I'd been Facebook friends with Exu Nazares for a couple of years by the time I actually got to know him a bit. Not sure how we connected on Facebook, but some of the best stories in my Godspeed You! Black Emperor story came from him, related to his time in the Ashe Gallery. It was kind of insane that I'd spent decades wondering about that space, only to discover that two of the people who ran it had, when I wrote that story, been known to me for years.
The Straight story I wrote about him came next. And a crazy number of t-shirt orders. Which I hope were actually helpful -- they're delightful shirts, but I hope the money from them was meaningful? (Because of course now I'm second-guessing whether they distracted him from completing his graphic novel; the last couple of shirt designs I was going to buy, I told him not to even worry about -- I paid for the shirts but said he should just focus on his book).
No idea what the state of his graphic memoir is. I believe there are completed chunks, but is there enough to salvage a book? In our last exchanges, he was sending me morbid promotional one-pagers for it, gruesome and hilarious stuff modeled off the advertisements in the back of horror comic books. Here's one he posted publicly back in April:
And now he's passed (either Thursday night or Friday morning, not clear technically which). I didn't get to know him very well, but enough to know that he was a neat cat. Condolences to his partner and surviving family.
Gonna wear one of his t-shirts today...
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