"Michael Zulli was a poet who chose comics as his vehicle,” his longtime friend and collaborator Rick Veitch said. “He wasn't the kind of artist who did anything by halves.”
Zulli, regarded by fans and peers as one of the most talented, detail-oriented comic book illustrators of his generation, passed away on July 8, 2024, following a long illness. He is survived by his beloved wife, Karen Pratt-Smith Zulli.
The artist entered the comic book industry in his mid-thirties, following a seven-year stint as a wildlife artist. “I did manage to eke out a living,” Zulli explained to Alex Dueben in a 2016 interview for The Comics Journal. “I’ve always been interested in the natural world and had tried to depict it with some fidelity. I was just burnt out. I happened to stumble across this new thing that a studio assistant of mine had come across called a comics shop. He told me where one was and I went there and the two things that I bought happened to be an issue of Epic Illustrated that contained Barry Windsor-Smith’s The Beguiling, and Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright. Between the two of them I just had this ridiculous epiphany – as all epiphanies usually are – and I thought if comics can do this, then that’s what I want to do. I want to work on that level.”
Intent on making the transition from wildlife illustration to comics, Zulli explored comic shops throughout Massachusetts, chatting up staff and customers so that he could prepare for his potential career change. “I went to another comics shop in the area and I asked the manager there if he knew a writer and he said there’s an employee of his named Stephen,” Zulli said. “I arranged to meet him and we talked and we both had the same kind of goal, it turned out. We got along well.”
That comic shop employee, Stephen Murphy, was an aspiring comic book writer, and, as his manager had predicted, he and Zulli hit it off right away.
“When we finally did meet it felt like meeting a combination twin and older brother," Murphy said. "We loved many of the same books, especially Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright series. Eventually, I screwed up the courage to ask Michael if he'd like to illustrate a few of my short comic book scripts. He agreed, and his work, of course, was amazing. It wasn't long before he agreed to hear my idea for what became The Puma Blues. His response: ‘Get typing.’
"I did, and a few months later we showed the first half of what would become the first issue to Dave Sim, who was then traveling the country, visiting comic stores, and asking to be shown work that he would consider for publication under his new Aardvark One International imprint. Dave looked over the pages, asked if we were interested in being published, and we were off…”
Playing to Zulli’s incredible skill as a wildlife artist, he and Murphy crafted the saga of The Puma Blues, an environmental fable set in the then-near-future of the late 20th century, as government agent and game warden Gavia Immer seeks the truth behind the natural devastation and the mutated animals that now populate the world. The surreal, dreamlike series included many musical references, the product of Zulli’s own upbringing as well as Murphy’s own creative sensibilities.
“My father was a jazz musician and so I grew up attending rehearsals and band meetings,” Zulli said in 2016. “Music is in my blood, in a way. I grew up with it. It’s one of those things I can’t really live without while I’m working. Styles and interests have changed over the years but it’s always been a constant companion while I work. I think for Stephen too. I don’t know if he worked in silence or not but underneath the surface of Puma there’s a lot of musical influences."
“I always tended to think that the book was deeply vested in Gavia’s personal mindset. What we were really doing was taking an abstract look at his psycho-spiritual process along the way,” Zulli continued. “It’s really part of the character and his mind. For me personally, when I’m building a character I always try to conceptualize some kind of psychological or spiritual underpinning of the character. That helps inform them physically – how they gesture, how they stand, how they sit, facial expressions. For me, characters become fully formed entities in my head.”
With a publisher in place, Murphy and Zulli developed The Puma Blues into an ongoing series starting in spring 1986. “I do have many fond memories of working with Michael, many of which center around the evenings we spent together,” Murphy recalled. “Me visiting him in his cramped living room/studio as he inked away while I applied adhesive zip-tone patterns and special effects press-on lettering, him with his ever-present Diet Pepsi and cigarettes, me with a few cans of beer.”
The initial print runs were small, but Sim’s endorsement ensured that comic book specialty shops would rack The Puma Blues alongside Cerebus, Elfquest, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other popular black-and-white indie comics in the mid-1980s, ensuring that its target audience, at least, might discover it. Positive word of mouth and enthusiastic praise from creators like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Peter Laird, as well as glowing reviews from The Village Voice and The Comics Journal, established Murphy and Zulli as major new talents.
