Sad news from the comic industry today with the announcement that artist Michael Turner died late Friday night from complications arising from his ongoing fight against cancer. Turner, who had worked for DC and Marvel Comics providing covers for books like Superman/Batman, Civil War and Uncanny X-Men as well as creating his own line of comics under his Aspen MLT label, had been diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in the year 2000 but had remained optimistic about his health throughout his extensive treatment. Aspen Comics have asked those wishing to make a charitable donation on Turner's name to donate to the American Cancer Society or to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Turner was 37 years old.

The popularity contest will run in tandem with the new series of webcomics that superstar artist Michael Turner's Aspen Comics studio will be producing for NBC's official Heroes site. Aspen EVP Frank Mastromauro spilled the beans to an excited audience at this weekend's Wizard World Philadelphia convention:

We just received a whole bunch of new mini-scripts for this [project]. Just in the last couple weeks, [artist and Aspen vice president] Peter Steigerwald designed 12 new characters for Heroes. All these characters are debuting online at NBC.com throughout the summer, and then, towards the end, characters who get the most votes [from fans] will probably wind up making it onto the show this fall.

Before you get too excited about this attempt at democracy, you might want to remember the fate of poor Hana Gitelman, the last character to make the leap from webcomic to television show, lasting all of two cameo appearances before being killed off. Nonetheless, I'm hoping that this vote is so popular that it starts a trend, purely because I'd like them to follow up with a "Which character should we actually give a personality to?" election.

New Heroes Web Comics Due [Scifi.com]