Bernie Mireault, the acclaimed Canadian independent comic book creator, best known for his creator-owned series, The Jam, has passed away at the age of 63. His friend and fellow comic artist, Howard Chackowicz, announced the news on social media:

I am completely heartbroken to say that my dear, dear friend, the great artist/cartoonist Bernie Mireault has passed away, by his own hand, this Monday. I’m devastated, so I will keep this brief (while I hope many out there, fans and comic book historians will never stop writing and talking about him): Bernie was a wonderful friend (truly like a brother to me). I can’t tell you how much he’s helped me over the years, what a great, great person, I love him so much. My heart and soul goes out to his two sons and his three sisters, his family and friends.

When Mireault was a teenager, he explained to the late, great Tom Spurgeon at the Comics Reporter (in a “self-interview”), that that was when he first got into comics:

It was at the age of 17 that I began to travel to Montreal for school and it was commuting back and forth from the city that caused me to discover superhero comics, having only them to pass the time on the bus. That’s what did it. I read them and enjoyed the form but not most of the half-assed content, at least as it was being dished out by the North American mainstream publishers of the 1970s and ’80s. For some reason I was sure that I could do it better. I resolved to become a comic artist and to try to make better use of the medium. That’s when I began to draw a lot. That’s really my art training, drawing as much as I can and even just spending time thinking about it. The hard part has always been maintaining the inspiration required to really work hard. That can be tricky.

In 1985, Mark Shainblum, who had created a small Montreal publishing company, Matrix Square Comics, to publish his own creator-owned indie series, Northguard, offered to publish a character that Mireault had been working on called Makenzie Queen…

As Mireault explained to CBR’s own Timothy Callahan years ago, “Mackenzie Queen was directly inspired by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s Doctor Strange work, of which I found the first two volumes in a drug store book rack. They were those terrible little “digest”-sized books, but the work really blew me away and gave me a lot of energy. I wanted to try something along those lines.”

That early series would sadly mark much of Mireault’s career, in terms of sales and acclaim. Everyone who read Mackenzie Queen dug it, but as the editorials in the comic itself would note, not many people were reading it.

Mireaualt then launched The Jam, which would be his most notable work during his career. He would continue writing and drawing The Jam for the rest of his life, with a striking number of different comic book companies having published a Jam comic book at one time or another (most recently, Nat Gertler’s About Comics published a new, full-color collection of The Jam. Gertler wrote upon Mireault’s passing:

Bernie was a cartoonist’s cartoonist, better appreciated by his fellow creators than by the comics readership at large. He crafted great work through both hard effort and unique vision; his comics were not a poor man’s version of someone else’s, it was all clearly Bernie. It is not just a sadness but an injustice that the industry was not able to find a proper home for his efforts.This was not helped that his key work was done before collecting storylines into books was the default, and for many years it was just scattered across the back issue bins. As his most recent work had shown, he had lost none of his touch as a creator, still creating lovely work in ink and color.

The Jam was basically like Will Eisner’s The Spirit, but if he was just a regular guy (originally known as The Jammer)…

Mireault explained to Callahan:

What is “The Jam” really about? My themes were/are: lower middle class existence, trying to manage a romantic relationship, relationships with animals and superhero satire. I try and bring the whole superhero thing down to Earth in an amusing way. Gordon Kirby has a costume but no superpowers, yet has these odd adventures because he wears the thing occasionally. It’s a set up that still works for me. I try to use humor as much as I can. Always looking for a chance to make people laugh.

In 1987, Mireault drew an arc (now known as “The Devil Inside”) for Matt Wagner’s Grendel, colored by the late Joe Matt, a fellow Canadian artist…

Upon the news of his passing, Wagner posted on social media:

I couldn’t possibly be sadder than to learn of the untimely death of my one-time friend and GRENDEL collaborator, Bernie Mireault. Bernie and I haven’t been close for many years at this point, but I still marvel at his brilliant talents as a comic artist. His clever, innovative and, indeed, ground-breaking grasp of graphic story-telling mark him as a true genius in our beloved art form. Sadly…Bernie was a genius creator who just never quite found the broader audience he so richly deserved. He apparently died in poverty, devoid of much hope. Many readers hailed his talents and held him in a lofty position of artistic honor and respect, but the quirky aspects of his drawing that so delighted the rest of us just never connected with most comics buyers. Sadder still, considering the diversity of talent and visual styles that flourish in the industry today…I can’t help but think that if he’d only been born 25 years ago, he’d be a mega-star nowadays—widely read and frequently imitated.

Mireault discussed his time on Grendel with Callahan:

With “Grendel” I tried very hard to create a strong visual unity between my three issues. Matt Wagner was living in Montreal at the time and we shared a studio and were enthusiastic comic art people constantly discussing craft and bouncing ideas back and forth. He didn’t specify the layouts but wrote stuff that determined them. (i.e. All those notebook pages from Brian’s diary were a big visual element.) Bob Pinaha did a great job lettering cursively on those little notebook pages. Matt’s script was pretty heavy and Bob had to work pretty hard for his page rate there. I’m not sure how he felt about me doing some of the lettering myself — insulted or relieved.

Through his Matt Wagner connection, Mireault drew one of the most famous Riddler comic book stories of all-time in Secret Origins Special #1, in a story written by Neil Gaimain, inked by Wagner, and colored by Matt. It’ll likely be the comic book story that Mireault will be most remembered for among more casual comic book fans, and if you’re going to be remembered for a single story, then this is the one to be remembered for, as it is a brilliant examination of the early days of the “grim and gritty” superhero era…

Mireault served as a colorist for Salgood Sam for many years. Here is an excellent sequence by the two at the end of the final issue of Muties (written by Karl Bollers)…

Salgood Sam wrote on social media about Mireault’s passing:

Bernie was a cartoonists’ cartoonist, one of the underground/alt pioneers of the 80s flipping the script on superhero tropes to lead to some great satire and drama in his comix. His work isn’t super well known these days but you’ll find MANY artists – especially GenXers and Millennial age – who would cite him as an influence on what they wanted to do.

I personally knew him since my mid teens when I met him at a Toronto comics convention at OCA in the 80s and recognized some of his Jam comics he had out. I was recently or about to drop out of high school and was aiming to make comics and had dug his Jam series. He was the MOST positive booster no mater what kind of comics you wanted to make. So I came to know him well over the years as a mentor, role model in the Canadian Indie comics scene, and for a long run there a close friend and frequent collaborator.

Mireault worked on a number of other projects over the years (and also was part of a band called Bug Eyed Monster). When his old friend and collaborator, Joe Matt, tragically passed away earlier this year, Mireault wrote a note on social media, and his sign-off works perfectly for his career, as well – “Thanks for making life on Earth more interesting through your creativity!”

CBR offers our condolences to Bernie Mireault’s family and friends.

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