George Perez passed away last week, another legend lost. My condolences to his family, his friends, and his many fans.
When the news broke, my social media timelines were flooded with unbelievable words of respect and love. It was unbelievable and unprecedented. Perez was universally beloved and rightfully so.
I had the honor of meeting Mr. Perez at the Boston Comic Con in 2013. He was incredibly nice and personable. There was a huge line waiting to see him but he took the time to chat with fans. He was even doing quick sketches for an incredibly reasonable price. I got this sketch from him there.
I told him I was a long time fan. I talked to him about how I loved his art and the times he drew Supergirl. And I talked about how that while I didn't agree with Supergirl needing to die in Crisis that I couldn't have asked for a better story or art for her to leave the DCU in.
Perez drew everyone and everything. His times drawing Supergirl was limited but I loved seeing his Kara when I could.
He drew the cover for her digest back in the day.
And he even drew a couple of issues of her New 52 run, recreating the Silver Banshee for the new 52.
Perez was fantastic. I loved his art.
Now I have been reading comics a long time. There is no way I'll be able to remember the first time I saw his art. But I can remember that I started putting a name to an art style when I was reading his work on New Teen Titans.
I was always impressed with his art and emotion and storytelling ability. But this explosion of lines and shapes around people with extreme emotion was what I first recognized as 'Perez'.
I began to see it in older issues of Fantastic Four and other books I randomly had.
But it was the Titans that I began to call myself a Perez fan.
As I got older, I began to see more things about his art that made me appreciate him even more.
Small inset panels to keep the story moving. Incredible expressive work. Putting in different body types in his books from the bodacious Kory to the athletic Donna to the waifish Raven.
And, of course, his ability to draw crowd scenes that seem impossible. If you asked me to pick one image to sum up Perez, it would be the crowd scene in Crisis #5, I mean this is the DCU super-hero catalog in one two page spread.
I'll miss seeing new Perez art on the shelves. I'll miss the man and his enthusiasm for comics and fans.
God speed Mr. Perez, You are a legend whose work will live on forever.
3 comments:
No one was better at cramming more details, action or emotional content into an undersized panel. He was the complete package as an artist, he could deliver on emotional content and action all in the same seamless way.
He will indeed be missed.
JF
I'm conflicted about George Perez- there were quite a few series that he worked on that I liked and quite a few that I didn't. I wasn't a fan of New Teen Titans but there wouldn't have been Batman and The Outsiders (which I was a fan of) without it. I enjoyed Who's Who, which he did several covers and character pages for, but he was doing Crisis (which I didn't like) at around the same time. His work definitely influenced many of those who came after him, both good and bad. Ultimately, I feel about him like I did about the also recently passed Neal Adams- I was never a big fan but I recognize that he was influential and there were a lot of people who did like him.
I was very fortunate that my local comic shop set aside a copy of the recent very limited edition of the re-issued JLA/Avengers drawn by Perez, and at cover price. The amount of detail Perez drew in that series was just incredible. There's an annotation section in the back of the book that lists the characters, their original appearances, and which costume they are wearing, for almost every panel. This was truly a work of love by him, and I'm glad DC and Marvel were able to set aside their differences and reprint this while he was still alive.
What a great talent, and one universally liked and even loved.
T.N.
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