Frequent commenter and WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM regular, Ramon, pointed out last week that venerable Hong Kong actor, Shih Kien, died last week at the age of 96.  Kien had a long career in film, but I, and most other film buffs in the Western hemisphere, knew him best as the evil Han from the legendary 1973 Bruce Lee film, Enter The Dragon. 

 Although in a previous post, I stated only a passing familiarity with kung fu movies, Enter The Dragon is the exception.  I know the film quite well, because my older brother Philip,  my cousin Clarence, and I used to make it ritual to watch my uncle’s bootleg, taped-off-HBO-copy of the movie whenever we got together over a holiday break.  Jim Kelly’s comment to Han, once he discovers the evil mastermind’s villainous intentions, “Man, you come straight out of a comic book,” is the inspiration for the name of the ”comic book blog” link tag on this site.

 RIP Shih Kien.

- JEP

My friend, Jeremy Mullins, died on Saturday.  He was hiking in New York with his girlfriend, when he slipped off the path and fell 50 feet to his death.

This is the third one of these memoriams I’ve done in as many weeks, but this is the first time I’ve actually known the person I was memorializing.

Jeremy and I were both in the Sequential Art graduate program at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) at the same time.  For a while, we were even roommates.  Among other common interests and experiences, we shared a mutual love for the Perez/Wolfman-era New Teen Titans and an unforgettable trip to Mardi Gras.  Jeremy Mullins had a big personality.  He knew how to have a good time, he had a raucous, raunchy sense of humor, and by his own admission, he could be an asshole at times.   However, he was an important figure in bringing my girlfriend and myself together, and I am thankful to him for his part in that.

In recent years, Jeremy and I had grown apart, as people are prone to do as time,  circumstances, and distance intervene, but through friends and via the occasional, incidental meeting, I managed to keep abreast of his activities.   Jeremy eventually became a professor at SCAD in Savannah, Georgia, where he taught Webcomics.  He was bringing Sequential Art to the generation that would carry it forward, in its new form, into the future.  By all accounts, he was having the time of his life doing so.  Too bad it was cut short.  He was thirty-two years old.

- JEP

06/15/09 – Update on the accident from The Daily Freeman.