RIP: GENE COLAN

Last week we were shocked by the loss of another great MARVEL COMICS artist. GENE COLAN, often popularly referred to (By Stan Lee mostly) as Gene, the Dean, passed away after having been comatose for almost a week.

Gene Colan was born in New York in 1926. He started working for Marvel as early as in the 1940s (when Marvel was called Timely) and came back to them in the 1960s with a vengeance on the superhero scene. At first he used a nickname Adam Austin (mostly on titles like The Sub-Mariner) but soon started using his own name. Especially on DAREDEVIL, Gene Colan had a great influence on the popularity of the character. He also had a great artistic influence on DR. STRANGE for a long time.
I mostly remember Gene's fantastic art on TOMB OF DRACULA from the 1970s. This was phenomenal art for a medium as lowbrow as comics.

Gene drew most of the superhero characters for Marvel and also worked for a lot of DC comics.

But one of his most unusual characters (although he had no hand in it's creation) was HOWARD THE DUCK. Along with writer and Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber, he also drew another of these unusual characters in STEWART THE RAT.

Colan had been in the news the last few years because of his poor health. He passed away last week. Gene Colan was one of my favorite artists and if you google him, you will not only find his own site but many others that feature his work as well as interviews.

Gene, You will be missed.