To have a career in an entertainment-based industry — and I suppose in many others — they say you have to either be very talented, very reliable or very nice. And some further say you can get by with any two out of three…though I can think of a few folks I've known who've had decent careers with only one. We won't talk about them now because I want to talk about a great friend and a great collaborator who, lucky me, excelled in all three. His name is Will Meugniot and that's pronounced "Mineo." The comics we've done together might not have been the greatest comics ever done but no one else's had a creative team whose names were so often mispronounced.
I started working with Will back in 1976 — on Tarzan and Korak comics I was writing and editing for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. They were for the overseas market and I recall that the foreign publishers were quite delighted with Will's work. I know I always was. We did a lot of different things but the one you're most likely to know of was a comic we created called The DNAgents with also led to a couple of spin-off books. Will was the perfect collaborator, meaning that we agreed on most things but not everything. He had ideas of his own and a lot of them were way better than mine.
We would have done the comic longer but it turned out Will was not only terrific at comics but also at all the creative skills necessary to work in TV animation. It was not long after he got his foot in that door that all the studios were throwing money at him to work on their shows and, eventually, produce them. For a couple of decades, a lot of the best action/adventure cartoon shows on TV were the best because Will made them that way.
This morning on Facebook, he went public with a secret that I've known about for just a little while and it depresses me, as it will depress you if you've ever known the man or even his work. He's battling two forms of cancer — prostate and pancreatic — and is soon to undergo some industrial-strength surgery. I could quote his statement here but instead, I'm giving you this link so you can go read it yourself.
And while you're over there, maybe you can take a moment and post something to Will. If you know him personally, tell him what a great guy he is because I'm sure you feel that way about him. If you never had the pleasure of knowing him but you know his output, write about that. The important thing is to let him know we're wishing him only the best of all possible outcomes and many more years with us and his incredible spouse and partner-in-life, Jo.
I have occasionally been accused of only seeing the good in people and maybe I am sometimes too oblivious or eager to not see the bad. But in this case, I see only the good because there just plain isn't anything else.