Keith Giffen, 1952-2023

Popular and controversial comics artist and writer Keith Giffen has died aged 70. He passed away at his home in Virginia Beach on 9th October, reportedly of a stroke.

Born in Queens, New York, Keith Ian Giffen commenced his career as an illustrator at Marvel Comics in the 1970s, on titles such as The Defenders, and frequent one-off or short-run gigs, in one of which he co-created the character Rocket Raccoon, who went on to become a pivotal figure in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise.

In the late 1970s he got work at DC on the Justice Society of America feature in All-Star Comics, and in the 1980s, the body of his output was at DC, particularly on books with large ensemble casts such as the Legion of Super-Heroes and the late-80s Justice League (later Justice League International).

His illustrative style meshed with the Legion’s huge cast, portraying multiple scenes, themes and characters with clarity and distinction, and, together with Paul Levitz’s writing, propelled the then-moribund Legion into one of DC’s best sellers of the decade. On the League, his artistic efforts were infrequent—occasional layouts and fill-ins—but as co-writer, he was credited with introducing the relationship-based humour that was the touchstone of that iteration of the Justice League, making it a breakout hit of the 80s and 90s, as well as introducing the sinister Maxwell Lord, a manipulative, corrupt business tycoon eerily prescient of conglomerate heads of later decades.

During this period, he also co-created the fourth-wall-breaking teleporting cult nuisance Ambush Bug, and the contentious character Lobo, the latter ostensibly a parody of the brutal Wolverine-type of anti-hero, which many of the readership deplored; but still more—completely missing the alleged irony—clasped the Last Son of Czarnia to their metaphorical unwashed bosoms.

Lobo as initially drawn by Giffen, in Omega Men #3 (June 1983), before Simon Bisley got his hands on the character.

Giffen became a figure of controversy when his art style, originally heavily influenced by Jack Kirby, started developing into a looser, Alex Tothesque atmosphere, and thereafter into a scratchier and more impressionistic presentation, heavily influenced by the work of José Muñoz—perhaps too heavily, as he himself admitted in a 2000 interview:

‘I had a bad incident with studying somebody’s work very closely at one point, and I resolved never, ever to do it again. I can get so immersed in somebody’s work that I start turning into a Xerox machine and it’s not good… There was no time I was sitting there tracing or copying, no. Duplicating, pulling out of memory and putting down on paper after intense study, absolutely…’

Giffen deep in his Muñoz-swipes period. (We should point out that one of the editors of FA likes Ambush Bug a lot more than the other.)

Although working steadily thereafter for multiple companies, including DC, Dark Horse, Tokyopop, and Valiant Comics, he never quite regained the peak of his late twentieth century fame and influence. The 2003 and 2005 sequels to his Justice League run, in conjunction with J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire, were well received, and the character he co-created for Infinite Crisis in 2006, the Jaime Reyes iteration of the Blue Beetle, has gone on to be a successful movie character, but Giffen’s brief return to the Legion of Super-Heroes in 2013 appalled Legion fandom, and his Inferior Five series of 2019 was so universally derided that it was cancelled four issues into a planned 12-issue run owing to catastrophic sales, with a truncated conclusion in a digital-only 5 and 6.

A message breaking the news of Giffen’s demise, thought to have been pre-penned by Giffen himself, appeared on his Facebook page on Thursday 12th October. It said:

‘I told them I was sick… Anything not to go to New York Comic Con.

‘Thanx. Keith Giffen 1952-2023.’