This morning I woke up to the sad news that artist Michael Turner has died. (Via Tom Spurgeon.) Presumably this is as a result of the cancer that he’d struggled with for years and years. A few years ago, while I was working at Wizard, I helped put together a book about Mike and his art–I literally wrote the book on Michael Turner–and during the days I spent with him I was really struck by what a kind, friendly guy he was. It’d be pretty easy for a dude with Turner’s looks and superstar-artist-in-the-Image-mold status to be a conceited jerk, but he wasn’t, at all, and that was evident not just from my own interactions with him but with the obviously genuine love and devotion his friends, co-workers, and family displayed about him. I know his art comes in for abuse over its excesses, but I always thought it had a real glamour to it–indeed, the original idea for my David Bowie sketchbook arose from me wondering “If I get the chance to get a Michael Turner sketch, who should I ask him to draw.” I would love to have seen what he’d have drawn in that book, and now I won’t get the chance. He was really way, way too young for this to happen to him, and I’m terribly sad about it.
Wow. Very sad news. I was a big fan of his work. One of the best cover artists ever.