The "Unthinkable"* has happened last Sunday. Mike Wieringo died at 44. Saying this actually hurts my throat. Gone too soon ? Hell yeah. I know about people dying too young, my own father died at the tender age of 34. But, anyway, Mike passed away and it's not fair.
I can't say Mike was a close friend, but he was a friend of mine and of the entire Comic Box team anyway. I read Cully Hamner's beautiful prose today and he writes that Mike was "everybody's friend". It feels so true. I met Mike in the flesh in 1999 at the Angouleme festival where he was invited to promote Tellos. He always liked Comic Box. I think we were among the first to support strongly Tellos, putting the series on the cover of our magazine (for collectors, it was Comic Box19, Jan.'99). We even granted Tellos a special treatment. At the time, CB was sold under a blister. This very month, we tried the foiled blister with a 4-color printing of the cover over it.
Over the years, we kept in touch from time to time. Late 2005, I called him up and asked him for an interview. We chatted for two hours before i realized that my recorder didn't record anything of the interview. As a result, we had to do it again a few days after. Mike wasn't mad about it. He appreciated that we could talk comics, because he loved comics so much.
And when we asked for an exclusive cover, he was really happy. So happy in fact that he offered it to us. This is how we knew Mike. A very generous guy. By any standards, he was a real "mensch".
Then the issue (CB3/38) came out and he was concerned that the translation didn't reflect what he was thinking of his current work (let's just say that "the Other", the Spider-Man saga, wasn't among his favorites). We argued then put this behind us and move on. This wasn't a very important disagreement anyway and had no consequences.
We cexchanged a few emails after that. He was very supportive and gave me lots of good advice for my personal projects.

Mike can never be replaced or duplicated. He was one of a kind. One of the best pencillers in the cartoony style that he (and I) loved so much. One of the best guys in comics. He kept on saying that his name wasn't selling and that he didn't recognized himself in today's comics, prefering looking at "the old stuff". Mike brought so much. A lot of Europeans like myself encouraged him to come here and try this market. Fate happened and it sucks. We'll never know what his new Tellos adventures will look like. We will miss him very much.

We'll dedicate our next issue to him. May he rest in peace.

Fabrice Sapolsky w/the Comic Box team.


For those who don't know Mike's wonderful works, check : Tellos, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Superman and so many other stuff !

* Unthinkable is one of the best (if not the best) Fantastic Four storyline ever produced these past years, written by Mark Waid for Mike Wieringo to pencil.