Zaffino's work was always admired by his peers. His influence on the medium in the world at large is still being felt.

Martín Larreategui- Fellow Argentine comic artist and friend of Jorge Zaffino.

First thing that comes to my mind when I think about Jorge is his open and sincere personality. When he was upset, you realized it just by seing him, as well as when he was in a good mood, his wide smile and his sense of humor were contagious. Along with his spontaneous way, he could be really warm and direct with the people he knew, his gestures talked about his generosity. When I first met him I had the impression of a cabal man, with neat ideas. Once I started to know him better I realized that appearance was on the surface, and that he has also an open mind and a lot of sensibility. He looked and showed himself as a simple guy, but that was part of his modesty. When I started to know and understand his work better, I started to think it was very similar to his way of being. It looked simple and spontaneous in the outside, but it has a great elaboration and complexity, the more you look at it you find more and more things, relations and elements.

When you looked at his original artwork the impression was very strong, I remember it took me a while to discover and understand it, there were about three or four stages I went through looking at his pages. When I first looked at them, I had the impression of seeing real things, three-dimensional objects, with deep and texture. He was taking me inside real and incredible worlds. Then I started to see the inking and started to appreciate the line, the black areas, how light and shadow and texture are achieved with pen and brush. I remember being amazed by the diversity of techniques, white painting over black ink, scratching, collage, ink itself seemed to have volume. There were things that were impossible to appreciate on a printed page. Seeing the originals made, you want to put them in a frame and hang them on the wall. But even when it lost detail, the reduced page always looked better, more solid and compact.

By [then] I started to study drawing, and as I started to learn, found that the most impressive part of Jorge´s pages were not their realistic impact or the inking. As I started to appreciate he drawing beneath, I understood that it was the main thing, the solid construction, the composition, the use of perspective and space. Jorge was one of the best skilled and trained draftsmen I had ever seen. He knew all that can be learned about drawing, he arrived to that level not every artists gets to; that knowledge level that makes all big masters resemble each other in some abstract way you can not really define, but that is not other thing than pure drawing.

Once I got to understand this, however, I discovered something even more amazing about his job. Instead of doing just a technically correct drawing, as he could have, he used his knowledge as a way of expression. The use of references, the attention given to characters and places, responded to a very personal representation of the world and people. That emotional involvement with a story’s elements is what gives that transcendental side to his interpretation of the script, it did not matter what the story was about. He gave it depth an feeling. His sense of drama, suspense and subtle humour were always on first place, drawing technique was the medium for it. He narrated in a very polished way, he knew when to give an effect, and when only to insinuate in subtle ways, adding dimensions and new aspects to the script. I believe that is that talent to represent reality as a personal way to understand the world that makes us be amazed by an artist, and Jorge had it. Once I understood that, I was even more admired for his job, it was not only impressive at a lot of levels, it combined several levels, and out of that combination something new appeared. Something that can not be easily defined but gives us material for reflection and is open to interpretation. I know a lot of people that admires his job, but everyone of us understand something different, depending of the moment you are [at], you never [stop] discovering new things.

I think one of Jorge´s biggest problem was his versatility, he could draw everything, every character, every genre, and do it right. In addition, he got so involved with his work and his permanent search that his work was always changing. The result of that was that editors did not quite know what to do with him, they were always trying to make him fit on the industry, but it was very difficult. I personally think he could have made other kind of stories, more appropriate to his talent, look for places when he could have had more freedom, not only to develop his drawing, but to choose the story as well. But he liked drawing so much that it was enough for him. I think in a way he was a victim of the system, an industry that has the money to hire the best artists, only to make them fit their own commercial purposes.

As I write those lines, anyway, I am starting to think that that gives even more interest to his job. I talked a lot with him about comics and storytelling, and he understood it in a very simple way. It is just about telling a story, and stories are to be read and enjoyed. He was not interested in "saying something", making a manifest or given a message, he just liked to tell stories people could read and enjoy. It is maybe that simple and direct approach to comic medium that that makes his work real masterpieces, the ability to understand a complex medium like comic books in a basic and direct way, taking it to its very essence. I will probably be always wondering, anyway, which stories could he have made if he was more involved in an ideological level with his role as storyteller. We will surely never know it, but I do not know if it really maters. After all, what makes an artist a master in his area is the compromise with it, and if something is for sure it is that Jorge loved drawing and creating comic books with every cell of his being. He could not keep its talent for himself, he had to share it and give it away. Fortunately for us, he did it, and did it a lot.

