RIP: Michael Turner

Um, superstar comic book and sequential artist, Michael Turner, has died. He was aged 37.

Turner rose to prominence in the late 1990s on Image and Top Cow titles, specifically Witchblade. He later created another female superhero icon, Fathom. He was most well-known for his cover work for all of the big companies, and we recently brought you the sketchwork for his cover to Uncanny X-Men #500.

Turner was from Crossville, TN, which is not far from here. Though I did not know him personally, I may have met him at any number of area conventions prior to his rocketing to fame, but this death hit me particularly hard because I was unaware of his battle with bone cancer, he was only four years older than I, and he is from my homestate.

Michael Turner did what many of us grew up dreaming about and succeeded far beyond many of our dreams. He continued working right to the very end and his courage and dedication to his work, the form, the industry, his fans, and life itself will forever serve as an inspiration to us all.

Michael Turner was, by far, the brightest talent in mainstream sequential art today, evoking the thin-lined, heavily-detailed style reminiscent of Berni Wrightson or Todd McFarlane. But unlike the glut of inferior artists who copied this style, Turner's work was firmly based in a clean, cartoonism similar to Art Adams' early work; where other artists mimicked this highly-detailed style, Turner developed it, gradually adding more detail until the latest incarnation of his overwhelming art emerged.

Michael Turner's passing is an incredible blow to the form and his young age is nightmarishly heartbreaking.

Michael Turner died of bone cancer at 10:56pm, June 27^th, in California's Santa Monica Hospital.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008