Recently Comics Beat asked friends and fans of Tom Spurgeon to “Name your 5 best memories of Tom Spurgeon. It can be ways he influenced you, or the things he did that touched you the most.” This is how they responded.
From Comics Beat:
In honour of Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Beat created a special “Five for Friday”. Five for Friday was a feature that ran on The Comics Reporter seemingly every week or every other week, where Tom asked readers to respond to a question with five answers. It could be naming five comics published before 1960 that you’d recommend to contemporary readers, or as broad as naming five comics published this year you really liked. It was a fantastic way to push you to think beyond your own personal circle of interests.
Here’s a sampling from Sean Kleefeld:
- 2. When I first introduced myself to Tom in person — at the opening of the new Billy Ireland Museum, where it was stuffed to the gills with comics notoriety — he lit up like that was the best possible thing that could have happened that day.
- 3. A couple days later, he kindly gave me a special call-out on CR, joking that I looked “strangely over-healthy, like one of those guys that runs four miles to work and can lift a small car over his head.”
- 4. Every time I saw Tom after that, regardless of where we met, he always asked if I had run there. When I saw him last at TCAF, he added that that joke would never not be funny to him.
The Comics Beat Five For Friday page.
With a Note –
If you have memories of Tom Spurgeon you’d like to share, please send responses to info @ comicsbeat.com. We’ll keep posting them as long as we keep getting them.
I wish I got to know Tom better. He was a major presence in comics and his Comics Reporter site was great.
Years ago he sent me a hardcover “Usagi Yojimbo” book on his own dime because I expressed interest in it. I’m thankful for his generosity.