Showing posts with label obituary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obituary. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 08, 2025

A literal loss to the ComicsDC family: Art Rhode R.I.P.

Birthday caricature by Mike Jenkins
My father Art Rhode passed away this Monday July 7th, probably from a heart attack. He'd been having heart problems for months by this point. He never made it to the cardiac surgeon's appointment he had scheduled that morning. I spoke to him the day before and he was feeling good and optimistic. I was too because he was tough. He snarled at me on Saturday when I offered to buy him a Rollator walker. He and I talked, admittedly about mostly nothing, every day as I drove home from work, or walked to the farmers markets on weekends.So take it from me and tell your family and friends you love them while you can. 

 Dad and Mom were big fans of comics - such as Superman, Mad Magazine, Peanuts collections, Disney Digests. Even though money was usually tight, I grew up reading comics of all types.

 A few months ago I republished this tribute to my Dad on his 83rd birthday.  This is all still true and accurate, and while I'll miss him more than I can say, I appreciate the foundations he (and Mom, but she's been gone since 1987) gave my life. And it's not just me - as many people have said, he was a good man, or a kind man, or a kind and compassionate individual (I'm not sure about the patience also mentioned there though). I agree and there are few better ways to be remembered. He always had time to help someone out, not infrequently to my mother's chagrin, who wanted our own home worked on.

Donations in his name can be made to North Shore Animal League, selected by our family as he got 2 dogs from there. Or, if you want to keep with this blog's theme, I personally support Team Cul de Sac, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Cartoonists Rights, and Hero Initiative.

I'll be inheriting Dad's set of IJOCA I guess unless my sister wants it; he didn't read it in recent years, but he's got almost a complete set in my old bedroom. I'll be looking for a good home for that as I don't need a third set. For those of you unfamiliar with it, I'm an editor of  and also run the blog for the Int. Journal of Comic Art published by Dr. John A. Lent.

 Here's some photos over the years... 



This was my computer background for years.

The Little Free Library he built for his house after seeing how popular ours was.

I literally have no memory of us meeting Betty Boop


My wedding day with my Uncle Herb, his next oldest brother


Caricature by Mike Jenkins

Released from the hospital with a new knee

  
Don't try this at home, or at Fort Ward 


Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Local comic book and art collector Kat Wheatley has passed away


Joel Pollack, founder of Big Planet Comics in Bethesda posted yesterday on Facebook:

Kat was one of our first customers at Big Planet Comics and had subscriber box #34. She was an avid art collector, focusing on Catwoman art by J.H. Williams. Rest in peace, Kat!

I'm sure we were in the store together at the same time at some point, but I don't remember ever meeting her. (I was box #45, for the record). 

Here's her obituary and funeral information:

Katrin Gabriella Wheatley Obituary


Katrin Wheatley, of Rockville, MD, passed away on Thursday, June 19, 2025 after a long valiant battle against Ovarian Cancer. She is mourned by her loving mother Gertraud de Thier, a host of relatives in Germany and friends from around the world. Katrin was born in Washington, D.C, and grew up in Bethesda, MD. After graduation from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut with a degree in Graphic Design, she returned to Maryland. Her professional career was spent in the financial field.

She enjoyed to travel, but her great love belonged to the arts, being a talented artist herself. Visiting Renaissance fairs and Comic Conventions brought her in contact with some of the best- and well-known artists. Her collection of comic art is the envy of her numerous friends. She enjoyed her mother's history books, trips to archaeology museums in Berlin and Munich, and mountain climbing in the Alps with her uncle, and special times with aunt. Getting together with her friends in Virginia once a month was always a special treat.

A Celebration of Life will be held at Pumphrey's Colonial Funeral Home, 300 W. Montgomery Avenue, Rockville, MD on Thursday, June 26, 2025 at 12 noon. (Service livestreaming information found below) Interment will be private.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Humane World for Animals (formerly Humane Society) Humane World for Animals, 1255 23rd Street, NW, Suite 450, Washington, DC 20037 (https://www.humaneworld.org/en)


Celebration of Life
Thursday, June 26, 2025
12:00PM
Robert A. Pumphrey Funeral Homes, Inc. - Rockville
300 W. Montgomery Avenue
Rockville, MD 20850

6/25 update:

I reached out via Facebook to John Judy, a longtime customer / friend of the store, for any comments or updates. He said, "The only thing I think it’s missing is an acknowledgement that Kat was proudly and openly gay.  I think, especially during Pride Month, that Kat would have wanted it known.

I can’t say that Kat and I were super-tight since I had no idea she had been ill. We were Facebook friends and had known each other for decades through Big Planet. We fell into that category of friends who could go years without seeing each other and pick up right where we left off. She was a delightful person and I hope she knew how many people felt that way about her."

Sunday, May 12, 2024

A tip of the hat to Art Haupt

 By Matt Dembicki

If you self-published comics in the D.C. area post-2005, you probably ran into Art Haupt at some point. Whether he was encouraging local comics creators, buying their books at local shows or penning his own stories, Art was a quiet but consistent presence in the D.C. comics scene. He passed away on May 3rd at age 78, after battling dementia for several years.