“I forget the year. It would've been the year that Dave Sim initiated his Aardvark One International imprint, the same and only year that Michael and I attended SDCC together,” Murphy said. “I no longer remember how it came about, but either Dave or Steve Bissette or, more likely, Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier, arranged for Michael and I to join Moebius for breakfast for a few minutes. Michael was extremely nervous but still managed to open his portfolio at Moebius' request. Moebius took his time, and gave careful scrutiny to Michael's work, most of it pages from Puma Blues, before closing the portfolio, turning to Michael and saying, ‘You too fly with the angels.’ Michael rode that cloud for a long, long time, and rightly so.”
Zulli’s lush, detailed artwork in The Puma Blues made a strong impression on readers, including Carla Speed McNeil, who would go on to create their own indie fantasy comic, Finder, which drew inspiration from the artistry and storytelling of Murphy and Zulli. “I am one of the many who know him through his art,” McNeil said. "Puma Blues was one of many books that made up a pantheon of mind- and art-altering experiences for me, coming along when I was ready to have my mind blown."
“Trying to pin down the main thing that Zulli had, and passed on through his art, storytelling, and particular focus — what I saw in it, and was drawn to, and strove to emulate — was not his delicate line, his graceful figures, even the framing of his scenes and panel breakdowns, though all those are books to learn from in themselves. It was a certain wildness," McNeil said.
“Zulli was one of our greatest animal artists,” she continued. “It shows whenever he draws and paints the natural world. His animals are graceful and powerful, sure, but there’s a streak of freaky there too, that won’t let you say, ‘such a noble creature’ and put it on a t-shirt. There’s something chaotic in the clean lines and harmonious color. Something weird that says, ‘You can’t see everything and you might not want to. Get a little closer, stupid. Get ready. Or don’t. It won’t matter’.”
During its second year of publication, The Puma Blues found itself caught in the middle of a battle between Sim and Diamond Comics Distribution. When Sim chose to bypass Diamond and comic book specialty stores to sell his Cerebus collected edition High Society directly to his readers, Diamond took issue, and Murphy and Zulli were caught in the crossfire. In the midst of their conflict, Diamond National Account Representative Bill Schanes informed Sim in 1987, “If it is your intention to pick and choose which products you want distributors to carry, it should be our privilege to choose what we wish to distribute. Therefore, it is our feeling we should no longer carry and promote Puma Blues.” This punitive measure taken by Diamond led Sim to team up with other indie creators, including Steve Bissette, Larry Marder, Rick Veitch, Peter Laird, and Kevin Eastman, to draft a Creator’s Bill of Rights that would establish a code of conduct for publishers that would ensure fair and equitable treatment for all comic book creators.
Puma Blues immediately found a way to circumvent Diamond’s embargo, as Eastman and Laird’s Mirage Studios, which had welcomed Murphy as a member, stepped up and offered to publish the title themselves. Zulli and Murphy eventually put the series on hiatus after issue 23 to focus on other, more lucrative opportunities. Murphy, under the pen name Dean Clarrain, wrote the kid-friendly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures monthly comic book series published by Archie Comics, while Zulli focused on adult titles, including Stephen Bissette’s Taboo anthology, which offered him the opportunity to write and illustrate his own short stories.
Zulli also illustrated an issue of Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing for DC Comics, notable because the story’s depiction of a time-traveling Swamp Thing meeting Jesus Christ – and ultimately serving as His crucifix – was approved but then canceled by DC management, which led Veitch to quit the title and leave DC Comics altogether. The story was shelved and remains unpublished more than 35 years later, but the resultant press raised Zulli’s profile more than if that story, intended for publication in Swamp Thing #88, had actually gone to press.
