It was incalculably sad to hear last week's news about George Pérez, and I can only hope the talented artist and decent bloke feels a little bit better after the vast outpouring of love and affection towards his talent, generosity and character.
His art is one of the hard bedrocks of modern superhero comics. The ridiculously dense compositions, tight action and slick consistency has resulted in some of the sharpest art in modern superhero comics, and it didn't matter how many bodies he had flying about the page, it was always perfect. Just so clean and so stable, with a ruthless dedication to experimentation in his packed page designs.
He is, as far as I'm concerned, the absolute standard, and always has been. He was the one artist doing Avengers and Justice League comics right at the time I was starting to seriously read comics, so it always became the default. The period of Wonder Man in a leisure suit, the Ultra-Humanite reaching across limbo. That's what the world's greatest heroes, of any universe, look like
The work he did for Crisis on Infinite Earths and Teen Titans was undoubtedly monumental and had moments of staggering brilliance - Ultraman flying off into oblivion, the whole of Who Is Donna Troy? - but he never looked better when he was doing the adventures of the best of the best, because that's what you do with your greatest artists.
God bless you, Mr Pérez, and thanks for all the wonderful, wonderful pictures.
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