Respect and Recognize

Respect.

While it hasn’t been covered in super detail on this site, word went out in early May that Gene Colan at 81 years of age has suffered, what has been described as, major liver failure. As a result of this he has been hospitalized, and to many, it appears that this is where he will be spending the rest of his days.

Colan, who is perhaps best known for his work on Daredevil and the Tomb of Dracula books, is one of the great artists to have found their start in the Silver Age period. While the majority of the workers of this period are lost in the shadow’s of Stan and Jack, there were many important and influential artists to come out alongside Colan such as Adams and Infantino (to name only a view). Many of these artists are what can be described as artist’s artists– while not known universally by fans, theses creators have influenced generations. I doubt there would be a Jim Lee if it wasn’t a Neal Adams.

It was this aforementioned news of Colan failing health that got me thinking more about these artists’ artists who are either lost in the shadows of giants of the past or the giants of the present. This group, like all of us is aging, and slowly disappearing from the comic landscape they helped pioneer.  In the past five years we’ve lost notable names from the ‘old guard’: Eisner, Aparo, Gerber, and Rogers to name a few, and this I think is only the start.  Remember the comic book itself is less then a 100 years old, which means we are now getting to the point where we are losing many of the trailblazers of the form, and like it or not, the losses are going to start to intensify as we hit ‘critical mass’.

What saddens me the most about this, is not the actual deaths, but is how the majority of fans have seem to forgotten about these people, or at the very least not seem to acknowledge them as much as they should. When I manage to get to a convention, one of the things I actively try to do is seek out these older creators, and talk to them at their booth or attend their panels. It was shocking to me that at the Canadian Fan Expo, arguably the biggest con in Canada, Neal Adams had a line at most of 5 people to see him, while others had lines that took two plus hours to get through. These legends seem to be suffering a quiet public death.

The stories that some of these legends have to share are just amazing. One of my favourite con moments is hearing Jerry Robinson, golden age Batman artist, talk about the battle that he and Neal Adams waged against DC to get Shuster and Siegel credit for creating Superman. Hearing him tell the story of the policting and the results left me with such a feeling, that four years later, I still can’t describe it accurately with words.  If you have a chance to see artists from this generation talk, you should by all means go for it. It will be worth your time.

So what made me realize all of this? What made me acknowledge the importance of seeing the legends of the industry talk?  It was an obituary I read in the afternoon of January 3rd 2005

Recognize.

January 3rd 2005 is the day that Will Eisner passed on, and is also the day when I realized that there may not always be that ‘next time’ to see a particular creator. Eisner’s death event stands out further for me, as six months earlier I had a chance to meet him.

Eisner was a guest of the 2004 Toronto Comicon (not to be confused with the Fan Expo). During this period I had stopped reading comics, as I had elected to spend my money on the other vices that many male undergrad students have; women and booze. Booze was the social glue to the people I hung out with, and while I had broken up with a long term girlfriend a few months prior to Eisner’s Toronto visit, she had managed to convince me to stop reading comics. Even after we had broken up, it took me awhile to realize it was alright to read comics. When the time came to go to the convention,  I decided not to take the 40 min bus ride to Toronto. What I did instead, I can’t remember.

Six months after the convention I was starting to read comics again, and Eisner was dead. A month after his death, I was reading comics regularly again.  six months after his death I was sitting in a small panel room and listening to Jerry Robinson tell stories about creating Robin and the Joker.

Thanks Will.