Karen Berger, editor of that ill-fated issue of Swamp Thing, immediately put Zulli to work on another mature readers DC title that was under her supervision, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Gaiman, a self-described “huge Puma Blues fan,” had befriended Zulli at the 1989 San Diego Comic-Con. Knowing that Zulli wanted the opportunity to show that he wasn’t just an animal artist, Gaiman asked him to illustrate “Men of Good Fortune,” a historical episode of Sandman that followed the centuries-spanning relationship between the godlike Morpheus and Hob Gadling, a man who achieved immortality through the simple act of choosing not to die. The story, published in Sandman #13, is one of the most celebrated standalone issues in the series, thanks in large part to Zulli’s storytelling and meticulous eye for historical detail.
“Michael was always a pleasure to work with. We only met in person once or twice many years ago. I remember that he had a great sense of style and looked effortlessly cool in a laid back kind of way,” Berger said. “Thankfully, back in the day people still talked on phones. Michael was funny, smart, and kind, and I always enjoyed chatting with him. He was uniquely talented. His delicate, beautifully detailed line conveyed a real emotional power. Characters seemed to come alive under the stroke of his pencil, pen or brush."
“His lush paintings were masterful, and his glorious iconic Swamp Thing painting [from 1993] is my favorite of all. He created such a resonant and evocative mood and atmosphere in all his work, transporting you to other imaginative worlds. Michael is an integral part of Vertigo’s legacy, especially his Sandman stories," Berger said. "We were so lucky to have him.”
After his Sandman story, Zulli returned to Mirage with the three-part Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story “Soul’s Winter,” an out-of-continuity tale notable for Zulli’s nature-influenced redesign of the titular heroes and the mournful, world-weary approach to violence and the Turtles’ conflict with their age old enemies, Shredder and The Foot Clan.
“‘Soul's Winter’ came about the way most non-Pete/Kev issues of the flagship title came about," Murphy said. “A pitch was made, there's a certain amount of back and forth, then either approval or not. Michael had the first issue well in mind, My input, I'm sure, was minimal. Still, Michael asked that I script it, so I did. However, I felt that his layouts were so strong that he didn't need me to script. I pushed him to write them and he did. All I did for the second and third issues was act as Michael’s editor, and then proofreader."
Fan reaction was initially divided. "Most fans hated it,” Murphy said. “It was just too different, too out there, too off-character. The fans that loved it, really, really loved it. These were older fans, long-time comic fans, those that were into more adult-themed comics. Also, those that knew more about Japanese culture, samurai history, Japanese visual motifs, the more meaningful or more serious tropes that Michael fused together for his vision ... for those readers, this take on the Turtles was what they had been waiting for.”
With each new project, Zulli became more entrenched in the comics scene, building his reputation, but, more importantly, building friendships with his fellow artists. “Mike and I would bump into each other at the events and hooplas surrounding the Turtles throughout the ‘90s,” said Mirage associate Mark Bodē. “We had a mutual respect for each other and started talking about etching and fine art. We inevitably met up at our house in Northampton and did some etching plates but never did any editions, sadly. ... He was a class act and someone I looked up to. I’ve been staring at the painting he gave me like it was a tattoo on my body.”
Zulli was very prolific during this era, balancing projects with DC Comics and their fledgling mature readers imprint Vertigo with regular contributions to Stephen Bissette’s groundbreaking anthology series Taboo.
“Michael had a wicked sense of humor, razor-sharp and cutting when he felt he needed to be, but he was a great compadre and companion at all times,” Bissette said. “Michael never did anything by halves; he poured as much or more into his ‘freebies’ as he did his top-paying freelance gigs. We collaborated as often as circumstances allowed, and often when circumstances didn't.
“That he carried himself, asserted himself, as an artist – how he looked, his manner, his hair, his mustache, his clothes, his voice, his at-times piercing gaze – drove some folks a bit nuts, but Michael knew and worked with that as well. He was as eccentric as any of us, incredibly intelligent yet an unrepentant smoker. He spoke so softly at times you had to really listen, strain to slow down and lean in really close to be sure to catch what he was saying — and that was calculated, as well. Michael loathed compromise, detested how the business of ‘the industry’ corrupted expression and self-expression, but he could also be his own worst enemy in how he undersold himself.”
Zulli and Gaiman planned for their second collaboration, their own version of Sweeney Todd, to be serialized in Taboo, but the anthology concluded while it was still in the planning stages.
