Bent Corner

The prosecutor in Michigan is charging Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book retailer Michael George with new charges.

George, 47 — who is accused in the slaying of his 32-year-old wife, Barbara, in his Clinton Township store — faces two new charges: insurance fraud and obtaining money under false pretenses.

“The proofs will show that nothing was taken,” said Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan.

He acknowledged that the murder charge is more pressing, but he said that George received $13,000 in insurance money.

George reported that two boxes of valuable comics were stolen from a back storage room during his wife’s murder. The police now contend that no comics were missing and that George simply made the whole thing up to receive insurance money and to make the police believe that the his wife’s murder was the result of a robbery gone bad.

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I’ve been trying to keep up with news concerning the 1990 murder case involving comic book retailer and con organizer Michael George and his first wife Barbara. As I wrote in my previous blog post about this whole mess, he used to own the comic shop in Chambersburg I buy my comics from.

From the Daily American:

The July 13, 1990, killing was the result of an extramarital affair George was having with a store employee, said Macomb County prosecutor Eric J. Smith. George also stood to benefit financially, Smith said, with a six-figure pay out on Barbara’s life insurance policy.

“It’s a classic case of domestic murder,” Smith said. “One partner wants out of the marriage the quickest way possible. Loved turned to hate.”

From The Detroit News:

The Georges’ two children were 3 and 5 years old when their mother died. Police believed robbery may have been a motive, but nothing was missing from the store, the body or the cash register.

Within months of his wife’s death, Michael George moved in with an employee of the store.

“Evidence does exist she was unhappy in the marriage,” said Macomb Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan. “She had strong suspicions of his infidelity.”

George married his employee and moved to Pennsylvania with his two children and his new wife’s five children.

I’m sure a lot more information will come out concerning this whole story as time goes on. A lot of the information so far just does not make a lot of sense. For instance, if it was a robbery gone bad, why didn’t the killer take the money out of the register? Also, George claimed at the time that $30,000 worth of comics was stolen. That’s a lot of comic books, especially considering it was 1990. The shop in Windber doesn’t seem to be the type that would have a lot of high-end premium comics in stock.

Update: Someone claiming to be Mike George’s stepson has posted on Newsarama that seems to contradict some of what was reported in The Detroit News. He writes:

For instance, my mother did not “leave” nor “abandon” my siblings and me in Michigan. She attempted to take us to Pennsylvania with her, but this move was fought by my father, who eventually won the ensuing custody battle. I chose to rejoin her in 1995 at age 15, and my siblings followed later. I’m sure all this could have been discovered with a FOIA request or two. But then, television journalists are not known for their competence.

This contradicts the story that Mike George and his new wife moved to Pennsylvania with his two children and her five children. Her children evidently remained in Michigan with their father for at least three years.

The man behind the annual Pittsburgh Comicon has been arrested for murdering his first wife execution-style 17 years ago in Michigan.

His 32-year-old wife, Barbara Marie George, was shot in the head in 1990 in the Comics World store they owned in Clinton Township, north of Detroit.

Her body was found in the shop she had closed that day to surprise Michael George on his 30th birthday, The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens reported.

Comic books valued at $30,000 were taken.

Michael George moved to Pennsylvania following his wife’s death. He opened another Comics World shop in Windber, Pa.

Clinton Township detectives reopened the case in January.

Not only did he open another Comics World in Windber, he also eventually opened one in Chambersburg. It’s where I buy my comics every week. George eventually sold the Chambersburg store, but it retained the name.

Continued Reading

• Detroit Free Press
• Tribune-Democrat
• Fox Channel 2 Detroit
• Comic Book Resources
• Newsarama

Two fans were driving home from the San Diego Comic-Con. They were listening to talk radio and heard the mayor of San Diego say something quite peculiar. He was discussing how American Idol was coming into town for tryouts. He said:

We’ve put up the superheroes and now we’re on to the people with actual talent.

I have to wonder if the honorable mayor has ever watched American Idol. Though you are sure to see many different things at these American Idol regional tryouts, talent isn’t one of them.