-Martín Larreategui 2003

Comiculture

The second issue of this classy full color comics info magazine has a great 3 pg appreciation of the work of Jorge Zaffino by various comics professionals. It is well worth a look: www.comiculture.com

Walter Simonson
In comics, I’m a fan of storytelling and draftsmanship. They go hand in hand in the best work, and Jorge Zaffino was as good at both as anybody who
practices the professional craft. He could storytell with the best of them
and he had a draftsmanship that was at once spontaneous and free and yet
remarkably precise. If I knew he was doing a book, I picked it up.
I was intrigued by his Winter World work, the first of his art I saw. And I
was blown away by his first Punisher graphic novel, drawn from a story/script by Jo Duffy. That particularly graphic novel still remains a favorite of mine and to this day, I keep it on the bookshelf below my taboret for easy access and reference. It isn’t that I ever find myself drawing the Punisher but, as with all the material that captures my imagination, I find it refreshes my own work to go back occasionally and reacquaint and reinspire myself with another look.
Jorge was one of the masters, and an inspiration.
Walter Simonson
Aug, 2002

Carl Potts
If memory serves me well, I was first introduced to Jorge Zaffino’s work through Chuck Dixon sometime about 1987.* Jorge lived in Argentina and Chuck showed me samples of Jorge’s work.
I’d been editing for Marvel since 1983 and was always looking for new (new to me, anyway) and exciting talent to work with. There were distance and language issues to deal with but I was determined to work on a project with Jorge.
Since Jorge’s art was so sophisticated and "mature" (in the true sense of the word), I initially assumed that he had to be in his 40s or 50s. It turned out he was barely in his 30s at the time. The confidence of Jorge’s line work, use of solid black areas and his visual storytelling sense fascinated me. Even though Jorge’s art was very dramatic, the work contained a lot of subtlety. The body language exhibited by the characters he drew was amazing. Each of his characters had distinct personalities on display through their body posture, gestures and subtle facial expressions.
Jorge’s art was appreciated by many fellow comics professionals and by the more sophisticated comics readers. His style, however, was not appreciated by much of Marvel’s super hero-focused readership.

Despite the concerns that Jorge’s style would not go over well with many of Marvel’s readers, I knew I wanted to work with Jorge. I needed to find the right project to showcase his abilities.
During this period, I was working to turn the Punisher into a major leading character. One of the Punisher projects I had in the works was a graphic novel written by Jo Duffy. The Punisher character and Jo’s script seemed like good matches for Jorge’s dramatic and moody style. Jorge teamed up with Jo and the result was the very successful "Assassin’s Guild" graphic novel (1988). Jorge’s work was brilliant. I remember being blown away whenever Jorge mailed in a new batch of pages. Other editors and artists would sometimes visit my office and dig into the flat files to get a look at Jorge’s latest work.
I was extremely flattered when Jorge offered to trade a few pages of his original art from the "Assassin’s Guild" graphic novel for some of my originals. I still have those "Assassin’s Guild" pages in my flat files and occasionally pull them out to admire them.
Jorge’s drawing was so amazing that, as a comic book artist, I could simultaneously be inspired and depressed when looking at his work! I knew that, no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to draw anywhere near as well as Jorge did. I wonder if he knew how good he was.
I believe I met Jorge in person just once. He visited Marvel’s offices in NY sometime in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. I believe he was accompanied by Chuck Dixon. I remember a very polite and gracious man who seemed genuinely amazed that his work was held in such high regard.
Jorge and Chuck teamed up to produce the "Kingdom Gone" Punisher hard cover graphic novel for me in 1990. This was another great project for Jorge. Again, it was just the right project for him and the graphic novel was very successful. Jorge and Chuck made a great team. As with the first Punisher graphic novel, Jorge gave all of his players distinct looks, body language and personalities. The tropical island setting in "Kingdom Gone" was very different from the urban landscape in "Assassin’s Guild". Jorge excelled in portraying both environments.
Even though Jorge’s work was popular in the Punisher graphic novels, I was still concerned that his style might not click with the audience reading the monthly Marvel Universe titles. Despite those doubts, editor Marcus McLaurin and I asked Jorge to be the regular artist on the new Terror, Inc. title. Terror is a very grotesque but fascinating character and Jorge’s dark and shadowy style should have been well suited for the book. However, the creative and editorial engine on the series never fired on all cylinders. Compounding matters, Marvel’s sales and marketing staff didn’t really know how to handle this offbeat title. The series eventually died. We moved on to other projects.
Around 1989, after the departure of Archie Goodwin from Epic Comics (Marvel’s line of creator-owned titles), a large part of my editorial duties included overseeing the Epic imprint.
Again teaming with Chuck, Jorge produced the fantastic art for a 48 page one shot, Seven Block, a very moody and scary science fiction prison story for Epic. The Seven Block title page features one of Jorge’s great paintings. Most comics pros and fans had only seen Jorge’s line art up to this point. The quality of Jorge’s painting made me hope to do a full-length painted comics project with Jorge someday. Unfortunately, that never came to pass.
In the early ‘90s, Jorge drew a story for Epic’s Clive Barker’s Hellraiser anthology.
Chuck then approached me about publishing Wintersea, the follow up to the Winterworld mini-series Chuck and Jorge had produced for Eclipse Comics. I was all for that! Unfortunately, the project did not get published before Marvel hit hard times and the company abandoned publishing creator-owned titles.
On a number of levels, Jorge was one of the all-time great comic book artists. Like some other great comics artists (Alex Toth comes to mind), Jorge was an "artist’s artist", greatly admired by his peers and by the more knowledgeable comics readers.
Chuck Dixon is primarily responsible for gaining exposure for Jorge in the US. I am very happy to have played a part in helping get Jorge’s work published in North America. His name continues to pop up occasionally in interviews with comics artists when they discuss the creators they admire and were inspired by. Hopefully, Jorge’s influence on developing comics creators will continue far into the future.
Jorge’s passing is very sad. The fact that he passed away while still so young makes his death that much harder to take. He should have lived happily for many more decades while continuing to amaze his audience with his creative abilities.
*Chuck also was the person responsible for showing me Quique Alcatena’s work. You might check with Chuck for the story on how he discovered these talented Argentinean artists. I believe he made the connection though artist and art studio head Ricardo Villegran.

