Publishing | Ron Richards, who joined Image Comics in January 2013 as its director of business development, has announced his departure from the publisher. "I am immensely proud of the work that I was able to be a part of," he wrote. "Re-defining how a comic company makes announcements and interacts with their fans with Image Expo, and helping usher in new and exciting comics like Black Science, Wytches, Southern Bastards, Deadly Class, The Wicked + The Divine (among so many more) has been an honor and a privilege. It’s been a delight to work alongside some of the most talented comics creators in the business  —  and I leave with respect for all of them." A co-founder of iFanboy and a veteran of Graphicly, Richards said he doesn't have any immediate work plans. His departure from Images follows that of Jennifer de Guzman last week. [Medium]



Legal | Police in Japan's Saitama Prefecture have arrested a 33-year-old part-time high school teacher on charges of uploading the digital edition of the first volume of Kuroko's Basketball. According to police, the teacher admitted having done so, and they suspect him of uploading more than 1,000 other items as well. [Crunchyroll]

Publishing | Francoise Mouly talks about founding the seminal comics magazine Raw, the possibilities of the comics medium and her work as covers editor of The New Yorker. [Guernica]

Comics | Paul Gravett looks at Dell Comics, highlighting the work of historian Michael Barrier, who singles out some of the factors that made Dell Comics good comics: "Barrier finds this depth at Dell, whose best titles he hails for not being made by children (or immature young men only a few years older than their readers), but by adults creating for children. He pinpoints crucial aspects in Dell’s approach which enabled these writer-artists to flourish: the publisher expected eight panels per page rather than the typical six and, with no pages sacrificed to external advertising, could accommodate longer, more complex tales of up to forty pages. Most other companies opted for anthologies of truncated short stories." [Paul Gravett]



Creators | South African political cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, who goes by the pen name Zapiro, discusses the sometimes-prickly question of what to do with monuments to the architects and supporters of apartheid, including Cecil Rhodes, whose statue was removed last week from the University of Cape Town. [Public Radio International]

Creators | Rachel Lindsay draws inspiration for her comics from her day job in the City Market in Burlington, Vermont. [Vermont Public Radio]

Creators | David Neal profiles Asheville, North Carolina, editorial cartoonist David Cohen, who talks about what makes the area such good fodder for his cartoons and about looking at century-old newspapers and seeing cartoons on the same topics he tackles today. Some of his subjects get to put their two cents in as well. [Citizen-Times]

Graphic novels | Paul B. Rainey has created his own private Milton Keynes in his graphic novel There's No Time Like the Present, in which he blends elements of the real town with those from his imaginary version. [MKWeb]

Festivals | Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald post their wrap-up of this year's MoCCA Arts Festival, which drew about 7,500 attendees over two days. Everyone loved the new space, with its windows, white walls, and rooftop seating area, but the word is it won't be available next year. [Publishers Weekly]

Festivals | Barry and Leon of Secret Acres write about MoCCA from the point of view of exhibitors, with a nuts-and-bolts discussion of the economic aspects of tabling at different festivals and a few sharp words for some of the artists as well: "MoCCA remains a little heavy on the Pikachu set, those exhibitors who exhibit the kind of Not Comics that one would expect of a show like APE. In these days of lotteries and curated everything, these guys looked like they crawled of 2003." [Secret Acres]

Conventions | The Poconos will get their first comics convention on Saturday when the Pocono Comic Expo opens its doors at the East Stroudsburg University's Innovation Center. Guests will include artists Rags Morales and Joy Taney. [PA Home Page]