This news came up during Somara’s surfing last night while I was taking in the latest from Nintendo Week. She prefaced the details with “two famous comic book people died.” As soon as she said Dick’s name, I was bummed because he was a major player during Silver Age and what experts now call the recent stuff, the Bronze Age, of comics.
He got his big start working for Charlton Comics, one of the smaller publishers back in the Fifties. When superheroes were popular again, Dick led the charge to have Charlton get into the act with characters such as Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, the Question, Peacemaker and Johnny Thunder (most people recognize them as their Watchmen counterparts). I’m sure he was influential into getting DC to acquire them in the Eighties, not out of a shrewd sense of business but more out of fondness. Getting them integrated into DC’s continuity was even more brilliant.
Dick was heavily involved with many personal favorites, namely Teen Titans and Batman. He’ll forever be associated with the Dark Knight thanks to his fantastic and distinctive inking on the pencil work of Neal Adams and Marshall Rogers. Along with Dennis O’Neil, he helped forge Batman’s more modern identity as the greatest fictional detective in DC’s Universe (I’ll go out on a limb and say Marvel too).
My friend Steve (Bryant), a comic artist himself had the great opportunity to see Dick Giordano speak at a forum at a convention before we met in 1991. Steve told me the advice he gave everyone about breaking into the business (paraphrasing): If you can do two of these three things, you have a good shot at making it.
- Do fantastic work.
- Always meet your deadlines.
- Be easy to work with.
I have often encouraged Steve by repeating the advice I heard indirectly! My friend has got three out of three! Somehow I have a feeling that the people who do fantastic work have difficulty with the other two, if rumors about some of them are to be believed.
Now I can only hope that DC will do a fitting tribute to him in the editorial pages of their books I continue to subscribe to. Their Web page has been conspicuously silent.