Carl Potts
8.15.02

John Paul Leon:
Jorge Zaffino raised the bar for the rest of us who draw stories for a living.
Zaffino was an artist of extraordinary power and depth. His work is a meeting point between many so-called schools of comics art. We can see a Kirbyesque influence via John Buscema in his Punisher graphic novels, Assassin’s Guild and Kingdom Gone, but also an obvious natural range in his draftsmanship more comparable to Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Add to that a heavy dose of light and shadow dramatic prowess in the Noel Sickles school and you have an artist who is a meeting point for many opposites. The results are as alive as any artist’s work I’ve ever seen.
Lessons learned from Jorge Zaffino’s work:
-It’s hard to argue with good drawing.
-There’s more than one solution to every problem/ There’s no one right way to do comics, use blacks, and draw with ink.
-There’s beauty in seeing the process on the board--unfinished quality as opposed to a more polished invisible hand ideal.
-Exaggeration.
-Drama and the power of suggestion in drawing.
But the best lesson to learn from his work is that you must relearn the same lessons over and over again. In fact it’s more interesting when you allow that struggle to be seen on the page,
Jorge Zaffino is a special artist to me. Unfortunately, I never met the man, but his work is so vigorous and audacious that I can only guess he must have been very passionate.
His work does not instruct, it questions.
I have a Savage Sword of Conan page hanging over my drawing board. I’ve had it there for three years. The piece is an original page drawn by Jorge Zaffino. It must have taken him about a day. I’m still learning from it.
John Paul Leon
Miami/2002

Tommy Lee Edwards:
I don’t believe in love at first sight. You have to earn the love; to warrant the love. To love a person, music, dance, drawing, painting, the oceans, or anything else on our precious earth is to delve into it; to wrap yourself inside of it and see if it fits. Sure, infatuation with surface-level exists. But to truly treasure that love, you have to know it.
I love Jorge Zaffino’s work. His drawing and storytelling and bold application of the ink have always been both inspiring and intimidating. Most Zaffino fans I know primarily refer to his Winterworld series as ‘the best’. I honestly couldn’t pick a ‘best’ because I always saw growth in Zaffino’s drawing that told me to never stop searching for a better way to do something. Personally, I find myself pulling Punisher:Kingdom Gone and Zaffino’s Conan job off the shelf when I need a dose.
Working in ink can be a tough medium. The best of illustrators seem to draw with the ink rather than ink pencils already rendered on the page. I’ve never seen Zaffino’s pencils or layouts under the ink, however, so much work was obviously done in the ink stage that it retains a certain life and spontaneous energy. Reference and research for a story’s subject matter is another big plus in the work. Again, Zaffino is able to keep the art rich with life and imagination while at the same time avoiding any fakery on costumes, props, or locations.

