I was saddened to read of the passing of the comic book artist Don Perlin. I was fortunate to cross career paths with him ever so briefly, and I recounted that in a note to Alter Ego magazine:
I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Don Perlin. He comes across in the interview just as he did during my brief interaction with him, so here’s a little postscript to the piece. A few years back I was commissioning comic book covers from my comic book heroes to be used in Funky and then auctioned off for the Lisa’s Legacy Fund. The covers were based on characters I created in the fifth grade. By the time I called Don, I only had two characters left, the Arizona Ranger and the Lunar Cadets.
Don was up for it so I told him to pick one and get back to me with his idea. When he called back he said: Here’s my idea for the Arizona Ranger. He’s in a bar, he’s shooting the pistol out of a bad guy’s hand and the ricochet hits the pistol in another bad guy’s hand… and he’s on a horse! I laughed and green-lit the cover immediately. Who wouldn’t? Then Don said that he had an idea for the other cover as well, and it was a great idea too. So he was the only artist to do two covers for the project.
Don was a font of ideas and it was so much fun to work with him. It was an honor to get to know, however briefly, one of the comic book greats.
It’s great that magazines like Alter Ego are keeping their stories alive before the memory of the Silver Age completely disappears.