The comic blogesphere has reacted in a very predictable fashion. Many called for the con to move to another city. Never mind the Comic-Con organizers recently extended the contract with the San Diego Convention Center till 2012. The mayor said a snide remark so the con must move.

I don’t get that. Its not like this is the first time someone has said something snide about comic books. I’d be willing to bet that anyone offended by the mayor’s comment have had worse things said about comics by members of their own family. If they are truly offended, they need to get over it.

Who cares what the mayor of San Diego says about the Comic-Con? I cant even remember his name and I’m feeling too lazy to go look it up. That’s how unimportant his opinion is to me.

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I strolled over to Geek News Central the other day to see what Todd was railing against these days. Big surprise, he is upset about how the FCC will handle the auction for the 700 MHz frequency spectrum. That’s the area of the frequency spectrum currently used by old fashioned analog broadcast TV. Starting in 2009, TV stations wont be broadcasting analog signals on the 700 MHz spectrum and will instead be forced (kicking and screaming) to switch to broadcasting a digital signal on frequencies other then the 700 MHz range.

This leaves the 700 MHz spectrum open for other things such as cell phones or wireless Internet. Signals in the 700 MHz spectrum can travel up to four times farther then signals transmitted on the current wireless frequencies. They are also better at going through walls and they don’t kill bees like microwave cell phone frequencies do.

Some have been advocating that the entire spectrum should be completely open-access. The FCC announced that only a third of the 700 MHz spectrum will be open-access.

This is what Todd had to say:

I am severely pissed off. Sure, the rules state that the spectrum must have Open Devices and Open Applications but the FCC threw out the baby with the bath water when they reversed course on what could have been the most positive wireless spectrum development since the invention of the radio when they closed the door and are going to allow CLOSED SERVICES and CLOSED NETWORKS.

I am truly unhappy and I hope you are as well. I encourage you to pick up the phone and call anyone and everyone you know with influence and tell them how you really feel about this.

The problem is that the majority of Americans are quite content with these companies getting their way every time. It is beyond criminal to say the very least.

I don’t know who exactly Todd is accusing of criminal activity. Is it the FCC? Verizon? Sprint? Google? How about AOL? They don’t have a stake in this, but Todd often sets his sights on AOL, even going so far as to encouraging people to sell off all their shares in AOL. Never mind that AOL is part of Time-Warner and there is no such thing as AOL stock.

Who exactly then is the criminal here? I really don’t know. I left a comment on his blog yesterday asking just this very question, but it never appeared. Todd is one of those bloggers that runs a CLOSED SERVICE blog. He personally must approve each and every comment that appears. I can only assume that is why most of his blog posts have 0 comments. Maybe people are leaving comments, but their comments don’t pass muster.

I’ve never really understood why some bloggers feel the need to engage comment moderation on their blog. What are they afraid of? That someone will disagree with him?

The ironic thing about this is that he is all for openness when it comes to radio frequencies, but not when it comes to the comment section of his own blog. That’s kind of sad.

Does Todd know what throwing out the “baby with the bath water” means? I don’t see how the expression actually applies.

So this is what a wombat looks like. The mystery is finally solved.

I found this photo over on Yahoo in the photo section of Yahoo News. This evidently was one of the most emailed photos for yesterday. I enjoy going there to see what photos people are emailing to each other. The photos usually fall in to different categories - fashion models in their underwear or cute baby animals.

These wambats are from the Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo. The baby wambat’s name is “Joey” and the mother’s name is “Kambora”.

Now that I know what a wombat looks like, I have to wonder why Luke Skywalker was bragging about shooting them. When being briefed on the mission to take out the Death Star, he told everyone he used to bullseye wombats in his T-16 back home. He also claimed that they were not much bigger than two meters. From the looks of the photo, they are a lot smaller then two meters. I think maybe he was exaggerating his story a bit to make it sound somehow more impressive.

I never liked Luke Skywalker. There was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. If he wasn’t trying to suck face with his own sister, he was bragging about killing cute defensive animals. I’m surprised he didn’t try to tell everyone about the time he got into a bare knuckle fist fight with a Jawa. He would undoubtedly leave out the part about Jawas only being 3 feet tall or the fact that the Jawa kicked his ass.

Luke Skywalker is a dick.