Wed May 14, 2008 6:42PM1 comment ›
Wed May 14, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Gene Colan's Health Issues Prompt Industry Fundraising Efforts
Popular artist suffering from liver failure...
While Warner Bros./DC is actively shutting down fundraisers, the friends and family of artist Gene Colan are continuing to put the word out about their need for donations to help with the cost of Colan's medical bills due to dangerous liver problems.
Dirk Deppey over at Journalista has made it the top story for the entire week and like many other sites, provided a link to auctions of Colan's original art that his family has posted. He's also offered up an alternate strategy for getting much-needed money into the right hands:
Do as I did, and make a direct donation via Paypal, where the Colans are registered as genecolan@optonline.net — just log into your account, hit the “send money” button, and insert said email address and the amount you wish to donate into the appropriate boxes. Oh, and you might want to mention the word “donation” prominently in the comments box, so the Colans don’t have to sort through a bunch of listings to find the eBay payments.
Tom Spurgeon also offered up a host of links and information about Colan, his predicament and how you can help, while ComicMix pal Mark Evanier posted a long message about Colan on his website:
I don't know what else to write here. It just seems appropriate to send a whole lotta love the Colans' way this morning. I hope the dire reports on his health will prove to be overstated. I hope we'll have Gene around for many more years. I hope — and of this, I am the surest — that Gene is well aware how many fans he has and how, whenever he goes, he's leaving behind an incredible body of work that will be praised and studied and appreciated by comic book fans who aren't even born yet. I just think we oughta postpone losing a guy like that as long as possible.
A message from Colan's wife Adrienne can also be read here.
Having never met Colan, the best I can offer you is yet another request for your support, as well as this one piece of evidence that testifies to his greatness. Simply put, Gene Colan is so talented that he can even make a character like Stilt-Man look scary:
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Comments (1)
Russ Rogers (10:47 AM on Fri May 16, 2008)
Gene Colan is a genius. It's funny. It took this turn in his health and me going back to look at some interviews and retrospectives of his work for me to realize that Gene Colan is the reason I love Daredevil, not Frank Miller. Miller is great. His run on Daredevil was cool. But my love for the character had long been established by Colan. Some of my favorite Batman stories were drawn by Colan too!
One of my favorite Gene Colan works is also one of his lesser known: "Ragamuffins." It was written by Don McGregor and published by Eclipse in the early 80s. The art in "Ragamuffins" is amazing. It was experimental in that it was just watercolors over Colan's pencils. They didn't ink it! You really get a sense of the subtlety and realism in Colan's work. This experiment was repeated (less successfully) by DC on the "Nathaniel Dusk" series. The subtleties of the pencils are in danger of being crushed by the printing process. How well would that process be reproduced on a computer screen? Hmm.
"Ragamuffins" is a series of short stories that deal with childhood incidents and show how those incidents affect the characters and become themes throughout their lives. I wonder how much the writing and art on "EZ Street" (here on ComicMix) was directly influenced by "Ragamuffins." "Ragamuffins" isn't a novel like "EZ Street." But the realism, the themes, the story structure and even the watercolors in "EZ Street" are very reminiscent of "Ragamuffins."
"Ragamuffins" is a series that is worthy of being republished. Are you listening, ComicMix? It was presented in very short vignettes, perfect for ComicMix's publishing style and schedule! McGregor said that he had many more "Ragamuffins" stories that never got a chance to see print. In a perfect world, Gene Colan will recover fully; he would be able to re-unite with Don McGregor for another run of "Ragamuffins" stories; and I would get to read them all for free here on ComicMix. A fellow can dream.