Bent Corner

A friend of mine emailed me this scan.  It’s of a piece of art he won during the charity auction at the 2008 Pittsburgh Comicon. Click on the image to see a larger version.

The artist is Josh Medors.  It’s based on Incredible Hulk #340 drawn by Todd McFarlane.  Wolverine is a zombie.  I’m not sure if the Hulk is a zombie too.  All I know is that it looks superb.

In fact, it’s making me rethink my stance on buying original comic book art.

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Comic book retailing news site ICv2 posted an article yesterday about the sentencing of Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book retailer Michael George.

They make a rather huge factual error:

With no witnesses, physical evidence, or confession (see “Greed, Sex, and Power”), the prosecutors basically convicted George on motive (a $130,000 insurance police), opportunity (by casting doubt on alibi), and his behavior after his wife’s death (he reportedly hit on a woman at his wife’s funeral). This sensational cold case trial gained nationwide attention as the result of a feature on NBC’s Dateline.

No witnesses? The reason doubt was cast on his alibi is because the prosecution had a witness that put Michael George on the scene at around the time of Barbara’s murder. Michael Renaud testified that he called the comic book shop at around the time of the murder and spoke to Michael George on the phone.

To say that there were not witnesses is really kind of silly. It makes me think that whoever wrote the article over ICv2 never watched the Dateline feature they referred to.

Convicted murderer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George is scheduled to be sentenced today in a Michigan courtroom. George was only recently convicted of murdering his wife Barbara George 18 years ago in the comic book shop they both owned. George was having an affair with one of his employees who he later married.

The case was recently featured in a two-hour episode on the NBC show Dateline.

The sentencing today is all but a formality since he is facing mandatory life in prison.

The prosecutor in the case, Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan said that he expects several of Barbara George’s relatives to speak at the sentencing.

Michael George is still listed on the Pittsburgh Comicon website concerning the 2009 show. His photo remains there too.

Link

I remember reading during the Michael George murder trial that producers for Dateline NBC were in court getting footage for an upcoming show. Word on the street is that the comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comicon promoter Michael George case will be featured on tomorrow night’s episode of Dateline NBC. And when I say “word on the street”, I of course am referring to what a woman at work told me. She said that she saw a promo for tomorrow nights program and “that comic book guy that killed his wife” was going to be on. Michael George used to own the comic book shop located in the mall next to where we all work.

I checked out the official Dateline NBC website, and it says squat about tomorrow night’s show. I checked out tomorrow night’s TV listings on Yahoo and it showed the Dateline NBC will appear on NBC from 9pm to 11pm. It doesn’t list anything about the stories that will appear.

I’m planning on watching it. Even if they don’t show the Michael George murder trial episode, they might show Chris Hanson bust some online perverts. I love when he offers them a cookie. There’s nothing more entertaining on prime time TV than catching child sex predictors.

[UPDATE] It’s been confirmed that the Michael George segment will indeed appear on tomorrow’s Dateline NBC.

Convicted murderer and Pittsburgh Comicon organizer Michael George is seeking to have his murder and insurance fraud convictions nullified by the judge. His lawyers are seeking to have Judge James Biernat throw the convictions out.

He faces a mandatory penalty of life in prison without a chance for parole for the murder conviction alone.

Judge Biernat will decide on April 25 if defense attorneys can even file a motion to have the conviction nullified before George is even sentenced. Prosecutors contend that they can only request a new trial after he has been sentenced.

April 25 is also the first day the Pittsburgh Comicon. George’s photo still appears on the Pittsburgh Comicon website. George’s name still prominently appears on the Pittsburgh Comicon website.

Though Jurors didn’t hear George testify during his trial, they listened to an audio recording of a police interview conducted last August in his comic book shop in Pennsylvania. Police claim that George changed his story. The jurors heard George speak that at the time of his late wife’s murder, someone “was out to get him”. He claimed that instead of killing him, they chose to kill his wife. He failed to say anything about this at the time of the murder.

Why would someone out to get Michael George murder his wife Barbara?  By all accounts, Michael George wanted out of his marriage with Barbara.  He wanted to begin a new life with his then employee and now current wife Renee George.  Because of Barbara’s death, he was able to do just that.

It’s been about five days since Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book retailer Michael George was convicted of murdering Barbara George, his first wife. Not only was he convicted of first degree murder for killing the mother of his two children, he was convicted of insurance fraud and obtaining money from an insurance agency under false pretenses.

The insurance fraud stems from the fact that Michael George made the murder appear t be a robbery and he fraudulently reported the loss of multiple high-value comic books to his insurance company. His insurance company paid him $13,000 to compensate him from the loss of these comics. The comics the jury decided he never owned.

Wont he now have to pay that money back?

Then there’s the matter of the $125,000 Michael George collected on Barbara’s life insurance policy. Since the jury ruled that Michael killed Barbara, wont he have to pay that money back too? Convicted murderers aren’t normally allowed to collect on the life insurance policy of their victims. And when I say normally, I of course mean never.

