Artist and animator Dave Simons has passed away after a long battle with cancer. He was 54.
Daniel Best has a tribute:
In his career Dave worked with some of the giants of animation and comic books. He was one of the best inkers to work with Gene Colan since Tom Palmer, a fact that Dave was damned happy to hear, especially when that praise came from Gene. He worked with Bob Budiansky on one of the best runs seen on Ghost Rider in the books life, and beyond. He worked with almost anyone you care to mention. His attention to detail and apparent inability to turn in a bad job held him in excellent stead and made him one of the go-to inkers of his generation. His generosity to others was known amongst his peers and there’s several inkers and artists who’ll happily tell you that Dave helped them along their way and gave them a start in their comic book careers.
Simons’ website can be found here.
so when i was in high school i met dave and gave him a hand on some backgrounds and whatnot on some comic titles. he was working with a few other guys at the time and they were doing their best to just pay the rent and eat, although they had like 5 books to ink between them at all times it seemed, thus the background help.
Funny thing…this hard living made me not want to get into comics, but I appreciated the fine work they were doing.
when i went to college i took advertising art and worked in advertising for 10 years…till i realized that i can actually make comics work for me in a different way than i watched these guys do it.
Dave was a prince and sweet guy and talented as hell, and i have good memories about him…watching him work taught me a lot about how to work a brush and such and these are good memories.
last year, before the NY con, a friend said he was in financial trouble and was sick…so I Paypaled some money to Dave’s account and didn’t hear anything back.
a few weeks later dave comes by my table at the ny comic con and says hi…he looks great, and i ask him how he is feeling…and he says very good. i ask him if he got the money, and he gave me a blank stare…well, i just told him its a little to help with the bills and a thanks for being nice to me when i was younger and he smiled and said he would talk to me later.
well…no later now…and a shame all around because we really hate losing someone so young…and such a nice talented guy.
Rest in peace Dave.
and thanks.
jimmy palmiotti.
so when i was in high school i met dave and gave him a hand on some backgrounds and whatnot on some comic titles. he was working with a few other guys at the time and they were doing their best to just pay the rent and eat, although they had like 5 books to ink between them at all times it seemed, thus the background help.
Funny thing…this hard living made me not want to get into comics, but I appreciated the fine work they were doing.
when i went to college i took advertising art and worked in advertising for 10 years…till i realized that i can actually make comics work for me in a different way than i watched these guys do it.
Dave was a prince and sweet guy and talented as hell, and i have good memories about him…watching him work taught me a lot about how to work a brush and such and these are good memories.
last year, before the NY con, a friend said he was in financial trouble and was sick…so I Paypaled some money to Dave’s account and didn’t hear anything back.
a few weeks later dave comes by my table at the ny comic con and says hi…he looks great, and i ask him how he is feeling…and he says very good. i ask him if he got the money, and he gave me a blank stare…well, i just told him its a little to help with the bills and a thanks for being nice to me when i was younger and he smiled and said he would talk to me later.
well…no later now…and a shame all around because we really hate losing someone so young…and such a nice talented guy.
Rest in peace Dave.
and thanks.
jimmy palmiotti.
Dave Simons and I had a mutual friend: Bob Downs. So that’s how I met him. Dave even did a cover for one of my publishing efforts. While we weren’t close friends, we had a pleasant e-mail relationship and I was planning on getting together with him on my next trip to NY for lunch or something.
What a blow. Very sad.
David Miller
Man. This is always hard to see when someone passes, and it’s so unexpected. I had assumed there’d be a lot more amazing material out of Dave, and now we have lost a talent of great ability. My thoughts got to his friends and family.
Rest well Mr. Simons. The general public and even avid comic book readers don’t often understand the role of inkers and their critical importance in realizing the intentions of writers and illustrators.
Dave Simons’s work was always recognizable, always excellent.
My condolences to his family and his colleagues.
I knew Dave since his early days at Marvel animation. He was designing characters and props and not too thrilled because he was itching to do storyboards since he was a natural storyteller. I spoke to the powers in charge and got him to work with me in the storyboard dept doing what he loved inking. He quickly learned the tricks of the storyboard trade and was doing his own boards not much later. We worked side by side on many shows through the years and he inked a few of my comic book jobs as well.
When Animation work took a downturn in the 2000’s I moved back to Hawaii and Dave went back to NY, but we kept in touch by phone & emails.
I had hoped that he would be around for many years to come, but I guess that isn’t in the cards. I’m glad to have known Dave, and I thank him for being a friend. Bye Dave, it’s been a hell of a trip. this comment being one from Dave when we left Marvel Animation, it was the caption on a drawing of Ghost Rider, one of his earlier comic jobs.
You will be missed.
I remember picking up Ghost Rider in 1980 SPECIFICALLY because Dave’s finishes on Budiansky made me go “Wow!”. Then, unfortunately, GR was cancelled a year or two later. In the early ’90’s Marvel reprinted the Budiansky/Simons run as a miniseries, but the work really demands the trade paperback treatment today.
His work on Colan WAS awesome!
Also, he did some amazing spot illustrations in early issues of The Comics Journal, which is where I first saw his beautifully lush work.
