When I was 15 I was obsessed with Death… and all of her siblings. Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman was my favorite comic and I couldn’t get enough. It was a good thing that I got to the party so late because there were already 6 years worth of stories to read. I loved the way that something from early on in the series would come up again so many issues later and make me think “Oh, that was clever” or how a particular piece of dialog or art would leave me thinking about it for days. The Sandman was sort of a gateway for me. Up until then I wasn’t much of a reader. Sure, I used to binge read the Babysitter’s Club books when I was 10 and did the assigned reading for school but most of the time when I picked up a book I lost interest really quickly. After falling in love with the characters and stories in The Sandman, I picked up a copy of Good Omens, cowritten by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, from the comic shop I worked at and from then on I became an avid reader.

Anyway, back to Death. She was my favorite, I used to doodle her in my journal, wore her on t shirts, saved pictures of her the I found online onto a floppy disk for no apparent reason… I loved the special issue, “A Death Gallery #1” and wished I could draw her as beautifully as Chris Bachalo, Vince Locke, Colleen Doran or Jon J Muth did.

Fast forward to many years later and here’s my Death drawing. It’s part of my pinup series that started with the Valentine’s Day drawings but has taken on a life of it’s own. I might need to start work on a Death series too as I have a feeling there’s more to come. –S.