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It has now been three years since Mike Wieringo died of a torn aorta at the age of only 44. Looking at his Web site's front page -- his sketch blog has been lovingly maintained by friends and family in Mike's memory -- the thing that strikes me the strongest is how many different directions the page suggests his life and work could have taken had he lived. It reminds me of Carson McCullers' quote, "There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."
Ringo was no different from most freelance cartoonists in that he used his Web site to ponder, hint, gripe and plug projects in various stages of production, but the last page is amazing in that it could have, should have served as the moraine terminus of decade's worth of Ringo comics. The potential projects he mentions, sometimes just in passing, over just a handful of posts: A return to TELLOS in different formats, more Marvel freelance work, creating "the story for the man from Earth who finds himself on far away Saturn, embroiled in a struggle for the throne of the greatest kingdom on that distant world," pondering the fleshing out of "a vague idea of a female aviator in a steampunk-type of setting," and a Romita Sr.-esque sketch so handsome it silently demands an answer to why Ringo wasn't one of the four artists assigned to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN when it relaunched as a thrice-monthly series.
[I don't know the actual circumstances, but I know I would have passed on drawing scripts written by a multi-writer team in favor of drawing whatever title Jeff Parker was on at the moment, even if one of the AMAZING writing team's members was the BACK TO THE FUTURE guy.]
It's also amazing to now see something I'm surprised I hadn't noticed when I was reading his blog at the time, and that's how fearless Ringo was about thinking out loud about his concerns and fears in his commentaries attached to his sketches. Considering that daily/weekly sketchblogs are rarely more than bait for compliment fishing, nominally value-added self-promotion and/or a self-imposed goad to actually sit one's ass down and produce the work, Ringo created a genuine diary of a creative man. This is probably why his site remains a compelling and fascinating read years after most of the links he was reacting are long gone. And yes, three years after he has passed too.
OK -- have a great weekend, everyone.
This is Entry 3,497.
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