Marc Arsenault, art director on Taboo, worked closely alongside Zulli during the research stage to establish a period-authentic aesthetic for the Sweeney Todd serial. “The two of us dug through stacks of old Dover Victorian line-cut clip art books, pulling out oddly disturbing images and contrasting decorative borders to create the ersatz penny dreadful to promote the series that was included as an insert in Taboo 6," Arsenault said. “Sweeney Todd had an overly generous number of collateral components and marketing and advertising materials that we had fun working on together. Warping fonts to get the right look for the logo and other design elements ... mixing his hand-made vintage aesthetic with my skills on the then still very new Adobe Illustrator.
“We were like kids in a sandbox. But there was also that desire for more time to make it just right; and, of course, that wish that we had been able to do more of it. His work on Puma Blues had been such an inspiration to me and I was ready to be intimidated. But he was far more easygoing than his imposing facade would imply. Michael was always very patient, enthusiastic and generous. I was overwhelmed when he gave me some art as a thank you after we finished a big part of the project. For years I wished we would have the chance to work together on it again.”
Zulli bolstered his Vertigo credentials in 1994 with contributions to the 50th issue of Sandman, A Death Gallery, and the Witchcraft limited series, and he also contributed stories to Rick Veitch’s Roarin’ Rick’s Rarebit Fiends, Chris Staros’s The Staros Report, and Mirage Studios’ Turtle Soup anthology. But his biggest project that year was his first Marvel Comics work, with Zulli and Neil Gaiman adapting the storyline from Alice Cooper’s concept album The Last Temptation into a three-issue comic book miniseries featuring painted covers by Sandman artist Dave McKean, who also painted Cooper’s album cover.
Last Temptation was published under the short-lived Marvel Music imprint, an initiative spearheaded by editor Mort Todd, who felt that a line of Marvel-branded titles racked in record stores had great crossover sales potential. “Michael and I talked for many hours on the phone during the creation of The Last Temptation comic,” Todd said. “He was from Vermont and I was from Maine, so we'd talk New England-y things. Neil Gaiman brought Michael into the project and he couldn't have made a better choice! It was always a thrill to get new pages from Michael and I would marvel over his exquisite line work and application of tones.”
The Marvel Music line was canceled almost immediately after it started due to the company’s severe financial downturn in the mid-'90s, and Last Temptation – a dark fable depicting Cooper as “The Showman,” a Faustian being who sought to tempt a boy named Steven into joining his supernatural show – never found the audience it deserved, something Gaiman sought to rectify several years after its initial publication.
“When the license to their Alice Cooper book had become available again, and Neil brought it my way — blessed fortune,” said editor Diana Schutz. “The Last Temptation had been published by Marvel in color, and to be honest, I hadn’t noticed it. But when Michael sent me his original art to the story, I fucking noticed! Not to fault Marvel, because it was just their way to publish everything in color on less-than-great paper, but Michael’s black-and-white art was spectacularly beautiful! He’d drawn the three issues — which we turned into a graphic novel — on an old-fashioned duoshade board, and it was glorious!"
“Michael’s pages were brimming with the grand passion of the story’s Grand Guignol, yet…at the same time, his art was delicate and sweet and ethereal. It must have been Michael who suggested we print in a kind of sepia tone in an effort to capture the otherworldly sensibility of his duoshade art, and back then small was all the rage because of manga’s then-recent ubiquity, so the first publication was a 6x9 trade paperback,” Schutz said. “To my mind, Michael’s art demands more respect than small can hope to deliver. It would take several more years, and our introduction of the first set of Neil Gaiman Library hardcovers, to re-publish The Last Temptation at a larger size and in radiant black-and-white, in order to replicate the astonishing detail of Michael’s original art. That was more successful, I think.”
When Sandman came to its conclusion following the death of Morpheus, Zulli was Gaiman’s first and only choice to draw “The Wake,” a four-issue story arc that brought together every character from the series to say farewell to the fallen Dream. His painterly quality and his easygoing nature made him a favorite in the Vertigo offices.
