Michael Turner, 1971-2008

Comic book artist Michael Turner died last Friday of bone cancer. He was only 37; we were the same age. I had no idea Turner suffered from cancer, and I’ve been enjoying his illustrations for at least the past four years; I’m not an avid comic reader anymore. Though I used to imbibe the things like water from the age of, like, two to 17, the only titles I buy with any regularity nowadays are the Frank Miller/Jim Lee All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder thing and Justice League of America – just the occasional superhero guilty pleasure. But I knew Michael Turner as one of the newer names I was previously unfamiliar with (he started on Witchblade, a title I never read), doing the covers of Supergirl, Fantastic Four, the upcoming Uncanny X-Men #500… Turner will be missed; he laid it down.

I mentioned last month that I was laying down my graphic novel idea, The Masters, in order to concentrate on my next book (which is going great, actually) and screenplay (which I’ve switched gears with; more later), but there’s been progress anyway of course. Through Facebook of all places, I’ve become part of a pretty serious no-bullshit proposition to start a comic book company. Stephen Cadigan up in Canada sent out a plea to everyone in a “Let’s Create a Comic Book Company” group last month. The company is being named and incorporated this month, I’m one of the co-owners, and it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out. Especially since we’ll need around $50,000 just to get this up and running for at least a year. To be continued.