George Perez Retires!
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Given his sparse output the last few years, it almost feels like he'd already retired and this just makes it official. He is my all-time favorite artist and I am so glad I had the opportunity to meet him a few times at San Diego. The very first sketch in my convention sketchbook is a Perez Wonder Woman headshot. Take care of yourself, George, and thanks for 45 years of entertainment.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/01/19/george-perez-retires-from-comics/#disqus_thread
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/01/19/george-perez-retires-from-comics/#disqus_thread
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With stories like "A Day in the Life", "Starfire Unleashed", Terra, Donna's relationship with Kori and Terry, Victor's relationship with Gar and Sarah Simms, Raven's sadness and understandable self-imposed isolation, Wally's desire to NOT be a superhero at all, and the back stories and motivations they developed for all of the Titans I learned to love stories with great characters and great art more than anything else. Creating fully realized characters with evolving relationships was what made the New Teen Titans a stand out book for me. Their backstories were so fleshed out that you could easily draw a direct line between family/place of of origin and each of the characters' motivations and behaviors.
Art wise, who but Perez can compose so many pages featuring scores and scores of heroes and villains on a page with such a striking level of detail? Crisis would've broken lesser artists, but every figure and page was amazing with Perez at the drawing board. I still remember when NTT switched to Baxter paper and in the first storyline one of the characters noted how Raven's face and hairline had been slowly changing over time and I had never even noticed! But I went back and looked at my previous issues and saw Perez indeed had been slowly and subtly changing her appearance to parallel with the way she was evolving as a character.
Thank you, Mr. Perez, for a lifetime of enjoyment. Hope your well deserved retirement reaches cosmic levels of happiness and good health!
Went to my first big convention -- Wizard World Chicago -- in the summer of 2001. George Pérez was there, and I got the above sketch from him. The man was amazing. My friend and I got in line for Pérez, immediately after the doors opened on the second day. We were somewhere around 20th in line. It took us six hours to get up to the table with Pérez because he was taking time to sketch (for free) and talk with his fans, and if anyone stopped by just looking for an autograph, he would take a quick moment to do that, after checking with the fan in front of him, at that point.
Note: this is a Barry Allen Flash sketch -- Pérez asked specifically if I wanted Wally or Barry because he draws each one differently. We're talking about a head sketch here! But he draws Wally's face a little more rounded, if I remember correctly, and Barry's with a bit more angles and a little longer. The dude's known for his attention to detail, there you have it. Pérez is my all-time favorite superhero artist and watching him run his pencil over the page and then follow it up with a pen was amazing. And the opportunity to have a few minutes speaking with him was equally amazing.
He was incredibly generous with all his fans. So much so that when we went to the Wizard Awards that night, after the convention hall was closed, Pérez was not there to receive his award because he had moved out to the lobby, with the few fans still in line when the doors closed and everyone was sent out, in order to do their sketches for them. Seriously, he was an enormous talent, but I think Pérez might have been an even better person, at least insofar as my interactions with him were. I hope he enjoys his retirement.