At school I had very traditional training in a primarily tonal approach to drawing and painting. As an illustrator breaking into comics, I was struggling with how to turn my thinking into strictly black and white. How to create depth? How to render the form on an object or figure? Studying Zaffino’s work aided me in ways I will always appreciate. He answered many of my questions, and started me on asking new ones. He helped me gain the courage to draw with a brush. For a man I’ve never met, he’s done a lot.
Ever feel like you know the artist when you love their work? I love Jorge Zaffino’s work.
Tommy Lee Edwards
North Carolina 8-02

From Comic Con's Splash Website:
July 15: UPDATE. The SPLASH has learned that Argentinian artist Jorge Zaffino has died from a heart attack. He was 45 years old.
Zaffrino studied under Ricado and Enrique Villagran, working as their assistant during his teens, then breaking into the Argentine comics biz. His most famous work in South America was the WOLF series.
During the 1980's he worked in the United States with Chuck Dixon and Tim Truman. Truman told the SPLASH: "I had the pleasure of working with him on a few projects, among them Winterworld. He was an amazing artist. Very inspiring. I remember seeing the Winterworld pages as they came in and thinking how perfect his technique was. Also, how well he could create the visuals for the invented civilzation that the story required. One of his foremost influences was Gene Colan, I remember. But Jorge had a technique that was all his own."
Mike Manley told the SPLASH: "It's really sad news when an artist at the top of his generation which Jorge certainly was passes away too young. I meet Jorge on his first trip the the US in the late '80s and it was clear from that meeting and seeing is work he was a top talent, and very modest as well. His work will stand the test of time and that is the mark of true talent."
Chuck Dixon, who received confirmation of the death from Zaffino's family wrote: "To say this comes as a shock is an understatement. He and I exchanged e-mails just last week about doing some work together. Two weeks ago Bart Sears and I discussed the possibility of Jorge doing a fill-in on The Path. There's few artists working in comics to whom the word genius applies. Jorge Zaffino was one of those guys. He was a true artist's artist. Pencillers and inkers who had been exposed to his work became instant lifetime fans. Show them pages of his originals and they would be speechless. His work displayed a raw power that is unmatched. He was like Joe Kubert in that you can see his "hand" in the work. What seems like delicate and deliberate line work in reproduction would, on close inspection of the pages, be revealed as brutal and varied ink lines that looked as though they were thrown down casually. But they weren't. Jorge worked hard to achieve that look of spontaneity. Often he would finish an entire sequence only to tear it up and start over again. In a business filled with harsh self-critics Jorge was harder on himself than anyone I've ever worked with. He drew the wildest fight scenes and most brutal antagonists. But he was capable of subtleties that few in comics can achieve.
"Sadly, he did little work here in the USA. He had a few admirers on editing staffs but they tried to use him on monthly schedules and Jorge wasn't built for that. He preferred special projects that allowed him to delve into the
story and fully explore it. He was no prima donna or temperamental soul. An easier guy to work with I cannot imagine. He just wanted the best work from himself. Many of the projects that I and others presented are probably still gathering dust on shelves somewhere."
"Jorge came to comics as a teenager. His father asked that he be employed at the Villagran Comic Art Studio in Buenos Aires at no pay. Jorge (or Jorgito as they called him) would wash brushes and empty trash and run errands in exchange for being able to watch the Villagran brothers and their studio mates work on pages. Most all of these long-time comic vets would tell me that by age seventeen Jorge was the best artist in the studio. This included talents that read like a grocery list of some of the finest artists every to lift a pen or pencil."
Dixon said: "On a personal level, he was a charming guy with a great sense of humor. He spoke no English and I no Spanish. But I always enjoyed his range of facial expressions as things I said to him were translated. Particularly if what I or another were saying was an attempt at humor. That dawning of realization and then his smile and laughter as he got the joke would crack everyone up all over again. Working with him was a joy as well. He would turn in the most astounding work. And he would find depth in scripts that wasn't even there until he saw them through his own lens. He made his writers look like geniuses too. I will miss him very much. The world of comics art will miss him even if most of them never knew his name. I will mourn to the end of my days for the work he might have done had he not left us at so young an age. My sympathies to his friends and family in Buenos Aires."
Quique Alcatena, a fellow Argentinian comic book artist told the SPLASH: "All of us are very sad and shaken up by his demise, which came as a terrible surprise. Jorge had not been well for many years, as he suffered from a persistent depression which is the reason for his producing so very little work these last years.
"His virtuosism was admired by all of us; a compulsive perfectionist, he was always looking for the acme of draftsmanship, which led him to tear apart whole pages, if he was not satisfied by the results (you may imagine that those artboards he discarded were actually masterpieces, but there was no arguing with him). This perhaps excessive professionalism brought him into conflict with deadline-minded editors, and Jorge got fewer and fewer jobs. Moreover, he was in a search for utter simplicity and synthesis in his line - he reneged from the more elaborate work he produced in the late 80's as being too cross-hatched- a fact which did not fail to earn his peers' applause, but which did not make him reader-friendly (not everyone can appreciate an Hugo Pratt, or an Alex Toth).
"I last saw him in the weekly gatherings of ADA (Asociación de Dibujantes de Argentina), which he attended two or three times; I was pleasantly surprised by his coming to the reunions, as it was not usual for him to abandon his self-imposed ostracism.It seems his initial enthusiasm faded, as he did not join us any more. Of course, things are very tough here in Argentina, as we are facing the worst political and economic crisis of our history: I'm sure this troubling situation must have taken its toll on Jorge too. And now, I've learnt he passed away last week. It's very sad to see a talent as his cut away at its prime.

