The Artist of Preacher, Steve Dillon, Died.

I was literally studying some Preacher pages this morning before I heard. Was trying to figure out how his approach to panel layout and cropping figures could help me solve my own maddening issues with writing comics.

It’s subtle unless you’re a comic process nerd like me, but his panel layouts adapted so much from page to page. Which is rare, because most artists just default to the same 3 or so page layouts, with minor variations, but Preacher was a comic with specific needs, and he was always thinking hard about how to tell the story on the page well. I’ve been sending Preacher pages to my artist for reference. To be honest, there weren’t many other people alive who were as good at comics art storytelling.

I sort of gave up and went “fuck it, I’d need a few weeks to study these Preacher pages to figure out how his panel layouts work, I’ll default to a standard panel grid”. His craft was too good to be figured out quickly.

It’s horrible to have more deeply realized his artistry and skills this morning, when his greatest comic is being adapted for TV and his work was getting showered with praise again, then to hear he died. I might try again right now to figure out how it all works. Read Preacher. It’s a perfectly told story