ComicSpace - Read Bulletin

Home / kikamika / Bulletins / Read Bulletin

Befriend kikamika

« Back

Posted by:

kikamika

Date:

August 14th, 2007 7:53 PM

Header:

My tribute to Ringo

Bulletin:

Hi,

I just read Cully's tribute to Mike and I felt I wanted to respond to it. Since yesterday, when I heard the news, I have been feeling like I needed to show my appreciation for this fine artist but amazingly with all this technology at hand, I didn't know the best way to get a message to his family. Maybe having too many choices is not always the best. So after reading Cully Hamner's tribute, I decided this might be a way to get something across to someone who was special to Mike.

So where to begin?...Quickly, I too am an artist and an avid comic book fan. Since around 11 years old I have been collecting comics and now I am 32 so it has been a constant in my life. When I first started in the mid eighties I was only a Marvelite. DC seemed foreign to me and the thought of collecting any of the Distinguished Competitions work didn't even enter my mind.

When I graduated from high school back in '92 I remember thinking I wanted to open up my horizons in life and that of course carried over to comics. Over the next few years I started getting into Watchmen and Maus, some independents and also DC comics.

One of the first titles I picked up from DC was Flash. I remember this distinctly because I was going through this dark moody period (grunge was at its peak) and I needed a ray of sunshine. Picking up the Flash comic always made me feel excited and hopeful. Some of that was due to the writing, but I think a majority of it was Ringo's art.

Now here is the part of this tribute where I am not sure I will be able to explain myself clearly, but this is coming from the heart, so I will try my best. Mike's work was beautifully rendered and deceptively simple looking. It was instantly recognizable and always action packed with some great layouts.

His abilities are something to envy and a benchmark to try to achieve. Yet there is more to it than that. Because through all of the concrete ways to describe the work, something else was shining through. Call it talent, or maybe heart. However you want to encapsulate it, there is something more there. I felt it. You knew him so you could see it. What I felt was the presence of a really nice soul. And that it not something that you can copy or recreate no matter how hard you try.

Yesterday, I was trying to explain to my girlfriend why Mike Wieringo was such a great artist and why he will be missed. Again I don't know if I was able to get my point across as clearly as I liked but I will repeat some of what I said to her. I think that in art, all art, there are people who come along that change the evolution of the medium. Within comics, I believe a small handful have done this as well. Their style is so unique that it is instantly recognizable as to who the artist is. They have brought some ideas that have not been seen before. The real way to know if this person has created something new, is if lots of other artists try to ape his or her style.

Some of the creators that I feel changed the medium are of course the obvious ones like Kirby and Eisner. I think of Mike Mignola and Jim Lee to be more recent ones. And there is also Mike Wieringo who brought a really different look at a time when everyone wanted to be a Jim Lee or some knockoff of Jim Lee.

Now a days I see lots of artists with Ringo's look. Some are better than others, but none are him, and I feel really sad and heavy hearted to know that we will never see him again. Yet, what he has given me will never be taken away so for that I am grateful.

I feel much better, now that I was able to get this out. I don't know if this will ever get read or if someone who knew him will read this, but just know that his art reached out to many people, many who never met him personally but nevertheless felt they knew him through his art.

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely and with deep sadness,

Keith Grachow

« Back

Befriend kikamika