LINDA GOLD 1949-2010

Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper died last week. You probably heard. It was in all the papers. If you were paying attention, you may also have heard that Art Linkletter passed. So did one of the guys from Slipknot and further down in the mix there was another heavy metal musician, also.

Someone who hasn’t received nearly as much mainstream coverage and yet whose loss is being felt so much in the comics community today is Linda Gold, the wife of writer/editor, Mike Gold. She died in her sleep overnight on Friday.

I never met Linda Gold. I barely know Mike and then only from emails and occasional Facebook contact. And yet this morning I feel loss…a surprisingly deep loss. Her Facebook page remains intact as of this writing and I look at it and see a fun, funny, opinionated and delightful woman that I wish I had known but now never can.

In the midst of many tributes appearing, Jean Bails (widow of one of comic book fandom’s founders, Jerry Bails) is looking to come up with some sort of way to memorialize her. If you’re on Facebook, message her there with ideas.

I’m sure I speak for all of ITCH when I offer our sincere condolences to Linda’s family and her many, many close friends, virtual and otherwise.

It’s being reported that she was a huge Green lantern fan so in her honor this morning, a few GL links. I may never have met you Linda…but I miss you already.

Let’s start with John Broome, Gil Kane and Joe Giella writing and drawing the original Showcase origin of the Silver Age Green Lantern, one of the seminal storis in modern comics continuity.

http://aquamanrules.blogspot.com/2010/04/not-so-secret-origins-of-jla-week-green.html

“If Earth Fails the Test…It Means War,” is the title of an unusual 1969 Green Lantern tale from the period just before the big GL/GA change. Art for this one is by the always enjoyable combination of Gil Kane pencils and Wally Wood inks.

http://apocolytesworldofcomics.blogspot.com/2010/03/gil-kane-and-wallace-wood-superior-art.html

Mail it to Team-Up offers a Superman/Green Lantern team-up from DC Presents, presented specifically as a tribute to Linda Gold. Written by later DC honcho Paul Levitz, the art is by the Man of Steel’s “official” illustrator, Curt Swan.

http://mailittoteamup.blogspot.com/2010/06/in-memory-of-linda-gold.html

Finally, Lee Elias and Bob Oksner draw the original Alan Scott Green Lantern here in a 1948 tale from an issue of National’s Comic Cavalcade written by the prolific Robert Kanigher (who was still writing comics four decades later).

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/search?q=548

R.I.P. Linda Gold