Bleeding Cool and the Comic Book Database report that underground comix artist Leslie Sternbergh passed away on March 27, 2019. Colleen Doran verified the news on Twitter, stating “the radiant Leslie Sternbergh passed away of Multiple System Atrophy. She was a brilliant underground cartoonist, artist, model, and a stupendously funny and beautiful person.”
Sternbergh was born on June 29, 1960. She studied life drawing at the New York Academy of Art, and her work appeared in underground/alternative publications like The Comics Journal, “Twisted Sisters,” and “Wimmen’s Comix.” She also took on more mainstream work: she was part of the DC New Talent Workshop, inking a story in 1989’s “Wonder Woman Annual” #2 (penciled by Cara Sherman Tereno), and some of her comics were published in MAD magazine.
Other work Sternbergh did included comic book illustrations for the 1989 B-movie Alien Space Avenger, and an appearance as herself in 1994’s Robert Crumb documentary Crumb. She was a member of the non-profit group Friends of Lulu, which promoted women’s readership of comics until it was dissolved in 2011.
She was married to Adam Alexander, a mathematician and creator of the puzzle Alexander’s Star. They had lived together in an apartment in New York’s East Village since 1985, but faced eviction in 2014 because of medical costs incurred by Sternbergh’s battle with cancer. They ran an Indiegogo campaign to raise the necessary $12,000 funds: they ultimately raised $2,935. He passed away in 2017.