“It was a great thrill to go from reading The Puma Blues in college to working directly with Michael when I was a Vertigo editor,” Shelly Bond said. "He was an exquisite illustrator and a kind soul. I’ll always remember our chats about art, philosophy, and a mutual love for Roxy Music.”
Bond’s colleague, Alisa Kwitney, was equally enamored with Zulli. “As a Vertigo editor, I wasn’t supposed to have a favorite artist, but when Karen asked me who I wanted to illustrate the story I’d written for the Sandman spinoff The Dreaming, I knew right away who my first choice was – Michael Zulli,” Kwitney said. “He was also the artist I chose to do the first sequence for my Destiny miniseries. There is something about Zulli’s art ... which evokes for me the true magic of comics. His pencils are sumptuous, rendering the silk of Victorian dresses and the damask of Gothic wallpaper, but he also captured the nuanced emotions of the characters he drew. He could convey the skeptical, wounded human soul inside Matthew the Raven as well as the glorious hooked beak and luxurious feathers.
“What really stood out for me, though, was his lack of ego, his playfulness, and how very easy he was to work with. He taught me how to collaborate with an artist at the very beginning of the story process. When I was starting ‘His Brother’s Keeper,’ my story about Cain and Abel, I asked Zulli whether there was anything in particular he wanted to draw. ‘I always wanted to draw Abel wearing a fez,’ he replied. We discussed the story before I began writing, and he went on to illustrate an Abel that was gorgeously rendered and vividly alive, equal parts fairytale creation and terrified victim-to-be. A hundred years from now, I feel sure readers will be discovering his work.”
Among those works will be Zulli’s collaborations with writer J.M. DeMatteis, with philosophical, spiritual, and ofttimes whimsical scripts that played to the warmth and humanity that Zulli brought to every book he illustrated. “Michael and I worked on a number of projects together in the late 90s/early 2000s. He wasn’t just a brilliant artist, he was a brilliant man: deep, passionate, philosophical,” DeMatteis said. “During those years of collaboration we spent many hours talking about the art of storytelling, the spiritual path, the search for God.
“When he drew an arc for my Vertigo series Seekers Into The Mystery, Michael very generously gave me the gorgeous painting that became the cover for one of his issues. It's been hanging in a place of honor in my house ever since. Michael and I lost touch some time ago, but I look at that painting every day: a piece of Michael woven into my life.”
Zulli alternated indie and Vertigo comics with mainstream favorites like Spider-Man and Batman, and brought the same level of care and attention to each project. “Michael Zulli taught me a lesson about elitist thinking,” said editor Joseph Illidge, who commissioned him to draw a Batman story during DC’s yearlong “No Man’s Land” crossover event. “I first became aware of his work as a monthly buyer of Sandman, and knew he was one of the unique ones. Those artists who played in the multiversal realms of other genres and not the superhero one which dominated my longboxes of comic books.
“When I learned a few years later that he wrote and illustrated three issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I didn’t believe it. Why would an artist of the caliber of Zulli go near a set of characters who were a silly, anthropomorphic offshoot of Frank Miller’s brilliant Daredevil stories? The books were the answer. In seeing how Zulli handled the mythological essence of the Turtles to craft a story that was beautiful in that haunting way his work always felt to me, I realized that the idea of the Turtles was huge, and my perception of the idea was small. God bless the artists who dig in deep, seeing the kernel of brilliance within what may seem silly, and surprise us with amazing stories.”
In the mid-2000s, Zulli stepped away from comics to focus on fine art and gallery exhibitions. His level of craftsmanship had evolved to the point where editors could not or would not call on him to illustrate single issues of monthly comic books, and he sought appreciative venues that would allow him to produce his own artwork on his own terms. “He described comics as having left him behind,” noted Alex Dueben in his 2016 interview with the artist. After illustrating a late 2000 four-part Spectre story written by J.M. DeMatteis and inked by frequent artistic partner Vince Locke in the anthology series Legends of the DC Universe, Zulli’s comics output was limited to a handful of short stories over the next several years.
