Eulogy for Kevin O'Neill

Art by Kevin O'Neill

Above excerpts from a moving eulogy that Moore wrote in memory of Kevin O'Neill. 

It was shared by Scott Dunbier on his Facebook page. 

[...] What made him unique amongst his generation of comic creators was the breadth of his influences and experience. While most of his contemporaries were modelling their styles solely upon the incoming wave of great American talent, Kevin was assimilating the angular transatlantic elegance of, say, Spiderman creator Steve Ditko, without abandoning his love for the manic cartoon grotesquery of England’s Ken Reid. The result was an astonishingly flexible ability to shift from the bold designs of the Edwardian illustrators he had a passion for, to the deranged absurdities of the British children’s fare that he’d been absorbed in since infancy.

Nobody drew like Kevin O’Neill. As a result of one of our more innocuous collaborations, Kevin received the supreme compliment of having his entire artistic style – whether he was drawing a table-leg or a baby carriage – ruled unacceptable by the American industry’s then-extant Comics Code Authority. [...]

Working with him was an honour, a pleasure, and an education. His knowledge of the culture we were mining was easily as extensive as my own, and in most instances was marvellously complementary. [...]

Not only a working relationship, the connection with Kevin was one of the most important friendships of my life. As well as being one of the medium’s most individual and exciting draftsmen, he was also exceptional in being one of the very few working-class creators working in a trashy, gutter art-form that was originally intended only for the poor and supposedly illiterate, since become a gentrified middle-class district with graphic novels in the stead of studio loft-apartments. Of all my mainstream collaborators, Kevin was the only one who stood solidly beside me in our difficulties with the comic-book publishing industry, and whose commitment was always to the work, like my own, rather than to the financial inducements and bullying of the companies; the manufacturers.

He was also one of the warmest, funniest, most erudite and most courageous people that I’ve ever met. [...] I am going to miss him like I’d miss sunsets.

In the words of English music-hall legend Max Miller, ‘Take a good look, missus. You’ll never see another one.’

Alan Moore,

Northampton,

November 9th, 2022

Read also HERE and here.