Dave Stevens

Illustrator Dave Stevens, best known for The Rocketeer, died Tuesday following a long, battle with Leukemia. Over the years I saw Dave repeatedly at the San Diego Comic-Con, but never stopped to talk to him, though I admired his work tremendously. That is not to say that I never met Dave.

Though most people remember Dave for his Rocketeer character, I was a fan of Dave's long before the Rocketeer ever came on to the scene. Dave used to do these amazing strips and illustrations for the San Diego Comic-Con program every year which were so brilliantly illustrated that you had to take notice. At least I did.

In 1980 my comic book partner Baron Mrkva and I were invited to the Filmation offices to interview for some storyboarding work on the Saturday morning Flash Gordon cartoon. We were so swamped with the stuff we were doing at the time to make ends meet, that we never had the opportunity to actually work at Filmation (and boy don't I think how my life would be different had that not been the case), but I was very pleased to meet a few people I admired while at the offices.

Before settling down in the amazing Bob Kline's office, we were shown around by Will Meugniot who I remembered from a Marvel Tigra strip that Tony Isabella was writing. The first person we met was Dave. He was hunched over a board animating the face of the Lone Ranger. Baron had no idea who he was, but I told Dave how much I loved the stuff he had done over the years for the SDCC program. He seemed surprised that anyone would know him from that work. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy, very humble with regards to his work and I was really pleased a few years later with the success he garnered with the Rocketeer. And nobody drew sexy women like Dave.