He retreated from big city living to Browns Valley, Minnesota with Karen Pratt Smith, establishing a home and studio space in a nineteenth century hotel. “Some days I’d show up late for work and suggest an adventure,” she shared in a social media post. “Let’s just run away for today, and we did. We saw amazing places, from visiting the site of The Kensington Rune Stone, to incredible vistas that only cows were privy to. He took my picture on an old metal roundabout because he knew that I loved them. I took his picture at an old farm where someone had once planted poppies, then gone wild, because he knew I loved them. We had a lot of fun as friends and we didn’t know yet that we were falling in love.” (Michael and Karen married in August 2019.)
His next major project was Neil Gaiman’s 2007 Dark Horse graphic novel The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch. Four years later, he released his semi-autobiographical graphic novel suite The Fracture of the Universal Boy, a sensitive, beautiful tale that, sadly, went largely unnoticed by the audience that had so readily embraced Zulli’s mainstream comic book work.
“What's amazing in hindsight is that with Michael, the journey was always worth it, however it did or didn't turn out,” said Stephen Bissette, reflecting on Zulli’s later career. “Michael was a fierce, brilliant, caring, driven creative partner, loyal to a fault, fearless in his absolute focus and dedication to the project, the work, his path, the path. But I also have to say that whatever is written about the late great Michael Zulli this week and following weeks, precious little of it will reflect Michael's real-world experiences with editors and publishers.
“It's hard enough being an artist in this culture and country we live in. Harder still when you maintain that path dealing with the shit freelancers habitually deal with, and the industry and fans treat as somehow ‘business as usual,’ without a clue what tolls it exacts from many, most, creative individuals. There's often a dynamic in freelancing that fuels and feeds upon our individual early-life traumas and issues, to the detriment of the individual involved — but, hey, ‘cost of doing business,’ y'understand. Suck it up. A lot of so-called professionals treated Michael like shit when he'd deserved so much better, but that never stopped Michael from delivering his best. He knew what he was doing was important to him, and to hell with the rest of the bullshit.
“Michael dramatized such issues, metaphorically but vividly, in his single solo graphic novel, The Fracture of the Universal Boy. That was entirely Michael's baby, an enigmatic and powerfully rendered masterpiece, but it was a crowdfunded venture, rarely seen since its launch. Rarer still are the readers who 'got it.' Like many crowdfunded projects — presold, printed and shipped only to those fortunate enough to catch its short online window of availability, then gone, forever out of reach — The Fracture of the Universal Boy was ‘lost’ before it was found, but it remains the most essential of Michael's works, wholly and totally and mysteriously his own.
“And that, too, like Michael, easily exasperates and alienates folks, but that's how he was: you took Michael on his own terms, or you didn't. Your loss if you didn't.”
Zulli brought his comics career full circle in 2015 with the help of the late Drew Ford, founder of It’s Alive Press, a publishing house dedicated to reviving classic, out of print indie comics through crowdfunding campaigns. “Drew Ford approached us both out of the blue,” Murphy recalled. “As we discussed the reprint collection details Drew asked if we'd like to finish the story. Simple as that."
“Working together was easy," he said. “I can't speak for Michael as we never discussed the concept of legacy, but Michael was very aware of his place in the industry, and was always very aware that he was making art. One of the last things that he said to me was, ‘Without you, there'd be no me.’ Without Dave Sim, there'd have been no us. We always agreed that we could never thank Dave enough for giving us our start.”
Fellow Sandman artist Colleen Doran was a fan of Zulli's first, then friend, and close enough to refer to him as "Zed."
“Michael Zulli was one of those people I loved on faith, with only a few direct conversations between us, but many social media encounters with family, and a trail of countless messages and kindnesses.He lived on another plane, a man of exquisite sensitivity, with a spiritual antennae that made me feel like a clod of mud in the aether,” Doran said.
“This industry is not kind to people like Michael – or anybody, really – but thankfully, his body of work with Neil Gaiman was a rampart against the worst that comics can throw at you. It throws its worst at real artists, and Michael was a real artist. No one drew like Zed. No one felt like Zed,” she continued. “He was a magician and a poet of pictures. He loved nature, and was the finest naturalist in comics. He was a work of art.”
The post Michael Zulli, 1952-2024 appeared first on The Comics Journal.
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