Monday, July 11th

BYRON PREISS

music: Barber's Adagio for Strings
mood: Numb

I am devastated by the news of the death of my dear friend Byron Preiss. I expected to be seeing him this Wednesday. We always had dinner together the Friday evening of Comic-Con at the Panda Inn in Horton Plaza. Byron always picked up the tab. This year I planned to surprise him and pay for him and his crew, just to see the expression on his face.

Byron Preiss has been a part of my family since the late 1970s. Byron shared my triumphs in this funny business; I shared his. Together we celebrated the mainstream success of our 1981 book THE DINOSAURS - A Fantastic New View of a Lost Era. While I produced the content for that book, Byron was the glue that held it together, the engine running the machine. We met and mutually (and wholeheartedly) approved of each other's future spouses. In fact I met my wife-to-be at LAX, coming home from a New York meeting with Byron regarding my dinosaur book in 1980. It's funny how fate is. If I had never worked with Byron I never would have met my wife. When Byron and I became parents we were both as proud of each other's kids as we were of our own. Whenever Byron phoned me he greeted me, "Hiya, Uncle Bill".

In reality, Byron was more like a brother to me than a nephew. We took turns at being each other's older and younger brothers. Like brothers we had our disagreements --- but these were always business disagreements, differences of aesthetics or production --- rarely anything major. And even though I was usually the hothead in these arguments not for once did I ever let that color or diminish our personal relationship or the love I felt for him and his family.

We shared many common loves. Despite (or maybe because of) being a New Yorker, Byron was a huge Beach Boys fan. One of our first projects together was The Authorized Beach Boys Biography. Through Byron I was able to meet the Beach Boys I hadn’t met (I had already met Brian and Dennis Wilson) and together we watched them perform at the Hollywood Bowl. We also loved and were close friends to Harvey (and Adele) Kurtzman and worked on Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures together.

I loved that Byron was constantly, daringly experimental, always trying new forms to break comics into the mainstream. Despite occasional bold failures and spurred on from his many deserved successes, he never relented in his efforts to have comics reach everyone so that the world could understand and share his love of and passion for this great genre.

Byron’s publications opened the eyes of many people who were not in the comics industry to the potential of using comics creators. My own entry into the film business was facilitated by the fact that John Milius, the director of Conan the Barbarian, had seen my story from Byron’s The Illustrated Harlan Ellison (“Shattered Like A Glass Goblin”) in Heavy Metal and had loved it.

I received copies of our new book, The Emerald Wand of Oz, the first of a series we were doing of three new Oz books, just two days ago. I was looking forward to handing him the hard copy of my essay on King Kong for his new Kong book, and unveiling the cover of our second Oz book, Trouble Under Oz, at Comic-Con this Wednesday mostly because, despite being in the business as long as he had been, Byron was still not jaded. He had never lost his fan enthusiasm for good new work.

I thought I would be working with Byron off and on forever. He always had a knack of approaching me with just the right dream project I had always wanted to do.

I am still numb from the news. I can’t believe it. My brother Byron has passed on much too early, leaving a large hole in my life. My warmest sympathies go out to his wife Sandi and his girls, Karah and Blair.

William Stout