Matt Howarth, the American cartoonist behind Those Annoying Post Bros., Savage Henry and the strange, crowded city of Bugtown, has died at the age of 72. His death was announced on 5 October by Eli Schwab of Cosmic Lion Productions, the publisher he had worked with most in recent years, Bleeding Cool reported. The news has been slow to travel; Michael Swanwick’s tribute appeared two weeks later, and File 770 picked it up this week.
Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston described him as “known for his dense, surreal science-fiction worlds, music-infused narratives, and pioneering independent comics,” and that is about right. Howarth was self-taught, and you could tell a Howarth page from across a comic shop. His work first reached a wide audience through Heavy Metal, where his serial “Changes” ran in 1980 and where the Post Brothers, Bugtown’s deeply unpleasant siblings, first appeared. Those Annoying Post Bros. went on to run through Vortex, Rip Off Press and MU Press from 1985 to 1998, for more than sixty issues.
Savage Henry, from 1987, followed an alternate-reality guitarist in the insect band The Bulldaggers, and it was where Howarth’s two great loves met. He was a serious fan of experimental and electronic music, and the comic was full of authorised cameos from the likes of The Residents, Hawkwind, Moby, Wire, Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler. He later called collaborating with musicians “a longtime ambition of mine”, and he made comics with Bill Nelson, Arthur Brown, Hugh Hopper and the Legendary Pink Dots, among others. Elsewhere he drew Keif Llama: Xeno-Tech for Fantagraphics, Star Crossed for DC’s short-lived Helix imprint, two issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Mirage, and illustrations for The Dune Encyclopedia. He also wrote the first review of the Turtles to appear in Heavy Metal.
Swanwick did not soften it: “He died in obscurity. He deserved much better.” He writes that Howarth “had an instantly-recognizable style entirely unlike anyone else’s” and “became internationally known”, but “because he had little or no business sense, he could never turn those facts into real money.” It is an old story in comics, and in science fiction, and it does not get any less depressing with repetition.
The kindest epitaph may be Swanwick’s last line: “Matt loved comics, music, and science fiction. He gave them his life and received little in return. But he got to spend that life creating work he believed in.” There are worse things to have said of you. If you have a box of 1980s independents in the loft, this would be a good week to go and look for the Post Brothers. Mind your fingers.
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