The comics world’s inhabitants were diminished on Tuesday, July 15th of this year — and most of them didn’t even know they had suffered a loss, but indeed they did. Indeed, we all did.
You see, my friend Dave passed away of cancer on July 15th, leaving us too soon at age sixty-three, leaving us with our tears and the hole torn through our hearts, even as we struggle to take solace from the knowledge that he’s now beyond the reach of the disease that burned through him like wildfire.
Dave was many things — an artist; a bass player and vocalist; a loving son, brother, and uncle; a staunch and loyal friend; but at heart he was always a comics guy. First a fan, later as an amateur (but dedicated) graphic novelist, and for decades as a comics retailer in and around Portland, Maine.
“I talk to people,” was how he described his retail work. I’ve wondered in recent days how many hundreds of customers through the years Dave steered toward the good stuff, because Dave always had a nose for quality goods, and he walked the bleeding edge in many areas of pop culture. He was talking about Will Eisner before I’d read either A Contract with God or my first Spirit section … I’d catch up with select musical acts when they had their big airplay breakthrough, only to later realize Dave had been extolling their virtues months, sometimes years before they “hit it big” … when we’d talk about Monty Python or Saturday Night Live or Johnny Carson’s recurring bits in the days when The Tonight Show ran for ninety minutes each weeknight, Dave would slip in a mention of The Kids in the Hall and make us all go, “Huh?” I always think of Dave as an advance scout, planting his flag on far shores, then waiting patiently for us to catch up to him.
I also can’t think of Dave without thinking of my wedding day. Circumstances put me outside the reception venue for a time and Dave found me there. Shortly afterward, the wedding photographer found us, too, and she liked the idea of capturing two “comics guys” looking at copies of their latest books. She posed us on a rustic fence and put us through our paces, Dave with a copy of the fourth collection of his self-described “comic novel,” Walking Christendom (produced under his creative nom de plume, Dave Naybor), and me with Volume 3 of Flash Gordon/Jungle Jim:
Eight of us cemented a friendship while the 1970s were turning into the ’80s, as we crossed paths and traded quips at Maine’s first-ever comics store. We’ve sustained our bonds across more than four decades, though the passing of time and the scattering of residences kept us from seeing one another more than a time or two each year throughout this millennium. I always knew Dave had a wider social circle than several of our merry band. His work selling comics, his live musical performances in Portland clubs and bars — first as a member of a group called Go Button and later as a solo act — and his attendance at various comics conventions gave him ample opportunities to forge other, equally important relationships, and when we’d get together Dave would casually drop a warm mention of this or that person. Just a name to us, but obviously so much more to him.
We still don’t know all those other friends from Portland and vicinity, but we know they were of enormous help to him during his final months, and we owe them a gigantic debt of thanks for helping take such good care of mutual friend.
Dave looked at the world with his head tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. He never seemed to take things completely seriously, even when he was Taking Care of Business. He was always quick to laugh at life’s absurdities, of which he observed many. I think our little band of comics buddies are only now learning how much Dave meant to us, now that his laughter and his unique perspective and the quiet warmth of his friendship has been taken from us.
Dave’s passing reminds us that he will not be the last of our group to go, nor was he the first; our larger-than-life pal Howard preceded him in 2014. Howard’s daughter, Mary — still in school when her father passed, now a married adult — sent us all a note the day after Dave was gone that reminded us how much Dave contributed, and how little we knew about the full scope of his efforts. “When Dad passed, Dave showed up to our house, unprompted, with cleaning supplies and he and I cleaned the house top to bottom to prepare for the funeral,” Mary wrote, in part. “He took care of all the high spots I couldn’t reach and helped me laugh during a time I didn’t even think I could breathe, let alone laugh … [Years later] he was a prominent feature at my wedding and my friends became quick fans of his when he joined us kids downstairs to bowl … I don’t know a life without him, and I never really wanted to. But here we are. I find comfort thinking about the reunion he and Dad are having as we speak, and I know they will look out for each other, wherever they are.”
A big part of me hopes Mary is exactly right, even as a little part of me can’t help wondering, “Which of their cartoonist heroes will they visit first … ?”
