Wow. This was a sucky week.

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

In one week we lost Jane Henson, Roger Ebert, and Carmine Infantino. From a creative point of view, the world has taken a serious hit.

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20 comments on “Wow. This was a sucky week.”

  1. Geez, the guy who got me into movies and the guy who got me into comics (well, Star Wars got me into comics, but Infantino is the one who drew them), dying on the same day. What does this mean?!

  2. Wait — Carmine Infantino TOO?

    Aw, crap and double crap.

    Rest easy, Jane, Roger and Carmine. You’ve all done so much.

  4. Infantino, too?

    This is like when Will Eisner and Kelly Freas died within a day of each other…

  5. I literally gasped when I read that Ebert died today (though I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, as I’ve done quite a bit of work on his Wikipedia article, including detailing the health problems in the last few years of his life).

    And then, when I heard Carmine died, I almost had to suppress tears, as he was my comics art teacher during my sophomore year at SVA, and a very genial, very encouraging fellow. Though he wasn’t as focused on teaching the fundamentals of storytelling as Klaus Janson in my junior and senior year, Carmine, who was hired to replace Gene Colan, the originally scheduled sophomore teacher, who had to bow out, was always encouraging. When he’d pass by my desk, he’d put his arm and my shoulder and give it a squeeze, and say, “That’s good, Lou!” (He called me Lou).

    The next time I saw him after I graduated was at the November 2008 Big Apple Convention in Manhattan, when I photographed him for his Wikipedia article. He seemed to be frowning in the pic, so when I ran into him again at the October 2010 convention, I photographed him again, this time smiling, in order to replace the Wikipedia pic. That was the last time I saw him, and I’m glad that my last memory of him was of him smiling.

    Rest in peace, Carmine.

    And thanks. 🙁

  6. Add Bob Clarke of Mad Magazine and Iain Banks announced that he has only months to live as he has terminal cancer.

    April is fired.

  7. Also George Gladir, co-creator of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. And Spanish director Jesús “Jess” Franco, whose exploitation movies weren’t for all tastes but he at least showed us stuff we hadn’t seen before.

    But Ebert and Infantino are the ones that connected with me the most, having grown up reading Infantino Flash comics and watching Siskel & Ebert.

  9. And in France, we lost Fred, the creator of Philémon. Yes, april sucks. Big time.

  11. And a little over a week ago, the horror community lost three esteemed novelists — Rick Hautala, James Herbert, and David Silva — all in rapid succession.

    It’s been a pretty godawful fortnight & change, all around.

  13. Sad news all around…it’s curious that the 3 that hit me the hardest, Franco, Ebert and Infantino, were creators that I never would have listed among my top favorites, yet I see the loss of each as leaving a big void.

    Franco’s work is usually too haphazard and often too sleazy for my tastes but I can’t deny the intelligence that went into many of them and one has to admire anyone who can grind out 200+ features in one lifetime. Ebert’s film criticism was very much hit or miss for me, at least when he disliked something. When he loved a movie he could be incredibly insightful. His political writing left me cold for the same reason and not just because he was on the opposite end of the spectrum. But when he wrote about the people he loved or his childhood or his love for life in the face of the last decade of terrible health setbacks he could be wonderful.

    And Infantino was an artist that usually left me unimpressed, too old school, too many of the same expressions and shortcuts. Ditto Ditko, ditto Curt Swan, ditto a lot of the older, less flashy artists of the era when I was devouring everything Marvel (and some DC) produced. And yet…I found myself sticking with those books more than some of the flashier ones once I started getting more selective. They knew how to tell a dámņ story.

    And now, with the wisdom that comes with time and constant exposure to superficial crap, I really appreciate what he brought to the table. He was one hëll of a cover artist as well.

    Terrible, terrible month. If anything happens to Ray Harryhausen I’m just cancelling the rest of the year.

  14. And the hits keep coming: Now, it’s Bigas Lunas, the spanish movie director who revealed Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, who has just died of cancer at 67. April sucks !

  16. And it keeps coming: Sara Montiel and Annette Funicello have both died today.

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