Keith Giffen 1952-2023

True to form, Keith Giffen leaves us with a joke: a posthumous Facebook post, after he passed away on October 9th due to a stroke he suffered the day before.

His first exposure to comics was World’s Finest of all places.

It was when Batwoman got Superman’s powers. All I could remember about it for years was that it had this big green monster with Mickey Mouse gloves on the cover and Batwoman zooming down. That was my first exposure to comics.
KEITH GIFFEN

He’s probably describing World’s Finest #117, which makes me regret having skipped it in the retrospective.

Keith was one of the most influential artists associated with the Legion of Super-Heroes, but he had an incredibly eclectic career… starting with a bonkers origin story.
(source: cbr.com reporting an interview with the Jack Kirby Collector)

I broke into comics by doing everything wrong. I was working as a hazardous material handler and I took a week off and said, “Hey I think I’ll break into comics.” So I just drew up a bunch of pictures and slapped them together. [CUT]
So I call up Marvel. I don’t know who the secretary was then, but it was not the most positive—”yeah, um, bring your portfolio in and they’ll look at it and you can pick it up tomorrow.” [CUT]
It took a while for it to sink in that apparently Ed Hannigan—prior commitments had forced him off this back-up strip in a b-&-w magazine called The Sword and the Star. And Bill Mantlo, who was the writer, happened to see my samples laying around and said, “I like him; why don’t we get this guy?” And they couldn’t contact me, because like the genius I am, I had dropped off my portfolio with my name on it and that’s it. No phone number, no address, no way to contact me. So they needed me yesterday and that’s pretty much how I got my start in comics.
KEITH GIFFEN

That’s the backstory on how Keith managed to co-create Rocket Racoon with Bill Mantlo in 1976.

He went on to work on the Defenders, easily one of the works where his artwork was the closest to Kirby’s. Seriously, VERY few people are as good as Giffen at imitating Jack Kirby.

Keith grew tired of comics, basically forcing Marvel to fire him by deliberately missing deadlines. Ironically enough, he ended up selling Kirby vacuum cleaners.

And so I left and bounced around with odd jobs. I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door, repossessed things. Then one day I just thought, ‘I’m doodling these things on my own; I think I’ve gotten a little bit better.’ So I called Joe Orlando [at DC], because I had screwed him over pretty bad and I thought at least I owe Joe hanging up on me—I owe him that much.
KEITH GIFFEN

I think you know what he did when he came back to comics.

Giffen’s name is forever linked to the Legion of Super-Heroes: from his artwork, to his collaboration with Paul Levitz, to being the main force behind the “Five Years Later” era of the Legion… for better or worse.
I’m no big fan of the 5YL era, but it’s undeniable that Giffen threw himself into it with tons of creativity and passion.

You can’t mention Giffen’s work in this era without the controversy of his artwork. While this was not the first (or the last) time Giffen completely changed his style, it was so drastic that it drew accusations of swiping Argentinian artist José Antonio Muñoz.
Something that Giffen all but admitted, and which really hurt his career when he was at the top.

I was flabbergasted. I think for about a month I couldn’t work. All I could do was study this guy’s work; poring over it and poring over it, until the point I practically became that work, and I stepped over a line. I fully admit that—not for any of the reasons they claimed I did. There was no time I was sitting there tracing or copying, no. Duplicating, pulling out of memory and putting down on paper after intense study, absolutely.
KEITH GIFFEN

While his sense of humor showed up here and there in the Legion, probably the character that best represented Giffen’s weirdness was Ambush Bug.

He wasn’t influential just for the Legion, of course. He was the co-creator of Jack of Hearts (again with Mantlo), of Lobo and more recently of the new Blue Beetle.

He was also behind the Annihilation event at Marvel, which relaunched the cosmic characters in a big way and was the basis for the modern version of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Lastly, together with DeMatteis he was behind a radically different Justice League relaunch that established Booster Gold and Blue Beetle as one of the funniest duos in comics.

That must have resonated with Giffen, since the “Bwa ha ha” in his posthumous post was one of its running gags.

I think one of the best looks into his mind comes from the advice he once gave Mark Waid.

When I asked him 20 years ago what the secret was to maintaining a steady career in comics, he said, ‘Figure out what you do better than anyone else and own that lane. It may not always be in fashion, but when it is, they have no choice but to come to you.’”
MARK WAID

But I have to close this with a comment from one of his most historically significant collaborators and friends.

Keith was probably the most fertile creative mind of our generation in comics. He had an infinite number of ideas, pouring constantly out. Many, thankfully, never saw print as wholly insane or inappropriate. But the ones that did!
Keith was a curmudgeon by choice, an act he perfected and enjoyed. Like many artists, he didn’t lead a healthy lifestyle, and that led to tough times that he always laughed off. He was a family man when out of public view, and his soft moments came out there.
PAUL LEVITZ

So long Keith, you magnificently weird man. You’ll be missed.