Tectonic Theater Project
On 6 October 1998 Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. He died 6 days later. His torture and murder became a watershed historical moment in America that highlighted many of the fault lines in our culture.
A month after the murder the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted interviews with the people of the town. From these interviews they wrote the play "The Laramie Project". The piece has been seen by more than 30 million people around the country.
The Phantom
In 2013 publisher Jim Shepherd, who had bought the rights from the original owners during the late 1980s, died of a heart attack. Shepherd had taken over the company and introduced some minor changes to placate King Features, which had become unhappy at Frew's treatment of its character. Shepherd's changes included glossy covers (replacing the standard newsprint covers), brief editorials, regular 100-page specials and, most significantly, an annual special of between 200–300 pages and included multiple stories and a standalone "replica" reprint of a very early Frew edition. Shepherd also embarked on the ambitious project to reprint the entire backlist of Lee Falk stories in their original formats: Frew's reprints had often been heavily edited to fit its 32-page format. Following Shepherd's death, Frew and "The Phantom" were continued by Shepherd's wife Judith until she sold the business to artist Glenn Ford and Rene White in 2016. Since then, the new "Frew Crew" (with new publisher Dudley Hogarth have introduced a range of innovations: