Tag: obituary

2000 AD is profoundly saddened to confirm that artist Carlos Ezquerra has passed away at the age of 70.

One of the all-time greatest comic book artists, the Spanish illustrator was one of the titans of 2000 AD.

Originally from Zaragoza, Carlos began his career in Barcelona, drawing westerns and war stories for Spanish publishers. Breaking into the UK market on romance titles like Valentine and Mirabelle, he was head-hunted for the new IPC title Battle Picture Weekly where he drew Rat Pack, Major Eazy and El Mestizo.

In 1976, he was asked to create a new character, the future lawman Judge Dredd, for a new weekly science fiction comic called 2000 AD. Thanks to his enduring partnership with John Wagner, Dredd was to become one of the world’s most recognisable comic book characters, with Carlos there to apply his inimitable style to some of the biggest stories in the strip’s history, such as The Apocalypse War, Necropolis and Origins.

Thanks to Dredd as well as his co-creation of Strontium Dog, created for Starlord in 1978, his adaptation for 2000 AD of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat, and thousands upon thousands of comic book pages, Carlos was lauded by readers and creators alike.

Modest and unassuming, Carlos was nonetheless a legend whose contribution to the global comic book industry cannot be overstated. His distinctive style – characterised by breathtakingly dynamic, high-energy storytelling and the distinctive ridged thick inking that outlined so many key moments – was instantly recognisable.

Despite a brush with lung cancer in 2010, he continued to work and, although the cancer returned this year it was believed he was recovering well. His sudden death is a profound loss not just to 2000 AD but to the comic book medium.

A statement on behalf of the staff at 2000 AD:

“It is difficult to put this into words, but we have lost someone who was the heart and soul of 2000 AD. It is no exaggeration to call Carlos Ezquerra one of the greatest comic book artists of all time, and his name deserves to be uttered alongside Kirby, Ditko, Miller, Moebius, and Eisner.

“Yet this doesn’t really do justice to someone whose work was loved by millions and has had an influence far beyond the comic book page. From Judge Dredd to Strontium Dog, from Rat Pack to Major Eazy, Carlos has left us with a legacy of stunning and distinctive work that was and always will be 2000 AD.

“He has been one of the pillars, producing the same dynamic, enthralling and arresting art we always loved him for. We thought we had many more adventures to come from the master, so we are devastated to discover we were wrong.

“Our most profound condolences to his family, his friends, and to the generations of readers who knew instantly they were reading a Carlos Ezquerra comic book.”

Matt Smith, editor of 2000 AD, said: “Carlos’s artwork spoke to me as soon as I saw it.

“I only started reading 2000 AD in 1985, but four progs after my first Strontium Dog story ‘Big Bust of 49’ began, and I was immediately hooked – powerful, clear and concise in its storytelling, full of energy and humour, and effortlessly cool, his distinctive linework soon became instantly recognisable to this newbie Squaxx whenever he worked on a strip, and he fast became a favourite. The Apocalypse War, Portrait of a Mutant, The Killing, Necropolis… so many great, great stories that came to life under his pen.

“Amazingly, seventeen years later, I became editor of 2000 AD, and had the absolute pleasure of working with the man himself, and he was as pleasant, generous and unprepossessing as he was talented. It’s hard to believe that his work will no longer grace the prog, since he played such a formidable part in what makes the comic so special, but his legacy will live on, for future generations to enjoy.”

Jason Kingsley, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Rebellion, said: “It is hard to put into words the influence Carlos’s work has had on me over the years. He may be physically gone from us, but the huge legacy of his creative abilities lives on. My personal condolences to his family.”

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This week we, along with so many creators and fans, were devastated to hear the news that artist Edmund Bagwell has passed away.

Edmund died of pancreatic cancer in Seoul, South Korea, at the age of 50 on Tuesday.

Getting his first professional work at Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon’s Deadline magazine in 1988, Edmund worked for Marvel UK on series such as Black Axe and Motormouth before moving on to work for 2000 AD.

After a stunning debut in the Judge Dredd Mega-Special in 1992 under the name Edmund Kitsune, he went on to produce breathtaking and inimitable work on The Ten-Seconders, Cradlegrave, Tharg’s Future Shocks, and Indigo Prime.

Everyone at 2000 AD is deeply saddened to have lost an incredible talent at such a relatively young age. We shall miss Edmund very much and our thoughts are with his family, friends, and fans.

For more details about Edmund’s life and work, visit Down The Tubes’ tribute >>

His family have asked that donations be made to Pancreatic Cancer UK in Edmund’s memory.

As a fond reminder of Edmund’s unique style and in tribute to him, we present his first work for 2000 AD – a story he drew with Richard Preston for the Judge Dredd Mega-Special 1992, written by John Wagner:

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José Ortiz Moya, better known to generations of comic book readers as José Ortiz, died on 23rd December 2013.

One of a handful of Spanish artists who had a huge effect on British comic books in the mid to late 20th Century, his death from heart failure in Valencia at the age of 81 leaves the industry without a “consummate professional” who was considered to be major part of the “golden generation” of Spanish comics.

From westerns to science fiction serials, from girls comics to horror, Ortiz was a distinctive craftsman who enjoyed a globe-spanning career that lasted six decades and – along with fellow Spaniards Carlos Ezquerra and Jesus Redondo – made a major contribution to 2000 AD’s history. Although he was an incredibly versatile artist, he is best known for his incredible work for Warren Publishing in the 1970s, where he proved himself to be a master of horror art.

Born in 1932 in Cartagena, in the Murcia region of Spain, Ortiz was the son of a watercolour painter and, after winning a competition in Chicos magazine in 1951, the 16-year-old began working for Manuel Gago’s Editorial Maga publishing company on the series The Spy. He and his younger brother Leopoldo, who was also an artist, soon moved to Valencia where they became part of a studio staffed by Gago, as well as Luis Bermejo, Miguel Quesada, and Pastor Eduardo Vañó.

