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MADRID Francisco Ayala, Spanish novelist
Francisco Ayala, a novelist, sociologist and one of Spain's leading scholars, died Tuesday. He was 103.
Ayala's foundation said he died of natural causes at his home in Madrid.
Ayala won many prestigious prizes in Spain, from the Cervantes award - considered the Spanish-language equivalent of the Nobel for literature - in 1991 to the Prince of Asturias in 1998.
His life as a young man turned into a flight from the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, which ended after Franco died in 1975. At the outbreak of the conflict in 1936, Ayala was in Buenos Aires on a lecture tour. He took the route of many Spanish intellectuals - exile in America.
Ayala published his first book, "Tragicomedia de un hombre sin espiritu" (Tragicomedy of a Man Without Spirit), in 1925 and received a doctorate in law from Madrid University in 1930.
In Buenos Aires, he taught sociology and founded the literary and cultural magazine Reality. He then moved to Puerto Rico in 1950, where he founded the respected cultural magazine La Torre.
In 1955, he began a 20-year stint in the U.S., working at Princeton, Rutgers, New York University, Bryn Mawr College, the University of Chicago and New York's City University.
Sheldon Dorf, Comic-Con founder
SAN DIEGO Sheldon Dorf, who founded the world famous Comic-Con International comic book convention, has died. He was 76.
A longtime friend, Greg Koudoulian, said the Ocean Beach resident died at a San Diego hospital Tuesday from kidney failure. He had diabetes and had been hospitalized for about a year.
Dorf, a freelance artist and comic strip letterer, founded Comic-Con in San Diego in 1970 after moving from Detroit.
Today, the convention draws 125,000 fans a year and is a major gathering for comic book fans, artists, writers and movie stars. Associated Press
