For the moment I'm still able to find things out on Twitter (yes, I'm still calling it that), and unfortunately, what I found today was an article in the Guardian saying that Keith Giffen, one of my favorite comics creators, had died. He was 70, and had recently suffered a stroke, which I hadn't heard about.
It's hard to overstate the influence Giffen had on me at a formative age. My first encounter with his work was on an issue of Justice League America, which he plotted and co-wrote with JM DeMatteis (who eulogizes him nicely at his own blog). It came as part of a random grab bag of 50 comics that I ordered from one of those ads you used to find in comics back in the 1990s, and featured Guy Gardner arm-wrestling with Kilowog on the cover, while Kilowog used his power ring to tickle Guy's nose.
Not that I knew any of that at the time. All I knew was, this was A Green Lantern, but not THE Green Lantern I knew about (Hal Jordan), and it was funny. When I looked inside, it was even funnier. I was hooked. I'd previously been an X-Men and Marvel acolyte, but I think it's fair to say that's the moment that turned me into a DC fan.
From there I gathered all the back issues of Justice League America, from its start as Justice League to its renaming as Justice League International. That also led me to the Justice League Europe spinoff, and somehow to Volume 4 of Legion of Superheroes, the dystopian Five Years Later era that also served as a foundational document. I also got the Legion of Substitute Heroes Special that he drew and wrote, as well as his Ambush Bug miniseries and the Heckler.
His most immediate influence on me was in my drawing style. I went from trying to emulate Jim Lee's work on X-Men to the Giffen's chins, profiles and squinty eyes. I doubt my copies were any good, but I don't think I've ever been able to shake it. My love for Giffen's style (at that time, because it changed numerous times) also influenced how much I like other artists' work. For example, one reason I like Charlie Adlard, who drew the Walking Dead, is his style's similarity to Giffen's.
The JLA/JLE/JLI run is probably my favorite sustained run in comics ever. Over 60 issues of JLA, the tone changed several times, from a seriousness grounded in 80s comics realism, to the silly comedy that everybody associates with that book, and even to horror in several storylines. It also took a bunch of characters that were, quite frankly, C-listers at best, and turned them into an ensemble with different personalities and tones. I don't know what Guy Gardner was like before JLA, but turning him into a know-nothing fan of Reagan and Stallone was beautifully apt for the time.
Legion of Superheroes is my second-favorite comics run. Like JLA, Giffen didn't script it, but he did draw it for most of the first couple of years, imbuing it with a used-future aesthetic that made the 30th Century feel like a real, lived-in place. While the tone was generally bleak - when it started the Legion was disbanded and Earth was secretly under the control of the Dominators - there was time for some humor, usually whenever Matter-Eater Lad showed up. It was also notably adult: there was violence, drug use, and same-sex relationships, though it never quite tipped over into "Mature Readers" territory.
I was struck by all these things when I reread those books a few years ago (the Justice League being my first port-of-call in the big comics reread). I was also struck, reading the ads for other books DC was publishing, just how many books Giffen was working on. With the exception of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, he seems to have been plotting just about every other DC Universe title between about 1987 and 1991, which is amazing considering that he's not better known outside of comics. Judging by all the off-the-wall references in Ambush Bug, he must have had as good a knowledge of the DCU as Mark Waid, who's famously the most knowledgeable man in comics.
Now, I call myself a Giffen fan, but I didn't keep up with his work much after his JLA and Legion runs ended. I'd kind of moved away from comics by then, and it's been hard to get back into the continuity after so long away. On the other hand, it was fun to see his creation Lobo show up on DCAU shows like Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited.
I do have one final story. Back when the internet was new, and America Online was the way most people accessed it, I was at a friend's house exploring the DC Comics hub on AOL. I found myself in one of the message boards, and who was there but none other than GIFFEN-1. He was very gracious about my requests for him to return to both JLA and Legion, pointing out that Dan Jurgens and Mark Waid were doing a good job (this is true of the latter). I never got to meet him in person at any of the conventions I attended during high school, but this was one of my "I'm not worthy!" moments.
Reading DeMatteis's tribute to Giffen, I need to go check out their JLA followup, Formerly Known as the Justice League, and especially their creator-owned book Hero Squared.
Goodbye, Keith - thanks for the laughs and the tears and the thrills. Luckily I have all the books and can revisit them anytime.
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