I wish I had the chance to meet him. He was one of the great inkers who influenced my decision to ink. He will be missed.
RIP, Mr. Simons.
Dave Simons and I both worked at Marvel Productions in the early 1980s; we never actually worked together because I was on stuff like MUPPET BABIES while Dave was on the “straight” stuff like G.I. JOE. But I always liked him and his print work.
I have one indelible memory of Dave. It was one of those super-hot summer mornings that scorch the San Fernando Valley. At our morning break, many of the Marvel staffers would go out to the parking lot behind the building on Sepulveda in Van Nuys (it now houses the production company that does THE REAL WORLD and PROJECT: RUNWAY) and purchase food and drink from a “roach coach” that would routinely drop by. Anyway, I was astounded to see Dave, smoking a cigarette, stripped to the waist and laying spread-eagled on the broiling-hot hood of his car, getting himself a quick tan. I could swear I heard his back-meat sizzling as if on a hot grill, but he seemed perfectly comfortable, like he was enjoying a day at the beach.
When I was in high school back around 1976 I worked at Black Star Comics on Manhattan’s lower east side. There was guy with a buzz cut who would always stop in dressed in his Coast Guard whites, talking about how he wanted to work in comics. He was a really nice guy with a very unique laugh (those who knew him will know what I mean) and we spent a lot of time talking about our mutual desire to break into the industry. Flash forward some years later; I’m up at the Marvel offices and from behind me I heard that unmistakable laugh and spun around to see a guy I had never seen before. The sailor now had jet black wavy hair, an earring and was all decked out in black leather, looking every bit of 1982! It took a few seconds to remind him where we had met and we had a good laugh over the fact that we were both now standing in the Marvel offices! I only ran into Dave sporadically over the years but we always had the memory of that old comic store to bind us. I wish him well on his journey.
This is sad news.
Because he was so well respected as a fine inker, one thing that gets overlooked about Dave Simons’ artistic talents is that he was also a skilled penciller.
Dave provided the pencils for the majority of the graphic novel Wild Stars: The Book of Circles — Recalibrated, and the new 25th Edition features brand new artwork by Dave.
Much of the work he’d produced for Wild Stars was absolutely brilliant, with excellent panel arrangement skills that he’d refined from his years of animation storyboarding, and his spotting of the solid blacks gave his illustrations weight and definition that made them spring off the page. He deftly handled challenging scripts that featured a wide cast of characters, constant scene changes, and transitions.
Dave Simons was massively under-rated as a comics illustrator, a good guy, and a friend.
He will be missed.
Dave Simons’ middle name was Lloyd. It was his grandfather’s name…and his grandparents lived up the road from me in Seelyville, Pennsylvania. Dave and I connected somehow in our middle teens, one summer when he was visiting his name-sake. We drew comics together, swam in the river, rode horses, played golf (Dave couldn’t hit the doggone thing to save his life!)…and dreamed of becoming comic book pros. Dave’s dream came true. I have many wonderful memories from those years which now feel like fantasy.
Dave’s first printed comic work (that I’m aware of) was a comic strip in his school newspaper called Night Rider (I have photocopies of some of them). NR was a motorcycle character…and Dave revisited his love for such characters in his later professional work on Ghost Rider.
His first printed comic work in Fandom (to my knowledge) was in my own fanzine, Comic Courier…and later in a zine that he and I worked on together: The Wonderful World of the Wild and Wicked West. I have that artwork still (and stuff we hoped to publish but never did).
Dave wanted to go to art school after high school, but parental pressure pushed him into the Coast Guard. He was stationed on Governor’s Island off Manhatten…and fell in love with the Big Apple.
Scientology got a hold of him…and took all his money ( I wrote him a song during that time…reaching out to him when it seemed that he was so lost). He took classes under John Buscema. He lived in a roach-filled apartment in Greenwich Village. He lived in a warehouse at the lower end of Manhattan. He fell in love…wanted to marry… it didn’t happen. He was pencilling the first issue of Red Sonja during that time: beautiful pencils (ruined by Vince Coletta’s inks!) He lived lots of other places…made new friends…kept drawing. He made his mark in the real comic book world–and beyond.
He and I lost touch. I tracked him down in California. Then back on the East Coast. Then no word. A phone call. A letter. Where was this guy?
Then a couple of days ago I found him online! I saw pictures of him. I discovered that he’d been battling cancer. I saw that he had moved to Jersey City. I found his blog…an e-mail address…I sent him an e-mail…and then I revisited the site where I found his blog…and discovered my friend had passed from this planet two days earlier!
Dave and I were both born in 1954. I have missed him through the years—I miss him terribly just now.
“Life is a brief minute…eternity follows.”
Mark Ammerman
Dear all,
I did not know Dave well. I protest Scientology and would sometimes see Dave in the subway trying to sell Scientology books.
Here was a vastly talented fellow, seriously ill, yet they had him out hawking books for hours in the subway. His eyes were empty, he seemed almost drained, it was as if he had given up whatever soul he had.
He and I had a conversation, maybe a month or so before he died. I tried to reach him; I thought maybe I was getting through to him.
Unfortunately, too late.
I’m sorry, I wish his friends well.