Another artist that I really like died yesterday. Carlos Ezquerra was a seventy-year-old man with lung cancer, and I didn't know him personally, so there's a limit to how sad or surprised I can be about it; but I'm still disappointed that there will never be any more Ezquerra artwork.
His style was rough and cartoony, but he was a fantastic visual storyteller.
In case you're wondering, in Dredd's timeline, the world was destroyed when a clownish right-wing populist was elected president of the united states, and then proceeded to start a nuclear war over control of the Earth's oil reserves. After the dust settled, democracy was declared a failed experiment, and anyone advocating for democracy is considered a dangerous subversive.
I'd also heard a couple of interviews with him, and found him quite interesting to listen to. On one occasion, he talked about how super-hero comics promote fascist ideals, by taking what are basically violent, masked, vigilante thugs, and holding them up as principled, patriotic, heroes, who succeed where proper law-enforcement fails. I suppose, growing up in Spain under the rule of Franco will give a person insight into the nature of fascism that most of the rest of us don't have.
Murray Ball went last year, and Steve Dillon the year before. Given their age, I have to assume that most of the rest of my favourite writers and artists will be gone within the next ten years or so. It's hard to describe, but it makes me feel like my own life is gradually being chipped away. Does anybody else get what I mean by that?
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