Gahan Wilson, the great macabre cartoonist best known for his work in Playboy and National Lampoon, has died. Link
Wilson, along with Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, was a big hero of mine. Unlike the other two, who were vested in Old World/Victorian-era images of Dracula and Jack the Ripper-type horror, Wilson drew on American and postwar horror gags rooted in the atomic bomb and mutant viruses (although Dracula and Wolf Man archetypes popped up in his work as well).
Nuts.
I love his work. RIP Mr. Wilson; you done good.
First Michael J. Pollard, and now Gahan Wilson. Dammit.
I still frequently think of his cartoons. They were the only reason I read Playboy as a teen.
He died of complications of dementia. Fortunately for all of us, he was demented most of his life.*
*Yes, I know that was in bad taste. I think he would have appreciated it.
Three weeks ago I gave my Gahan Wilson 50 years of Playboy Cartoons to my nephew, as I thought he would appreciate it and it was just sitting idle in my bookcase.
He would have. 
I had an English teacher who adored Wilson’s stuff. He used to cut the cartoons out of the magazine to share around with our school newspaper staff. We all loved them, too. So perfectly twisted!
I’m sorry he’s gone.
Damn. Sad to see he’s gone, but equally sad that his brilliant mind was whittled away over a long period of time. Hopefully he had loving care through the long process.
Is Nothing Sacred?
My favorite.
Wilson drew a monthly cartoon for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from about 1965 to 1981, and occasionally after that. He also had a story in Again, Dangerous Visions; the title was a blot of ink. He also designed the original World Fantasy Award.
He was a less subdued version of Charles Addams. Much of Addams’s work was subtle and there was nothing subtle about Wilson. A great cartoonist.
He just painted what he saw…
His NUTS comic strip was what convinced me that all you need to be a writer/artist/cartoonist is to pay attention to what happens around you; now, and looking back on your childhood.
I first encountered his cartoons in F&SF many years before I saw my first Playboy. What a bonus it was to have a second source.
Nobody seems to remember that he published a two novels, Eddy Deco’s Last Caper: An Illustrated Mystery and Everybody’s Favorite Duck, and a collection of his sf stories, The Cleft and Other Odd Tales. I think the short stories are better. His humor, like a book of cartoons, should be taken in small doses.
SDMB trivia time: Everybody’s Favorite Duck was edited by our own Ukulele Ike.
The definitive response. I remember those old Nat. Lampoon cartoons well. Recently reread a bunch of them. My goodness.
This.
Go Ike!
I’ve got to sit you down and hear your stories sometime.
For those of us of a certain age, and iconoclastic tastes, the transition from MAD Magazine in our early years, then to Cracked, and finally to National Lampoon in our sophisticated teen years, with Nuts especially it felt like Wilson was chronicling our lives.
There was always a little feel of the risque to National Lampoon, maybe you didn’t want your mom to know you were reading it because of the occasional adult content. So in my case I never got the magazine myself, but relied on borrowing it second hand from my more rough friend, who’s parents didn’t seem to know about his adventurous streak. But as I remember, Nuts was essentially clean.
Anywho, I remember finding Wilson’s books at our town library, which was a godsend, as bookstores were not around. Once when a new Wilson title was coming out I mustered up the courage to ask the stern grandmotherly librarian if it had come in. She surprised me by saying yes, and she had read it and mostly liked the comics in it. It just never occurred to me that stern small town grandmotherly librarians would have any shared experiences with teen boys with iconoclastic tastes. Kind of a Nuts moment, if you ask me.
We librarians will surprise you sometimes.
He used to also draw for science fiction monthlies. I don’t remember which ones, but certainly remember his drawings…RIP
