Gahan Wilson

image source: Joe Mabel

We learned with some sadness the other day of the passing of Gahan Wilson, the great cartoonist whose macabre humor and startling talent kept us amused since we first encountered him in the 1960s. His images were inevitably funny, yet also somehow terrifying.

Perhaps not since Charles Adams have the fearsome and the comic been so brilliantly united.

But, what is a story about a cartoonist, no matter how talented, doing in a political blog? We would submit that Mr. Wilson was political, in his strange way. His cartoons were subversive. They forced us to question reality, and, more importantly, the reality imposed on us by authority—whether that was the authority of governments, or great corporations, or the learned professionals whose expertise we are supposed to accept without question.

Thus, let us hope that Mr. Wilson is duly rewarded for his efforts. If there is a life after death, let us hope that even now he is there, enjoying the company and wit of Charles Adams, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Parker, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Carroll, and all the others of their kind.

And let us further hope that even now, Cthulhu, the White Rabbit, and Belphegor circulate among them, making certain that everyone has a full tankard of ale, or at least the best tea and (existentially threatening) cream cake and brimstone.

-mjt