Memorial to Bernie Wrightson March 19 2017 Suzanne Forbes CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

One of the all-time greats of comic art has just died. Bernie Wrightson has passed on at only 68.

He was a genius who elevated comic art to new level. HIs pioneering work co-creating Swamp Thing opened an incredible space and laid the groundwork for the Moore-Bissette-Totleben run, which impacted me and my boyfriend Rob profoundly. His legendary creative fellowship with Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Barry Windsor-Smith and Michael Wm. Kaluta at The Studio inspired my generation of comic artists to be artists, not work-for-hire content producers. (There’s a book!) He worked on dozens of famous characters in comics and movies, from Batman and Spiderman to The Punisher, and with Stephen King and Steve Niles. You can’t begin to imagine how how influential his work was.

Every time you looked at his Frankenstein work, you just said, how the hell can anybody be so good?

He set a standard for excellence that was so inspiring. I never met him, though I was at the same con as him a few times during my pro career in comics. A great regret, and a tremendous loss of a great artist who was loved by all.

There are six pieces of original Bernie art available for sale at the Comic Art Fans site right now. There’s lots of gorgeous images available to print in the Wrightsons Zazzle shop too.

RIP, Bernie Wrightson.

Update: SO much better! My friend and colleague at ESDIPBerlin, illustrator Rafa Alvarez, collaborated with me to make this picture actually look the way I imagined it in my head, using his amazing skills. I feel like together we did some justice to Bernie’s inspiration. Every new generation of comic artists and illustrators shares the responsibility of carrying this torch.

Bernie Wrightson Memorial Collab Suzanne Forbes x Rafa Alvarez March 20 2017