Visual Deaths: Freas and Eisner

Two men who shaped our visual environments have passed away. Will Eisner and Frank Kelly Freas. If you don't recognize either of those names, you are a passive victim of your graphical environment, because you almost certainly have been exposed to and most probably affected by their work. For starters, check out their home websites: Will Eisner and Kelly Freas.

I am a great devotee of graphical novels, pioneered by Eisner, and deeply grateful for his mentorship of Jules Feiffer. I also got to see Freas once, at a science fiction convention panel on art and artists, and his SF/F magazine cover art and book cover art was ubiquitous (I had no idea he'd worked on Mad Magazine, or for the Catholic Church, though). I didn't really understand at the time who or what I was seeing, I'm afraid. I've always appreciated and loved the visual imagination necessary to create humor and story and very realistic unreality. Both men had that and we live in a richer world for it.