Marvel Publishes A Tribute To Butch Guice In Its Comics This Month

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Marvel Comics publishes a tribute to Butch Guice in its comic books this month

At the beginning of May, comic book creator Jackson “Butch” Guice died at the age of 63, after a strong case of pneumonia. In this month’s comics Marvel Comics has been running a tribute to Butch Guice in its monthly titles. And which quotes Ed Brubaker saying “Butch was one of the best craftsmen working in the comic book industry. He had the skills of a classic era comics artist like John Buscema or Jim Steranko, and I think some of the work we did together on Captain America and the Winter Soldier will rank with the best of the best. He was a lot of fun to work with, and he was an underrated talent his entire career. I, and so many others, will miss him.”

A month ago, comic book creator Jackson “Butch” Guice was hospitalised after his wife called EMT and he posted “It has been a very long week. I had previously been losing a fight to a strong case of pneumonia. It looks like that fight took a nasty turn somewhere and very nearly killed me. A long week indeed.” But that fight came to an end this week, as Butch passed away, at the age of 63.

A fanzine creator and self publisher with Crusaders, later Southern Knights, Butch Guice came to mainstream comics, after he showed his work to Bob McLeod at a North Carolina comic con. Bob asked if Butch would help him finish off a New Mutants comic that he was late on. Seeing those pages later, Pat Broderick then asked Bob to ask Butch to help him finish a Rom Annual. When Marvel editor Al Milgrom tried to catch the Micronauts books up on deadlines, on the back of these, he hired Butch to help do that as well, which led to him becoming the series artist. He would then work with another Bob, Bob Layton to launch X-Factor and co-create the X-Men villain Apocalypse in the process, and then launch the new Flash series in 1987 with Mike Baron. He would work on Iron Man, Nick Fury, Deathlok and Fantastic Four at Marvel, where he would co-create X-Men character Ahab, with Walter Simonson. Working on Doctor Strange at Marvel, a cover he drew for that series that used an image of singer Amy Grant, and she sued Marvel for the association of her image with the occult. Marvel settled.

He returned to DC for Action Comics and the Death of Superman. Then with James Robinson on The Terminator: Endgame miniseries and Chris Claremont on Aliens/Predator: The Deadliest of the Species from Dark Horse. After working for Valiant in the Acclaim era on Eternal Warriors and Sliders, where he was the show’s star Jerry O’Connell’s favourite comic book artist, he returned to the Big Two for DC/Marvel: All Access, co-created Resurrection Man for DC with Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning and then became the regular artist on Birds of Prey, and a long working period with Chuck Dixon.

With Chuck, he was also one of the founding creators for the CrossGen comic book publisher on the title Ruse, with Mark Waid and Laura Martin. He would work with Geoff Johns on Olympus from Humanoids and would then return to DC for Justice League with Warren Ellis, an Aquaman relaunch with Kurt Busiek, Storming Paradise with Chuck Dixon and to Marvel for Ultimate Origins with Brian Michael Bendis. Captain America and Winter Soldier with Ed Brubaker and The Invaders with Chip Zdarsky before co-creating The Futurists with Patrick Stiles for Allegiance Art in 2020.