Gahan Wilson, R.I.P.

Just wanted to note the passing of Gahan Wilson at age 89. Not sure where I first starting seeing his work, probably some of his magazine illustrations back in the 1980s. He was a long-time regular cartoonist for PLAYBOY, NATIONAL LAMPOON and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, as well as a lot of book covers. Below are samples from all of those, plus a few other interesting bits. There are a few pin-ups he did for DC's SANDMAN related books, bringing his style to the characters created by Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg. When First Comics revived the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED line in 1990, the book they chose to open with was Wilson illustrating the selected poems of Edgar Allan Poe, starting with "The Raven". Wilson also did a lot of writing and art for the Paradox Press line of "Factoid Books" that DC published for a few years, including writing all of THE BIG BOOK OF FREAKS (drawing a few chapters himself but mostly with other artists, including Frank Quitely, Russ Heath, Bryan Talbot, Rick Geary and dozens more) and drawing short chapters for many of the other books.