Courtesy of Scale Model News
Marvel Comics shared that longtime staff colorist Andrew P. Yanchus has passed away, aged 77. He colored various titles for the company from 1976 to 1993, including “Uncanny X-Men,” “Alpha Flight,” and the original “New Warriors” run by Fabian Nicieza and Mark Bagley. According to Scale Model News, Yanchus died in Florida on September 11, 2021, after having been in ill-health for the past few years.
Yanchus was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 31, 1944, and enjoyed building plastic modeling kits as a child, a hobby that led him to study at the Pratt School of Industrial Design. In 1965, he began working for the Aurora Plastics Company, where he became Project Manager for their hobby kit line. During the nine years he spent there, he launched Monster Scenes, a smaller version of the company’s monster toy line, which garnered complaints from parents, and was eventually canceled as a result.
In 1976, he began a new career at Marvel, where he started as a color correction artist on reprints of older comics for “Marvel Tales.” One of his earliest assignments as a staff colorist was 1977’s “Uncanny X-Men” #104 (written by Chris Claremont with art by Dave Cockrum), and he would go onto color John Byrne’s “Alpha Flight” and “Incredible Hulk” runs in the ’80s. His other credits included the Hobgoblin’s first appearance in 1983’s “Amazing Spider-Man” #238; the New Universe titles “Nightmask” and “Star Brand;” 1989’s “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D;” and “Doctor Who” and “G.I. Joe.”
Yanchus continued to write about model building and kit collecting in fan publications and professional magazines like Starlog, and worked as a consultant for the company Atlantis Models. In 2014, he co-wrote a book with Dennis L. Prince called Aurora Monster Scenes — The Most Controversial Toys of a Generation, a retrospective of his infamous line of toys.
He is survived by his sister, Pat, a retired nurse who looked after him during the COVID-19 pandemic. The two moved from his home in Brooklyn, where he maintained a large model collection, to her home in Florida after it was deemed better for his health. You can visit a Flickr page, where he shared some of his favorite memorabilia, here.
