When the sad, somewhat shocking news of John Paul Leon’s loss produced its deserved wave of tributes on social media, it felt like colleagues and admirers crafted their grief with great care. Just as the artist’s incomparable work warranted.
At a relatively young age, JPL had already climbed to that stratosphere of artists where his name became an adjective for an aesthetic that other artists aspired to. (Often in vain.) It felt like he climbed to those unreachable heights one brick and portico at a time. The unmistakeable style came from both prodigy-level talent and prodigious hard work, and so the hard-earned respect that Leon’s craft won led all of us who loved it to assiduously craft our words of mourning, or otherwise to wordlessly post the indescribable perfection of his awesome pieces. Our timelines were filled with his poetic cityscapes and cinematic portraitures.
John Paul Leon was just 49 when he died of cancer on May 2nd of this year. He is survived by his wife and daughter, along with a huge community of peers who were fans and fans who were awed by his artistry.
Born in 1972, Leon was a wunderkind at just 20 when he drew “Robocop” and “Static” while studying at the renowned School of Visual Arts in New York. In time, he amassed an impressive bibliography of both covers and interiors, with titles like “Earth X” and “Challengers of the Unknown.” It’s hard to forget the potency of his cover art on comics like “DMZ” or “Sheriff of Babylon,” but the haunting visuals of books like “The Winter Men” and “Batman: Creature of the Night” demonstrated how Leon could carry over the spellbinding design sense of those covers to dramatic narrative sequentials.
From the many accounts of Leon the person, attested on friends’ podcast interviews and social media posts, he was that kind of gentle and generous human being whose modesty might make you overlook the immense passion and genius he plied in his trade.
But the energy in his compositions, the sometimes spare but always spot-on details of gesture and expression in his figurework, the ever judicious balance of extremely dense detail and soaring negative space… these spoke volumes about John Paul Leon’s attention to human emotion that was elevated — not erased — by our vast built worlds. That Manet-atop-the-Mondrian that characterized a JPL piece summed up the mix of “high” and “low” art that comics are uniquely poised to present, the proletarian assertion of grace in workaday struggle, the grit inherent even in superpowered transcendence.
For a moment, reflecting on the tragically early passing of one of my favorite artists, I worried that Leon had a brilliant ouevre but not a definitive or representative work, like the Darwyn Cooke “New Frontier” or the Bernie Wrightson “Swamp Thing,” that might cement his legacy. It’s probably fitting that everyone can have their own favorite for a creator of such breadth.
But I want to humbly submit that, even though it was early and his distinctiveness wasn’t fully formed, John Paul Leon’s work on “Static” (now available in Milestone’s glorious re-release and revival!) might be the clearest showcase of those lasting contributions to comics art. Although the Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, Derek Dingle, and Robert L. Washington III imprint on the character (and the imprint) deserve all the credit they get (and often didn’t!), the fact that JPL matters so much to such a consequential, revolutionary character, but nestled among a panoply of creative stars, seems fitting to the man’s unassuming presence.
What’s uniquely JPL, what supercharges those issues of “Static” even before it was coupled with the oxymoron “Shock,” is the potential energy reverberating from every corner, the pent up firepower that lived in all the city’s conducting metals and busy crowds, bursting with both focus and chaos out of Virgil, those villains, and the thumping effervescence of young Black and urban communities on the come up. What folks forget about the brilliance of “Static Shock” — and what they must know about the genius of John Paul Leon — is that behind the stunning flamboyance is a not-so-secret ingredient: incredible, unflappable discipline.
