The Marvel family was sad to announce that George Pérez passed away at the age of 67.
What's Happening:
- News broke on Saturday afternoon from a message on George Pérez's Facebook page that on May 6th he passed away "peacefully at home with his wife (Carol) of 490 months and family by his side."
- In December, Pérez shared that he had stage three cancer, which led to the comic community rallying behind the creator and talking about their experiences and work with him.
- Recently, multiple DC Comic artists have come together to celebrate Pérez in a piece of artwork featuring an assortment of characters he illustrated for the publisher over the years.
- The two-page spread will be published in every issue released in the month of June to honor his birthday, which would have been on June 9th.
- Pérez was born on June 9th, 1954, and began his career in the early 70s at Marvel Comics as a pencil for back up stories in 1974's Astonishing Tales #25.
- He went on to create White Tiger, the publisher’s first Puerto Rican superhero, with Bill Mantlo.
- His career kept becoming more and more successful as he went on to draw The Avengers for over 20 issues creating the villain Taskmaster with David Micheline in 1980's Avengers #175.
- Later, he joined DC and collaborated with Marv Wolfman to launch The New Teen Titans in 1980.
- Although he did art for Justice League of America around the same time, Titans was where he gained the most attention and success.
- Other highlights in his career include the 1987 reboot of Wonder Woman and drawing for Jim Starlin’s 1991 limited series Infinity Gauntlet with Marvel.
- In January of 2019, Pérez retired due to health issues, although he would attend a limited number of conventions from time to time.
- A memorial service will take place for those attending MEGACon in Orlando Florida on Sunday, May 22nd at 6 p.m.
Marvel Entertainment shared this on their Twitter page: