A Small Farewell to a Long-time Fan

[krpalmer]

News of Stan Lee's death got onto the front page of my newspaper, if "below the fold." Mulling over that, even if that also meant remembering how I'd felt intimidated by their already existing continuities when young to the point of taking only the smallest nibbles at Marvel superhero comics and for whatever reason don't watch their steady stream of movies now, lasted me though the day. While I was doing that, though, I picked up on reports of a death that wouldn't reach quite as far but still had me aware of "one thing after another" coincidences. Fred Patten, one of the earliest North American manga and anime fans, had also died.

Most of my connection to Patten came from having bought his book Watching Anime, Reading Manga from a local comics shop over a decade ago. I happened to say something about that book here just this summer, commenting that beyond its historical tidbits the thought of Patten having kept commenting about anime and manga for three and a half decades to that point was encouraging at a moment when fans much younger than him on some message boards I hadn't quite backed away from yet were exuding impressions of burnout. With that said, beyond reports that Patten had kept going to conventions in a wheelchair I don't quite know what his most recent opinions on "drawn entertainments from Japan" were. That he was also a "furry fan" can provoke a strange thought or two, but I suppose I'm positive about a few things I'm also cautious about certain potential responses to myself.