Gil Kane update

 

A a follow-up to the previous Kane post I think it only fair to point out that, despite what you may read on the internet, Kane was not booted out and shunned and not able to get work.  Just read the Wikipedia entry and he was far from struggling to get work. His problems lay in lymphoma.

It should also be pointed out that comic pros did not all shun him and he had many friends in the business. When you die the people who never liked you in real life can say all the nastry things they want to.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Kane did character designs for various Hanna-Barbera^[23] and Ruby-Spears^[35] animated TV series including The Centurions which he co-created with Jack Kirby. In 1974 he contributed to redesigning the obscure Marvel Comics character the Cat into Tigra,^[36] and three years later created the newspaper daily comic strip Star Hawks with writer Ron Goulart. The strip, which ran through 1981,^[37] was known for its experimental use of a two-tier format during the first years. During this decade he also illustrated paperback and record-album covers, drew model box art, and co-wrote, with John Jakes, the 1980 novel Excalibur!^[38] He drew the John Carter, Warlord of Mars series for Marvel beginning in June 1977.^[39]

In 1971, Kane met Michel “Greg” Regnier, then the editor of French-Belgian comics anthology Tintin Weekly. He ended up creating a science fiction/fantasy tale called Jason Drum, about an astronaut stranded on a sword and sorcery world. The series debuted in Tintin weekly, making the cover of #202 (July 1979). Due to a medical emergency Kane reached out to Joe Staton to help with layouts and, starting with Tintin #205, uninked penciled pages were sent to France. Belgian artist Franz inked five pages of Kane’s pencils and pencilled and inked the last pages of the story himself (in #206 and 207 [Aug. ’78]). After his recovery, Kane lost contact with Tintin. In 2006 Kane´s friend Gary Groth and publisher at Fantagraphics discovered that Kane did evidently finish the Jason Drum project with 44 fully linked pages with dialogue. The project had never been published in English, but the original 27 page version assisted by Staton and Franz was published in some other languages including Swedish (as back-up in Lee Falk's The Phantom in 1980. ^[40] [41]

Kane was one of the artists on the double-sized Justice League of America #200 (March 1982).^[42] and had a brief run on The Micronauts series in 1982 ^[43] In the early 1980s, he shared regular art duties on the Superman feature in Action Comics with Curt Swan and contributed to the 1988 Superman animated TV series.^[23] The Brainiac character, a nemesis of Superman, was revised by Kane and Marv Wolfman in Action Comics #544 (June 1983).^[44] He was one of the contributors to the DC Challenge limited series in 1986.^[45] Kane was the artist on the early Green Lantern serial in the short-lived anthology Action Comics Weekly from issues #601–605 with writer James Owsley,^[46] and illustrated the Nightwing cover for issue #627 in 1988. He returned to drawing the Atom in the Sword of the Atom limited series, a collaboration with writer Jan Strnad.^[47] In 1989–1990 Kane illustrated a comic-book adaptation of Richard Wagner's mythological opera epic The Ring of the Nibelung.^[37]

During the following decade, Kane drew for publishers including Topps Comics, for which he illustrated a miniseries adaptation of the film Jurassic Park; Malibu Comics, for which he and writer Steven Grant created the superhero Edge for a 1994–95 miniseries; Awesome Entertainment, in which he illustrated Alan Moore's four-page Kid Thunder story "Judgment Day: 1868" in Judgment Day Alpha #1 (June 1997); and DC, for which he drew several Superman stories. He was one of the many creators who contributed to the Superman: The Wedding Album one-shot wherein the title character married Lois Lane.^[48] He and his former apprentice Howard Chaykin worked together again on a three-part story for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #24–26 (Nov. 1991 – Jan. 1992)^[49] and the Superman: Distant Fires one-shot (1998).^[50]

Kane collaborated with writer Mark Waid on The Life Story of the Flash graphic novel.^[51] As well during that decade, he designed the set of the 1997 Santa Monica Playhouse production of the play Lovely!.^[52]

Though his last full comic during his lifetime was Awesome's 40-page Judgment Day: Aftermath #1 (March 1998) — written by Moore and featuring the characters and teams Glory, Spacehunter, Youngblood and others in individual tales — his final narrative works, all for DC, were penciling the two-page "Antibiotics: The Killers That Save Lives" in Celebrate the Century: Super Heroes Stamp Album #5 (1999); portions of seven pages and the cover, all shared with humor artist Sergio Aragonés, of DC's Fanboy #2 (April 1999); and a two-page pastiche of 1970s Hostess Fruit Pie superhero ads, "The Star Sheriffs", in Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins #2 (Sept. 1999). His last published comics art during his lifetime was a one-page illustration in Dark Horse Comics' Sin City: Hell and Back #4 (Oct. 1999).^[5] Posthumously published was his final completed work, the two-issue Green Lantern / Atom story in Legends of the DC Universe #28–29 (May–June 2000); and four years later, the final issue, drawn in the mid-1990s, of Malibu's planned four-issue miniseries Edge, as part of the iBooks hardcover collection The Last Heroes.^[5]