Life in Comics #4: Tribute Where It's Due

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on June 3, 2008 Sign up now!

By Jennifer de Guzman -- Publishers Weekly, 6/2/2008 1:37:00 PM

Most recently came the news of the passing of Will Elder, best known for his cartoons in Mad and the risqué, light-spirited Little Annie Fanny that ran in Playboy. I was aware of his influence on a cartoonist I've worked with, Evan Dorkin, but it really became clear to me after I read Evan's tribute to Mr. Elder on his journal, which lauded Elder's "sense of humor, his playfulness on the page, his insane background gags, and just how much he loaded into a standard page of comic art. If God is in the details, Will Elder channeled God." Reading, that, then looking again at some of Mr. Elder's art, especially a Mad cartoon showing a hectic restaurant scene, I realize just what that influence meant. The scene in "Restaurant," one packed with people of amazingly diverse expressions and exaggerated actions, just the kind that Evan has become known for in his comics Dork and Milk and Cheese. It's not an aping of style; rather, through Elder's work encourages the viewer to take notice of the kind of chaos that's so often present in real life. One of the schools for Dorkin's eye for detail was Elder's work. Without it, perhaps Evan Dorkin would have been a very different cartoonist, and we would have been less rich for it.

Many other comics greats have been lost to us in the past few years, and their deaths usually follow by some feeling of regret. My husband Brian regretted not buying a drawing from Green Lantern original artist Martin Nodell at Comic-Con in 2006, Mr. Nodell's last Comic-Con. And I still daydream about traveling back in time to make myself overcome my shyness and talk to Will Eisner, whom I always saw at Comic-Con, a friendly legend of a man. Once he came by the SLG Publishing and told my boss, the company's found Dan Vado, that indie publishers like us were the "future of comics." What a compliment! I remember Dan beaming—and people who know him also know that he's not the beaming type.

What I'd say to Will Eisner is that I not only admire his comics, the expressiveness of his characters, the innovation of his page layouts, but also his work to make the medium a studied form of art and storytelling. I would put aside my thoughts that I was just a upstart girl editor and he was Will Eisner, and I would shake his hand.

I was heartened to see the response to the news that artist Gene Colan is ailing. The comics community came together to pay tribute and support an artist who has given much to the industry and who has influenced many. When I told my husband about Mr. Colan's illness, he said, "I started learning to draw by copying his drawings." Brian prizes his collection of Tomb of Dracula issues featuring Blade, bought at his local comic book store when he was a kid, a week at a time, two quarters at a time. The Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon notes that Mr. Colan participated in creating or significantly developed characters that Marvel has greatly profited from of late: Blade and Iron Man. Heidi MacDonald reminded readers of her PW comics blog The Beat that "when you drew comic books all your life, even comic books as lucrative as those drawn by Colan, like Blade, you don’t get a pension or residuals or anything really."

Since Mr. Colan's illness was made public, there has been an outpouring of unsolicited support for him, with many artists expressing their appreciation for his work and acknowledging the influence it had on them. Many have donated art for auctions benefiting Colan and his wife Adrienne. Marvel has stepped up to contribute as well. In this difficult time for the Colans, one of the comics industry's virtues—that of rallying around its own—has shined through.

As I was writing this installment of Life in Comics, Rory Root, owner of the influential Comic Relief store in Berkeley, died. Rory was one of my convention acquaintances, always ready with a friendly smile or word when I visited his booth. He was of a younger generation than the artists I've mentioned—only 50—and so I never would have thought I would be including him in this column. I regret that I never made the trip to Comic Relief's new location while he was alive. It always seemed liked I had plenty of time to do it.

Reading through the seemingly endless tributes and remembrances, I thought about how close-knit the comics world is. Nobody is separated by more than a couple of degrees, and Rory was probably an essential link in many of those connections. This is another one of the comics community's great strengths—people who are devoted to the art form and the industry who are willing to share their talent, knowledge and enthusiasm.

Jennifer de Guzman is editor-in-chief at the independent comics publisher SLG Publishing. She also writes fiction—mostly in prose, occasionally in comics—and holds an M.F.A. in literature and creative writing from San Jose State University.