I never know how to phrase what I'm thinking now about my pal Vince Davis, who passed away on May 6 due to kidney failure. I'm sorry to lose Vince, who was a great guy and a great cartoonist. I'm not sorry that he's out of pain. The last few years, his life had only been about fighting to stay alive, checking in and out of hospitals, wasting away physically and emotionally. I'm told his wicked sense of humor remained intact until a few months before the end, when even that part of him failed. After that, there was no real reason for him to stick around.
Vince was one of those quiet talents, working in animation and on the occasional comic book project, never calling attention to himself, sometimes not even signing his work. He did some wonderful work for Bill Spicer's Graphic Story Magazine in the late sixties. In the early seventies, he was in a few underground comics. Mostly, he worked in animation, working his way up from layout and design to directing and producing.
He produced the last few seasons of Garfield and Friends, which was the first time we worked together after several decades of friendship. He was very good at his job, though he had one failing. He was a soft touch (usually) when he was approached by someone desperate for work…someone he knew needed a job but maybe wasn't up to the demands of the assignment. So he'd hire them anyway and when they handed in something unusable, he'd just redo it himself, even though it added many long, uncompensated hours to his work week. (Vince, I should mention, was not related to Garfield creator Jim Davis. This did not stop someone on an animation website from claiming he got his job through nepotism. No…he got it because he was good.)
I could write a lot more about Vince but there's no way I can top what animator Mark Kausler wrote about his and my pal. Go there. Read a lovely tribute to a lovely guy.
I must have a dozen photos of Vince in my files but I can find none of them tonight. Instead, I decided to illustrate this with a panel from "Comic Book Fans," a three-page comic book story Vince created around 1972. It was a harsh but loving slam at those of us who wallow in funnybooks…written and drawn by an admitted wallower. That's Vince in the above scene, annoying Bill Spicer. The story struck a note with fans of the day and it was reprinted in several magazines and issued as a huge poster that was literally wider than Vince was tall. I just read it again and it made me smile, partly because it reminded me of myself but mostly because it reminded me of Vince.