A copy editor by trade, Art had a keen eye for using the right word—or cutting a string of superfluous ones. He and I met in 2005 during his time at Kiplinger Washington Editors. Art was old school and very proficient in his craft, preferring to use a ruler and red pen when editing a printed article. During our work interactions, we found much in common, including our Polish heritage and love of comics.

Our conversations about comics started with his passion for comic strips--especially for the classics such as Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbs and anything by Milton Caniff or Hal Foster. It was during this time that a few comics creators in the Washington area started to mull an idea to create a local comics creators collective. I asked Art to join us for our first meeting, and he did--trudging through a snowstorm to get to a bar in Arlington, Virginia, where a handful of us gathered for the initial gathering of the D.C. Conspiracy (DCC) comics-making group.

At first, Art was mainly a supporter, talking with folks about their projects and perusing the portfolios they brought to meetings, which in the early days were held regularly at Dr. Dremo's Taphouse, a car dealership-turned-brewery in Courthouse section of Arlington that closed in 2008. It was when the DCC started to create its own publications that Art began to dabble in writing comics.

 

Art Haupt (second from right) at a D.C. Conspiracy meet-up at Dr. Dremo’s circa 2006. (Photo: Matt Dembicki)


Art's father, Zygmunt Haupt, was a renowned Polish author and painter, and Art was passionate about his father's work. He arranged to have much of his father's work housed at Stanford and helped to organize and speak at several Zygmunt Haupt Festivals in Poland in the 2010s. Art for years worked on his own unfinished opus that he guarded and only shared with family and let a few friends see a few chapters.

But comics gave Art an immediate creative outlet, especially in the anthology format. The works were smaller in scope and provided a chance for Art to collaborate with others in the DCC. His first published comic story was in DC Conspiracy Presents Shear Terror (2006), an anthology that featured stories with scissors in them. "They Gleam" was actually a prose story that included spot illustrations by local comics creator and DCC co-founder Evan Keeling. The opening paragraphs summed up Art's succinct writing style (and it also captures his fondness for crime noir, which carried into his other works):

 He got annoyed as hell when she started playing around with the golden shears.

No more showing off his grand-père's archaeological trophies, he vowed silently. Should never have let her touch the damn things.

Aloud, he called out: "Dana...Dana! Those scissors are old and very fragile. They're valuable!"

But she only snatched a newspaper off the big carved desk. Waved the shining blades at him, safely out of reach. Then snick--and the shears worked.

The Dartmouth graduate's next comics writing was for Doctor Dremo's Taphouse of Tall Tales and Short Stories: The Spoils of Crime. The eight-page story "Murder Summer" again includes art by Keeling, this time in full comics paneling.

Art continued with his crime writing when he wrote an online comic called Porter Black, which he created with another local comic booker and DC Conspiracy member, Andrew Cohen. The strips were later pulled into self-published collections, "Porter Black" Murder Under Midnight Suns" (2011) and "Porter Black: True Romance" (2013). The two also teamed in 2012 for a Porter Black comic that was the center-spread in the 3rd issue of Magic Bullet, the D.C. Conspiracy's comics newspaper. 

In 2012, Art teamed on writing "Truman" with another local creator, Rafer Roberts, who illustrated the seven-age story about the assassination attempt on President Harry S. Truman in 1950. It was published in District Comics: An Unconventional History of Washington, D.C. (Fulcrum Publishing, 2012). 

Art Haupt, 3rd from left. See footnote for others.

Art's body of comics work wasn't large, but he still had an impact on the D.C. small press comics scene. Aside from his creative work, he frequently participated in small press events, such as the signing of local talent's new releases, various venue presentations and he enjoyed meeting new people through gatherings such as the annual Small Press Expo, AwesomeCon and the D.C. Conspiracy's own Counter Culture Festival, which featured comics makers, crafters, musicians, magicians, tattoo artists, belly dancers, comedy troupes and more.

Awesome Con comics convention in Washington, DC. District Comics panelists - Art Haupt, Rafer Roberts, Mike Cowgill, Andrew Cohen, Jacob Warrenfeltz, Mike Rhode, Carolyn Belefski and Troy-Jeffrey Allen.
 

Art and his late wife, Linda “Lee” Martindale, who passed away in 2013, also hopped on the occasional D.C. Conspiracy outing, such as when the group visited the now-closed Geppi's Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, which housed some of the comics distributor Stephen Geppi's most prized comics.

--

Matt Dembicki is a co-founder of the D.C. Conspiracy, and a former editor of this blog. He's been on a creative hiatus since 2019.

 

*“District Comics: An Unconventional History of Washington, DC”  Sunday, August 19, 2012  book signing at One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia.

1. Evan Keeling
2. Grant Jeffrey Barrus
3. Art Haupt
4. Rebecca Goldfield
5. Mal Jones
6. Kevin Rechin
7. Michael Rhode
8. Michael Brace
9. Jacob Warrenfeltz
10. Jason Rodriguez
11. Rafer Roberts
12. Tabita Whissemore
13.Carolyn Belefski
14. Andrew Cohen
15. Joe Carabeo
16. Michael Cowgill
17. Carol Dembicki
18. Rand Arrington
19. Gregory Robison
20. Steve Loya
21. Matt Dembicki
22. Dale Rawlings
23. Paul Zdepski