I just found out that Arnold Drake, creator of the comicbook characters THE DOOM PATROL, STANLEY AND HIS MONSTER and DEADMAN, died this morning from pneumonia complications at the age of 83. I find this very sad, especially coming only two weeks after the death of cartoonist Bob Oksner (co-creator of ANGEL AND THE APE), who collaborated with Drake on STANLEY AND HIS MONSTER.
Anyone with a passing interest in comicbooks should consider exactly what Drake was doing--and when.
In 1964 Drake created the Doom Patrol, a trio of accident victims transformed into the ultimate outsiders on the fringe of society, battling madmen and science gone awry to save a world that reviled them as freaks and monsters.
Stanley and His Monster, the story of a boy and his monstrous friends that his parents believe (or perhaps hope) to be imaginary. Predated Calvin and Hobbes by twenty years and Pixar's Monsters Inc. by thirty.
Deadman is/was the story of Boston Brand, a circus aerialist who refused to pass on to his afterlife following his murder and became an emissary of a higher power and a champion of the innocent. Serving an Eastern diety named Rama Kushna, the otherwise spectral and immaterial Deadman could possess the bodies of the living and work vicariously through their flesh. This was written in 1967.
A truly imaginative intellect and creative soul is now missing from the world.