Passings | The Comics Journal collects tributes to Maurice Sendak, the legendary children's book author and illustrator who passed away Tuesday at age 83. Philip Nel, director of Kansas State University’s Program in Children’s Literature, also writes an obituary for the influential creator of Where the Wild Things Are. [TCJ.com]

Publishing | In an interview with the retail news and analysis site ICv2, IDW Publishing President and CEO Ted Adams says that while digital sales are at 10 percent of print sales, both are going up: "There’s just no question at this point that selling comics digitally is definitively not impacting [print] comic book sales. If anything you could make the argument that the success of digital is driving more print comic book sales. The correlation at this point is that increased digital has resulted in increased print. Whether or not that is a direct correlation, I don’t know how you would figure that out. I can say with no uncertainty that our increased digital revenue has come at a time when we’ve had increased comic book sales." [ICv2]

Creators | The American Academy of Art in Chicago is honoring 1989 graduate Alex Ross with its 2012 Distinguished Alumnus Award. He'll accept the award and speak to this year's graduating class Monday during the commencement ceremony. [press release]

Creators | Fables writer Bill Willingham discusses world-building, the Oz universe, and conducting research for his nearly decade-old series: "Weirdly enough, real folklore scholars will occasionally cross paths with me or contact me and act like I’m part of the group, and I feel like a complete fraud. Even though I can fake it that I’m a rigorously trained, self-educated scholar—what that really means is that, no, I read books. I read the books I love. That’s it." [Omnivoracious]

Creators | Alex Dueben talks to Ted Naifeh about his 10 years as the creator of Courtney Crumrin, why he decided to reissue the comic in a new, colored edition this year, and why he's releasing an ongoing Courtney comic: "We changed the format for two reasons. One, the limited series just doesn't appeal to comic shops anymore. They want trades, or they want ongoing series. The second reason is that I needed an excuse to commit to Courtney. I really want to spend more time building her world. But once you're done with a mini-series, it's hard to commit to another. I regret that I didn't stick with the character and build more momentum. Even if I'd only done one mini-series a year, I could have had ten Courtney volumes instead of 4 by now. And who knows? She might have gotten a lot more followers. People like stories with a deep history. That's one reason Bone did so well. Jeff Smith committed to it." [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Alex Zalben interviews Mike Mignola, who admits he can't stand to hear actors reading his dialogue — so he hasn't seen the new Hellboy motion comic. [MTV Geek]

Creators | Vaneta Rogers asks several creators how they feel about the lawsuits against the Marvel and DC Comics by the heirs of Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. She rounds up responses from Neal Adams, Gerry Conway and Jeff Parker. "I want us working more like traditional publishing," Parker said. "All comics’ publishers have heavily pushed their own identity in a way that the rest of the book world doesn't, because in our distribution system that's the key to health for them. And probably because it's fun to think of them as teams, a big chunk of readership has embraced this. But are people reading Hunger Games concerning themselves with Scholastic and hoping Suzanne Collins doesn't get too much control? Are they getting fired up about Bantam Books because of Game of Thrones, or do they want more George R.R. Martin?" [Newsarama]

Creators | Ralph Gardner interviews cartoonist Drew Friedman, whose work has appeared everywhere from The New Yorker to R. Crumb's Weirdo, and whose subjects range from Woody Allen to sexting Congressman Anthony Weiner. [The Wall Street Journal]

Creators | Michael Cavna has a brief interview with Stephanie McMillan, the winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for cartooning. [Comic Riffs]

Comic strips | Check out the Zits strip that was too gruesome for The Washington Post! Warning: Clicking the link will lead you to Mighty Skullboy-level gore. [Comic Riffs]

Editorial | Tom Spurgeon explains why he wrote a check to The Hero Initiative, and why you should too — even if it's just 10 bucks. [The Comics Reporter]

Publishing | Barry Courter profiles Marvel editor Bill Rosemann, who has been a comics fan from early childhood (The Amazing Spider-Man was his gateway drug). [Chattanooga Times Free Press]