R.I.P. Yoshito Usui
Yeah, this was depressing news. And he was only 51. I was hoping he'd be found alive and everything would turn out fine.

Sarah and I were big fans of the Crayon Shin-Chan anime series after a fan sent us a VHS tape many moons ago. If the rights weren't tied up at the time there would have been a good chance of the Cartoon Network running the series back in the late '90's, after we duped it off for our Space Ghost producers. Sarah even netted a finder's fee for bringing the series to their attention (It's ironic that we ended up working on the Funimation/Adult Swim version of the series years after the fact, which as some of you know, ended when Funimation let us go without telling us. But I digress).

We had picked up some of the un-translated manga in sale bins at the Edgewater Kinokuniya (boy, do I miss that store), and bought the first series of translated books -- I think Comics 1 put those out. DC/CMX has been releasing the series with, I assume, new (and better - Comics 1 put out incredibly choppy stuff) translations. 

Anyway, very sad news.