Bernie Wrightson, the prolific horror comic book artist who "was best known for co-creating the DC Comics monster Swamp Thing with Len Wein in 1971," died March 18, Variety reported. He was 68. Wrightson's many other projects include a 1983 version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, "released by Marvel and comprised of 50 ink illustrations"; and the comic book adaptation of the Stephen King-written horror film Creepshow.
Twitter tributes came in from many contemporaries, including Neil Gaiman ("Bernie Wrightson was the first comics artist whose work I loved. Oddly, I don't mourn the artist. I mourn the lovely man who told bad jokes.") and Guillermo del Toro ("As it comes to all of us, the end came for the greatest that ever lived: Bernie Wrightson. My North dark star of youth. A master.").
In a Washington Post remembrance, Michael Cavna wrote: "Bernie Wrightson didn't draw lines so much as he seemed to summon them from the deep. His pen spun out dark and supernatural visions in such spellbinding detail that to some comics fans, Wrightson rendered Poe to be Baltimore's second greatest master of the macabre."