Deaths on October 17

Suzy Covey, American scholar and academic (b. 1939)

Suzy Covey (Shaw) (October 27, 1939 – October 17, 2007) was an American comics scholar, whose work examined intersections of comics, technology, and sound, including Internet studies and studies of the Comic Book Markup Language (a specialized XML for encoding the images, text, and sound effects depicted in comics). In honor of her work with its comic collections, the Smathers Libraries renamed them the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in Special Collections in 2007.After retiring in 2006 from the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries as a university librarian emerita, Suzy Covey's comic studies scholarship was enhanced by her work with computers during the early days of the Internet and her scholarship on music, which followed her undergraduate music studies and her own work as a musician, where she played as a band member on the "Bruce Springstone: Live at Bedrock" parody record, released in 1982. The A-side features "Bedrock Rap/Meet the Flintstones," (3:01) a parody of Springsteen singing the Flintstones theme; the B-side is a Springsteenesque arrangement of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (2:41) which is included on the CD collection Baseball's Greatest Hits. The record sold 35,000 copies and received airplay on rock and college radio. Her musical experience and expertise, along with her technical skills led Suzy Covey to use early bulletin board systems (BBS) and Internet discussion forums to discuss music, comics, and technology. Her role in these discussions and in early Internet studies helped to support and focus her comics research. She studied at Florida State University.