From The Chuck Dixon "Dixonverse":

Mon Jul 15, 2002

I received a very short and cryptic e-mail from Jorge Zaffino's son Gerardo yesterday.

It seems that Jorge passed away on Friday afternoon. It was a sudden heart attack. Jorge was forty five.

To say this comes as a shock is an understatement. He and I exchanged e-mails just last week about doing some work together. Two weeks ago Bart Sears and I discussed the possibility of Jorge doing a fill-in on The Path.

There's few artists working in comics to whom the word genius applies. Jorge Zaffino was one of those guys. He was a true artist's artist. Pencillers and inkers who had been exposed to his work became instant lifetime fans. Show them pages of his originals and they would be speechless.

His work displayed a raw power that is unmatched. He was like Joe Kubert in that you can see his "hand" in the work. What seems like delicate and deliberate line work in reproduction would, on close inspection of the pages, be revealed as brutal and varied ink lines that looked as though they were thrown down casually.

But they weren't. Jorge worked hard to achieve that look of spontaneity. Often he would finish an entire sequence only to tear it up and start over again. In a business filled with harsh self-critics Jorge was harder on himself than anyone I've ever worked with.

He drew the wildest fight scenes and most brutal antagonists. But he was capable of subtleties that few in comics can achieve. My favorite page by him is a man and woman talking in a waiting room. No galaxies exploding or fists flying. The page is just two people talking. The scene
is a lawyer talking his client into volunteering for medical experimentation to shorten her prison sentence for manslaughter. But even without words he conveys a sense of rising dread on
the page. Without going over the top or even near it he puts across the weight of the conversation and its heavy implications for the female character. The man remains jocular and re-assuring
but we can see by the woman's body language that she is upset, then worried and finally resigned to what he is saying.

Sadly, he did little work here in the USA. He had a few admirers on editing staffs but they tried to use him on monthly schedules and Jorge wasn't built for that. He preferred special projects that allowed him to delve into the story and fully explore it. He was no prima donna or
tempramental soul. An easier guy to work with I cannot imagine. He just wanted the best work from himself. Many of the projects that I and others presented are probably still gathering dust on shelves somewhere.

Jorge came to comics as a teenager.
His father asked that he be employed at the Villagran Comic Art Studio in Buenos Aires at no pay. Jorge (or Jorgito as they called him) would wash brushes and empty trash and run errands in exchange
for being able to watch the Villagran brothers and their studio mates work on pages.

Most all of these long-time comic vets would tell me that by age seventeen Jorge was the best artist in the studio. This included talents that read like a grocery list of some of the finest artists every to lift a pen or pencil.

On a personal level, he was a charming guy with a great sense of humor. He spoke no English and I no Spanish. But I always enjoyed his range of facial expressions as things I said to him were translated. Particularly if what I or another were saying was an attempt at humor. That dawning of realization and then his smile and laughter as he got the
joke would crack everyone up all over again.

Working with him was a joy as well. He would turn in the most astounding work. And he would find depth in scripts that wasn't even there until he saw them
through his own lens. He made his writers look like geniuses too.

I will miss him very much. The world of comics art will miss him even if most of them never knew his name. I will mourn to the end of my days for the work he might have done had he not left us at so young an age. My sympathies to his friends and family in Buenos Aires.


-Chuck Dixon