Yesterday the legendary artist and writer Bernie Wrightson lost his battle with brain cancer.
It's a real sad day for the comic book community and fans like me. Wrightson was a master horror and the macabre and I spent many a day of my youth pouring over his works.
Let me just say that my parents didn't have the best sense of discretion. Or maybe they were the coolest parents ever. When it came to books, they let me read just about anything I wanted. The very first comic book I ever bought was a horror comic book was Ghostly Tales #152. It didn't feature artwork by Bernie Wrightson but it did start me down the path to reading and collecting horror comics.
One of my group of favorite horror books are the classic EC books from the 1950s. Those controversial books influenced Wrightson to focus on horror books over the course of his career. Well it had been a goal of mine to own an original EC Comic of any sort. In a bittersweet moment of glory for this Madman, on the same day I finally get to own an original EC book, the comic book world lost Bernie.
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| In '77, Wrightson did a series of lithos based on dinosaurs. |
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| Wrightson's most famous creation, Swamp Thing. A short story from an issue of House of Secrets, the plant man hero is a fan favorite. |
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| Some villagers trying to kill a vampire. |
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| A scene from Wrightson's 1977 Frankenstein project. |
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| Though Wrightson is noted as a master of horror, he did many other genres including this Jonah Hex cover, a western. |
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