I remember my uncle talking once about the stages of getting old. One day you realise that it isn’t weird or untimely if people of your parents’ generation die. A while later, it’s no longer weird when your peers do.
There’s another one in between, i think, when it happens with your heroes. The generation that was doing what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it. Not the people you wanted to replace, the people you want to join.
Darwyn Cooke ‘s death earlier this year hit me harder than I expected, and Monday morning on the way to sell my comics at Armageddon Expo I read Steve Dillon has died. We’ve never met, never spoken, but Hellblazer and particularly Preacher loom big over my teenage years. He was 54. Younger than my dad. I always assumed there would be more of his stuff for me to read. I was still learning from it.
Thanks Steve. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to join you and say it in person.