Alex Guenther was a Brazilian comic artist, who passed away a couple weeks back at the age of 48. He leaves behind a wife and two sons.
His website contains a number of samples of his work. His characters were always expressive. And you can see he was an extremely versatile artist, suited to a number of genres. He could do anything.
I got to know him briefly in his final weeks. We first spoke just about six weeks before he passed away. I had been looking to get into comic scripting, and had hired Alex to illustrate a short comic I wrote. He let me know up front he was dealing with cancer, which might slow him down, but that he still hoped to get the work done fast.
He got one page done and a start on the second before messaging me that he was admitted to the hospital.
I last heard from him about two weeks before he died. He apologized for being behind on the work, informed me he was about to have surgery, and that he would need at least a week of recovery before he got back to work. I assured him his concern for my comic was not needed and he should take care of himself. A “thumbs up” was the last message I received from him. Two weeks later, I saw a message from his wife on social media that he had passed.
The two pages he’d worked on for me are among his final pieces of art, perhaps his very final pieces. It seemed important to make sure they were shared with the world in tribute to a great artist gone too soon.
The story is called The Omega Mandrill and concerns monkeys battling zombies. This was his rough pencils for page 1 along with the finished page.
He did chastise me for trying to fit too many panels on a page, but I think he did a great job with the nine-panel grid.
I saw that page 1 has 9 squares. The drawings look small with so many squares on one page.
I had asked him to shade in the mandrill’s face in the inking. I was looking to hold off the reveal that this was about monkeys for a page or two. That’s why the beautiful mandrill visage in panel 6 became an amorphous blob of shadow. All my fault.
This was his rough pencils for page 2, as far as he got with the work.
I should note these pages were done within two days after we came to an agreement, so he worked fast. But then he got admitted to the hospital.
Rest in peace, Alex. With deepest sympathies for your family and loved ones.