So where exactly does this leave the Pittsburgh Comicon?

The show is owned by Michael and Renee George. How will all this effect the show? Will the insurance companies that paid large sums of money to Michael George under fraudulent terms now move to seize assets belonging to him? Wouldn’t the Pittsburgh Comicon be one of those assets?

I’ve been checking out the Pittsburgh Comicon website every day since the verdicts were handed down. Everything looks the same. Not one mention of the fact that the show’s co-promoter has been convicted of murdering the mother of his children and is now facing a mandatory life in prison. Further more, prosecutors in the case claimed that Michael George killed his first wife so that he could start a new life with his mistress, the woman he is married to now.

She is the show’s other co-promoter.

It seems to me all this would require some sort of statement from the show. Not only is Michael’s name still featured on the Pittsburgh Comicon website, so is his photo.

There’s already talk among some comic book creators about boycotting the show on the grounds that it is supporting a man convicted of murder.

Last month I was contacted by Patrick Thomas, the Marketing Director of the Pittsburgh Comicon. He assured me that no matter what happened in Michael George’s trial, the 2008 Pittsburgh Comicon would be going on as planned and that nothing would prevent that. I don’t know Patrick, but I know people that do. I’ve been assured that when he says something, you can bank on it.

Pittsburgh Comicon organizer and comic book shop owner Michael George was found guilty of murdering his wife Barbara George in 1990 in the back room of their comic book shop. The jury found him not only guilty of first-degree murder, but insurance fraud.

I’m really kind of surprised by this. I’ve been following the case from the day the news broke that he had been arrested. As I’ve blogged earlier, Micheal used to own the comic book shop in nearby Scotland, PA. It’s located in the Chambersburg Mall and it’s where I buy my comics every week.

As more and more came out about the case, I was certain he was guilty.

I then read how his two daughter testified for him.

They were familiar with all the evidence, yet they still firmly believed in their father’s innocence. Who was I to question that? They knew about all the womanizing — and attempted womanizing — while he was married to their mother and all of the other sorted details that came out about their father. They still thought he was innocent of the murder of their mother.

All of the evidence against Michael George was circumstantial. That’s not to say someone cannot be found guilty with only circumstantial evidence. It happens all the time. This just seemed so surreal in the fact that it happened 17 years ago. No new evidence had come up.

Reed Exhibitions, organizers for the New York City Comic Con decided to move the dates of this year’s convention to the middle of April. For the past two years, the convention was held in the month of February. When I first heard of the date switch, I assumed that they wanted to muscle out the Pittsburgh Comicon which holds its event during the same time frame.

Now I’m not too sure.

As it turns out, the 2008 New York City Comic Con takes place April 18 - 20, the very same weekend as Passover.

Why would Reed Exhibitions change the date to correspond with one of the most important holidays for Jewish people? Do they not want them to attend?

I searched the New York Comic Con website for an explanation as to why they changed the event to take place during Passover. I couldn’t find it. That’s not to say it’s not there. I just couldn’t find it. I did find something that was supposedly written by someone representing Reed Exhibitions by searching Google. It’s a comment on a LiveJournal post about this controversy:

Needless to say, I’m none too happy about the Passover situation either, so let’s get that out of the way right off the bat - we are really sorry about this and certainly intended no disrespect towards anyone. The unfortunate reality is that these were the dates we were given at the Javits Center. Javits is unlike most places in that the demand for the space far outstrips the availability, so customers, such as NYCC, are left with little to no choice as to what dates we are given. To that point, I’ll announce here first that the show will be moving back to February next year - because we want to be in February? Not really. Quite simply, these are the only dates we can get next year.

So it’s not Reed Exhibitions’ fault. It’s the Javits Center’s fault.

It’s more then possible that this has nothing to do with antisemitism, but just plain old fashioned incompetence. This is the same group that massively over-sold tickets to the inaugural event in 2006. Not only were there reports of people having to wait in line for hours to get into the event — including some comic book professionals — there were reports that many who purchased their tickets months ahead of time and traveled to New York were not allowed in and were turned away. I remember listening to Greg Topalianone, one of the event’s organizers speaking on a podcast. Not only did he blame the Javits Center for not giving them more floor space, he blamed people that purchased 3-day passes for actually attending all three days.

They had no idea people would do that.

I doubt they are antisemitic. I think they are just incompetent enough to schedule an event in New York City during Passover.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Clinton Township police’s 17-year suspicion that Michael George killed his wife in the back of their comic book store finally reaches the courtroom today.

Jury selection is set to begin at 1:30 p.m. in the case, in which George is charged with the July 1990 shooting death of his 32-year-old wife, Barbara George.

Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan said he expects to call 43 witnesses in the reopened cold case. The trial could last more than three weeks.

Former Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga is representing George, 47. The case has garnered national attention. The NBC show “Dateline” is expected to feature it in a future episode.

One of my personal goals in life is to never appear on an episode of “Dateline”. No good can come of it.