-in campaign for Sal against an unpopular district attorney who was running unopposed. He lost, but the ridicule Cassatt's character heaped on the D.A. during the campaign took its toll, and he didn't stay in office for long. [Aspen Times]



Creators | Dylan Horrocks discusses why he releases his work with Creative Commons licenses and how his view of copyright and IP rights has evolved over the years: "“I don’t object to people sharing my work and I don’t object to people using my work as an inspiration for new work, because both for me are really gratifying. It shows that people are engaging with my work and they’re excited by it." And if someone wants to make a movie of his comic, they still have to go back to him for the rights. [Creative Commons]

Digital comics | Steve Morris talks to Ron Perazza about his digital comics site Comic Book Think Tank, and about digital comics in general. [The Beat]

Creators | Jeff Pearlman interviews Derf Backderf, creator of My Friend Dahmer. [Jeff Pearlman]

Comic strips | R.C. Harvey takes a look at the venerable comic strip Gasoline Alley, which is 94 years young this year. [The Comics Journal]

Comics | Looking at sales numbers is a dreary task, but Jim Shelly takes the Diamond Comic Distrubutors' list of the Top 500 graphic novels of 2012 and breaks out the data in several different ways, with some eye-catching graphics to boot. [Flashback Universe]

Retailing | Johanna Draper Carlson notes that the Star Clipper comics shop in St. Louis, Missouri, is offering a price guarantee on graphic novels: If you pre-order and make a deposit, they will match Amazon's price. [Comics Worth Reading]

Comics conventions | A former comics reader brings his 11-year-old son Albuquerque Comic Con but doesn't quite get into the spirit of things himself. [Mountain View Telegraph]