I am utterly heart-broken by the death of Richard Sala, one of the greatest comic book creators of our time and a HUGE influence on my artistic output.
I must point out he died last year in May, 2020 and I've only just found out. I just presumed he went off-line for a while because of this Covid madness, after all, he was updating his tumblr/ blog just a week or two before his death with exciting news about a new series he was working on... (Google him, he has a bunch of blogs and tumblrs still around.)
Nonetheless - the news is shocking.
The man was incredibly unique in his style, his works were immediately recognisable. A touch of German Expressionism, a bit of Surrealism, some naive art, and plenty of Gothic horror and old school monster movies/ noirs/ pulps. Something I loved about his comics was how he managed to make spine-chilling murders look ... "cute".
My introduction to Sala was through MTV's Liquid Television in ... 92? - with his incredible cartoon serial INVISIBLE HANDS. Hooray for the internet, someone has managed to upload the entire serial, ripped from VHS - I shall pop right here:
Aaahhh... satisfaction.
"Aaahh... satisfaction." is a line friends and I still use to this day.
The cartoon blew my mind. It had mystery, old time radio, a non-linear plot, an amazing look, very simple but effective animation, lurid pulp fiction colours but obviously high-brow ambitions of artiness (what with that Expressionist set), those pointy hands and teeth... It was genius. And to think the whole thing is only 12 minutes in total!
I ripped him off.
In 2000 I wrote a novella called CRIME [HERE] . It was an experimental noir of sorts, in part driven by the fact I never got to see all of INVISIBLE HANDS and wanted to know more about its world - so I just made up the "rest" of the story, or at least a story set in that world - and yes, my novella has a turban-wearing psychic (Yuri, the Bulgarian Psychic).
I have drawn a bunch of comics (An Appalling Deconstruction, Skeleton Bird, some one-pagers, etc [HERE]) which at times were inspired by Sala's aesthetics (I love his hands and arms just coming out of the wrong angles). In fact if I'm ever stuck for what to draw in a comic, I think back to how he draws. Doors and windows on angles. Pointy hands. The non-linear plot, the intrigue that something mysterious is happening, if you can just find the key behind the right book on the shelf...
His stories were full of masked villains, sexy detective girls, well-meaning nerd boys, deformed psychopaths, intrigue, old bookstores, secret lairs, conspiracies, cabals, ugly henchmen or gangs of sexy but homicidal girls, supernatural critters - but all done in his unique style, never pandering to any popular depictions - he believed strongly in "personal style" and in "artistic obsessions".
I also lifted his approach to cartoon-making, that is, keeping the animation as simple as possible whilst letting the images and sounds tell the story. As gorgeous as the liquid-like movements of Snowhite or Akira are (and they are stunning), a sense of dreaminess can also be achieved by creating jerky movements or by only moving one or two things on the page (screen). Let the brain fill in the rest or puzzle over what's missing...
My cartoon series, THE MICTURATING ANGEL CARTOON
It's not everyday you lose someone who's been there for 30 years of your life - and yet you've never met them. It's weird to find yourself that attached to a stranger (I'm looking at your death, David Bowie.) I have a bunch of his books looking down at me from the shelf as I type this. The Chuckling Whatsit, Mad Night, Peculia, Delphine, Maniac Killer Strikes Again!, The Ghastly Ones, etc..., so he'll always be here, inspiring me.
I will end by recommending his book THE CHUCKLING WHATSIT as a good starting point for anyone interested in Sala's work. Apparently the work was Kafka-inspired and mostly stream-of-consciousness, but it does have a plot and things do fall into place. The art is wonderful (he softened his approach more towards the end), the villain is creepy, the tale is a noir msytery with plenty of black humour. A stark contrast to the more recent (but also highly recommended) THE BLOODY CARDINAL, a wonderful but obviously despair and rage-filled work about a villain driven mad by the failures of the world, the failures of the revolutions of the 60s...
Buy it HERE - or just come borrow my copy.
Gonna miss you, Mr.Sala. And thanks.
