Mailer, who started the country's first alt-weekly with Daniel Wolf and Edwin Fancher in 1955, died early Saturday in Manhattan. He was 84. After he finished his third novel, Mailer put up $10,000 to launch the new weekly and came up with the name, the Voice reports. "Though Mailer wanted the paper to be 'outrageous' and 'give a little speed to that moral and sexual revolution which is yet to come upon us,' his partners, he said, were more interested in making it a successful, established venture," according to the Voice. He soon started writing a column in the paper, only to quit the paper four months later because he said there were typographical errors in his column. For more reflections on Mailer from around the world, visit Google News.

Continue ReadingNorman Mailer, Co-Founder of The Village Voice, Dies

The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation released yesterday hidden-camera videos and 258 pages of documents from its nearly two-year investigation into the Weekly's classified department, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The MBI says the videos, which show ad reps talking about how to best word escort ads, helped convince a grand jury to indict the paper and three of its employees for allegedly knowingly selling ads to prostitutes for sex services, according to Local 6 News.

Continue ReadingMBI Releases Videos and Transcripts in Case Against Orlando Weekly

Nicholas Gurewitch's The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories is a collection of the best of his weekly strips, which appear in a handful of alt-weeklies across the country. The hardcover collection will be released later this month by Dark Horse Comics. To celebrate the occasion, Gurewitch talks to New York about, among other things, his comic vision, Gary Larson, and the one strip he regrets publishing. "It's the beginning of a race. And the second frame shows the racers just standing there after the gun had gone off. And the third frame reveals that the runners are not running at all but are, uh, defecating, and on the banner it says 'Poo,'" he says. "I thought that was very, very funny at the time, but now I'm undecided whether it has widespread appeal."

Continue Reading‘Perry Bible Fellowship’ Cartoonist Releases His First Book