January 3, 2012

2012Vicar, Chilean cartoonist (born 1934)^[†]

Vicar, a pseudonym for Víctor José Arriagada Ríos, was a Chilean cartoonist, known for his prolific career drawing Disney comics.

2012Robert L. Carter, American lawyer and judge (born 1917)^[†]

Robert Lee Carter was an American lawyer, civil rights activist and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

2012Winifred Milius Lubell, American author and illustrator (born 1914)^[†]

Winifred Milius Lubell was an American illustrator, artist and writer. In her early adult years, Milius was active in the Communist Party of the United States and an advocate for social justice. She began her artistic career creating pen and ink portraits of victims of the Great Depression, before proceeding to examine the struggles of the working poor in the towns of the Eastern United States through woodcuts, as well as producing drawings from the sit down strikes in Chicago. An artist and an illustrator, Milius' most notable publications include the illustrations for Dorothy Sterling's Cape Cod natural history book The Outer Lands. In her eighties she wrote and illustrated the women's studies exploration of feminism, sexuality and mythology: The Metamorphosis of Baubo, Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy. She died on January 3, 2012, of congestive heart failure. She was 97.

2012Josef Škvorecký, Czech-Canadian author and publisher (born 1924)^[†]

Josef Škvorecký was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.