Tom Luth, hailed by many as "The Hardest-Working Man in Comics," was found dead in his apartment last Thursday. He earned that title for the Herculean task of coloring the work of Sergio Aragonés — for Groo the Wanderer and other publications — for around forty years. It kept him busy but not so busy that he couldn't squeeze in work for others who admired his handiwork and wanted Tom Luth coloring on their comics.
I first met Tom through Alfredo Alcala, from whom he was receiving some mentoring and occasional assistant work, and through cartoonist Phil Yeh, who was a close friend of Tom's. It was Phil and his wife Linda who found Tom last Thursday, struck down by an apparent heart attack. Tom had suffered an attack last year and was scheduled for surgery in the not-too-distant future. He had not been answering his phone for several days and had missed an online music lesson last Monday. The Yehs, being good not-too-distant neighbors, went over to check on their friend and found what they found. He was 70 years old.
Tom largely retired from the coloring business a few years ago, opting to spend most of his time composing music. He was very good at it. Still, when Sergio and I agreed to contribute a Groo story for the recent Comics for Ukraine benefit book, Tom practically demanded to color it as his contribution to the cause. The last thing he colored for Sergio — and I suspect for anyone — was the cover to a forthcoming collection of our 2000 mini-series, Space Circus. Tom colored the original series back then and he colored a wonderful wrap-around cover that you'll see on the book when it's released later this year.
I think there's still time for me to write something more about him for the book before it goes to press. I won't have to write about how good his work always was. You'll be able to see that for yourself in that volume and in any of the hundreds of comic books to which he lent his great talents. What I will write about is how nice, professional and dedicated he was. There would not have been 120 issues of Groo the Wanderer in 120 months from Marvel's Epic line if Tom hadn't done the impossible over and over and over, month after month, often meeting impossible deadlines. His work was always good and he was a helluva nice man. We're all real shaken-up over this news.