Ortiz worked extensively for Editorial Maga for the next ten years on strips such as El Capitan Don Nadie (Captain Don Nobody), El Terremoto (Dan Barry, Earthquake), and Pantera Negra (Black Panther). Not until his contemporary Redondo, he is best known for his Westerns – particularly the popular Don Barry series from 1954-7 and the first 31 issues of Johnny Fogata.

Branching out to other publishers, Ortiz continued to draw Westerns but also produced historical and adaptation strips such as Sigur el Wikingo (Sigur the Viking) and Los Viajes de Gulliver (Gulliver’s Travels). 

But it was his work for foreign publishers that Ortiz would become best known. In 1957 he got his first work with Scottish publisher DC Thomson, making his debut with “In Love’s Trap” for the romantic pocket library series Love and Life. It wasn’t until the dawn of the ‘60s that he became a regular artist on the company’s war libraries, including titles such as War, Battle, and Air Ace. In 1962, he even he illustrated the comic strip ‘Caroline Baker, Barrister at Law’ for the Daily Express, allegedly coming to the UK to make sketches at a local magistrate’s court.

Since 1950, The Eagle had been an unassailable mainstay of British comics but since the departure of both its founding father, Rev Marcus Morris, and Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson it had gone into a steady decline. Ortiz, who had drawn the colour series The Green Men for Boys’ World in 1964, took over the adventures of UFO Agent, which switched to Smokeman when the superhero fad following the Batman TV show began and then to Grant (C.I.D.) when it ended.

This was the beginning of the boom time for British comic books and Ortiz produced work for titles such as Eagle, Lion, Air Ace Picture Library, and Battle Picture Library, as well as for publishers from the US and Italy. Finding himself drawing nursery comics as well as strips for girls titles Valentine and Romeo, he was offered the chance to draw the adaptation of the The Persuaders TV series for TV Action.

It was then that James Warren magazines came calling and it was there that he would produce his greatest work. Created to circumvent the restrictive Comics Code Authority – Warren called its publications ‘magazines’ rather than ‘comics’ – Warren became was the home of horror comics Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Thanks to Ortiz’s trans-Atlantic success of Western series Mitos del Oeste (Myths of the West) with Josep Toutain and the Selecciones Illustrada agency in Barcelona Warren providing Warren with talent from 1971, Ortiz became one of the many Spanish artists who helped turn the company into a publishing legend, becoming a legend in his own right as he produced hundreds of pages every year. His dark, shadow-heavy atmospherics made him perfect for Warren – his mastery of brushwork created incredibly evocative strips full of seething menace and brooding anger. In 1974, he was deservedly named as Warren’s Best All Round Artist.

For a time he abandoned the British market altogether but as the Warren age ended, he returned to Spain in 1981 and began working with writer Antonio Segura, creating the post-apocalyptic science fiction series Hombre in the adult-oriented Cimoc magazine, a strip which continued until the 1990s and gave a futuristic twist to the Spaghetti Western.

Two years later, the duo took part in the launch of the short-lived publishing house Ediciones Metropol, with artists including Leopold Sánchez, Manfred Sommer, and Jordi Bernet, which produced the Metropol, Mocambo and KO Comics magazines, the latter of which began to run Hombre as well as well-known strip Man.

During this period he returned to British comics and the revived Eagle, contributing series such as The Tower King, The House of Daemon, Survival, The Amstor Computer, News Team, and the long-running The Thirteenth Floor, which debuted in Scream! in 1984 and continued when it merged with Eagle. It was on this strip that he made his biggest mark on the minds of many young comics readers: The Maxwell Tower housing block was controlled by a sentient caretaker computer called Max who acted as both character and narrator in the strip. Emotionlessly malevolent in the vein of HAL 9000, Max used his control over the block’s ‘13th floor’ to trap, torture and kill anyone who contravened his perverse morality – the ironic punishments meted out to burglars, con-men, adulterers, and even just those who annoyed Max were typical of Alan Grant and John Wagner’s writing, but took on a gruesome reality under Ortiz’s brush – it readily evoked his work for Warren and showed he was perfectly suited and at ease creating chilling contemporary horror.

It was at the same time that he began to work for 2000 AD, which by now had established itself as a driver of a flailing British industry. Although it was a purely science fiction title, Ortiz’s horror-tinged style found a ready home on Rogue Trooper where he eschewed the focus on high-tech science fiction and instead turned Nu-Earth into a pestilent, toxic wasteland filled with deadly vegetation and disease; it would not be until Will Simpson’s work on Dave Gibbons’ reboot that Rogue’s world looked so akin to the steamy jungles of Vietnam, rather than the familiar landscapes of World War Two. He also drew Judge Dredd and The Helltrekkers but his time in UK comics drew to a close with strips for Eagle and WildCat in 1988 and 1989.

Ortiz continued to work on Hombre for Cimoc until the 1990s, when Spanish comics suffered the same fate as the British industry and collapsed in popularity. He spent the next two decades working for Sergio Bonelli on the famous Italian western, Tex.

His most recent work was reportedly La dimora stregara (The Haunted House) for Dylan Dog Color Fest in 2012, and in the same year he was awarded the Grand Prize at the 30th Barcelona International Comics Convention in recognition of his incredible career.

Although his work for 2000 AD was brief, José Ortiz made a profound impact on British comics over the course of decades and he remains as one of the most influential horror artists of the past 50 years, his style living on in the work of many of the industry’s biggest names.

José Ortiz Moya – born 1 September 1932, died 23 December 2013