“Celebrity deaths don’t hit me that hard usually, with a couple exceptions:
1. Harvey Pekar: I think because I liked his stuff so much, but also because it felt like he never really got as much credit as he deserved in his lifetime. Like knowing a famous painter was fuckin’ awesome, but nobody recognized it until after he was dead, and as he was dying, you were just like, “How is this fair?”
2. Amy Winehouse: I don’t know why exactly. I wasn’t like a megafan or anything. Maybe just because she was so young. She was born the same year I was, so maybe it was a little like, “Damn, that seems early.”
3. George Perez: He just seemed like a super nice guy. I always thought his shirts, made by his wife, were really adorable. That’s #CouplesGoals right there.
4. Kevin Conroy: I always loved Batman The Animated Series, and he was one of those dudes that nobody had a single bad thing to say about. Of people who played Batman for an entire feature, he’s definitely the most underrated and underappreciated.
5. Stan Lee: I was on vacation with friends when I found out. Actually, THEY found out, and one of my friends was like, “Don’t tell him, he’ll just be sad.” Weirdly, I’d just purchased a Spider-Man comic that same day, Spectacular Spider-Man #310 by Chip Zdarsky, which is a wonderful standalone comic, and it kind of gained this added meaning for me. I still have it, even though I’d folded it in half to read on the train.
6. My Grandma: Hey, fuck you, not my fault you don’t know the greats.”