Friday, July 4, 2008

Phil Lasorda R.I.P.

My first email of the day-July 4th 2008-was word from an old friend, Bill Cucinotta, that our other old friend and Comico publisher, Phil Lasorda died.

I then found this at Heidi MacDonald's blog:

"We’ve received word that former Comico publisher, Phil Lasorda, passed away yesterday. In addition to running the company which published such titles as MAGE and THE ELEMENTALS, Lasorda was a creator himself, with the book AZ. No further details are available at this time."


I'm very sad to hear this news-the few of you who read this blog know of my professional past at Comico Comics-Phil was a very important part of my professional life in comics- if not for him taking a chance on my still amateurish work back in '83 I may never have gotten into this biz-a job which has become a huge part of my life these past 25 years-I can never thank him enough.

Phil and I never became close friends but we did work together on 3 issues of his book AZ-they were changing their books over from B & W to color and Phil chose myself and my partner Rich Rankin to draw his series-those three 30 page issues never saw the light of day (thank goodness ;o) but they were a great training ground for me-i needed that time to hone my art and learn the discipline of monthly comic books-that time with Phil led to our doing the ROBOTECH MASTERS series for Comico.

I will never ever forget his generosity to a guy who just wanted to draw comics.

Farewell, Phil.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, Neil, that's sad news. I just happened to come by searching for some info on those Robotech Masters comics to find this news.

Pass along my condolences the next time you communicate with Bull Cucinotta.

Keith Wilson

Neil D Vokes said...

Hi Keith-yeah,it's not the best of reasons to bump into each other,is it? Phil may not have been an integral part of comics history as a whole,but he was in MY history in the biz-I wish his family well...

anything i can help you with,pal?

Anonymous said...

That's a shame. My condolences to his family.

Ron