George Pérez announces he has pancreatic cancer
by Tony Keen 08-Dec-21
George Pérez, who has announced that he has pancreatic cancer, is one of the greats of the American superhero comic.
Superstar artist George Pérez, already retired due to failing eyesight, has announced that he has pancreatic cancer, with a prognosis of six months to a year to live. This is terrible news, but at least it means that we can all write our tributes to him and hope that he might get to read them.
George Pérez first emerged onto the comics scene at Marvel in the mid-1970s, drawing Avengers. To tell the truth, his earliest efforts aren’t that great, but he improved a lot very quickly. By the end of the decade, he was a major contributor to the revitalization of Avengers, and for many, he was the artist for the book. He then departed for DC, ostensibly to draw Justice League of America, but he got drawn into a little side project with Marv Wolfman, New Teen Titans. This became a massive success, and spearheaded DC’s 1980s revival that led to them being able to attract talent such as Alan Moore. Pérez also drew the first big cross-over event comic, Crisis on Infinite Earths. He then took on a title that nobody wanted, Wonder Woman, and utterly transformed it, making it DC’s mythology title. In a very real sense, every Wonder Woman comic since 1987 has been written in the shadow of Pérez’s work, and the Wonder Woman we get in the 2017 movie is as much Pérez’s as it is William Moulton Marston’s. At the end of the 1990s, he went back to Marvel and Avengers, and revitalised the title a second time.
Most comics artists dislike drawing team books, with a whole series of costumed heroes in them. Pérez loved them, and most of his great successes came in team books. To this was added superb attention to detail. It meant that he was never the most prolific of comic book artists, and he needed a sympathetic inker, but his love of what he was drawing shows through in almost everything he did. Nowhere is this more apparent than when he finally got to draw the comic he was born to create, JLA/Avengers. He was also a pretty good ideas man, as is shown by the way story quality on various titles tended to nosedive once he left the books.
There have been a lot of people who have helped mould the modern superhero comic—Jack Kirby, Julius Schwartz, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Alan Moore. George Pérez is right up there with them.
Tags: Avengers, DC, George Pérez, Marvel, Teen Titans, Wonder Woman
This is not only a huge loss to the industry, but a devastating personal loss to so many of his fans. George is that true rarity in the comics community, a man for whom people have literally nothing but praise for his friendliness, fannishness, warmth and energy, his empathy and humour when he’s met his admirers, and his generosity of spirit. All we can do now is wish him and his family strength and comfort in the time they have remaining.