George Pérez (1954-2022): a remembrance.
I met George Pérez and his wife back in 1978 at UK’s Comicon and his first visit over here. Back in the day, we were still getting used to the idea of American comicbook creators coming over here. As such, we were talking about how much he should charge for illustrations as neither of us could decide.
My best suggestion was not to charge so much that the ordinary fan couldn’t afford it. I’d be pushed to think how much it was in the pre-inflation days then but I did get a brilliant A3 Storm from him and it’s a bit big to go in my scanner to show here.
Anyway, it sort of backfired and he had a long number of illustrations to do that weekend and I only saw a sampling of them. I did know that when he returned to his hotel, he worked late into the night and was still going strong on the Sunday. This was principally when he was at Marvel so most of the pictures were of their characters and Wolverine was the most popular request, although I did see a nifty Banshee and a look at google today noted it had been auctioned off recently.
George’s reputation was built off his ability to draw team books, turning from the Avengers to briefly the Justice League Of America and then, with Marv Wolfman, resurrected the Titans, dropping their ‘Teen’ name. The recent TV series owes more to their version than the 1960s version. When it came to drawing ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’, he was the logical choice. The man was prolific.
I missed his later work with Wonder Woman when he also turned writer but his perchance for detail and good art carried on over his career until his eyesight started to fail a couple years back and he had developed inoperable pancreatic cancer.
The comicbook world is a poorer place with his absence but his legacy of art will last forever. Don’t forget the accent on the first é.
GF Willmetts
08 May 2022
