Michael Zulli, the acclaimed comic book artist perhaps best known for his work on The Sandman with writer Neil Gaiman, where Zulli co-created the immortal Hob Gadling, has passed away at the age of 71.

Zulli broke into the comic book industry a bit later in life (he used to joke that he “was born in the fifties, survived the sixties, and spent most of the seventies recuperating”), with the independent comic book series, Puma Blues, with writer Stephen Murphy, which was originally published by Dave Sim, before moving over to Mirage Studios a few years later.

After Mirage Studios began to publish Puma Blues (which ended in 1989), Zulli and Murphy also worked on a number of notable issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…

Zulli was to be the artist on the controversial issue of Swamp Thing written by Rick Veitch that saw the hero witness the death of Jesus Christ (with Swamp Thing making up part of Jesus’ cross). DC ended up pulling the issue before it ever saw publication.

Zulli later did an amazing cover for a Swamp Thing collection….

Zulli worked on another project that never ended up being published, as he and Neil Gaiman started to develop an adaptation of Sweeney Todd for Stephen Bissette’s Taboo, but that magazine folded before the story could be published.

His association with Gaiman, though, continued to Gaiman’s iconic series, The Sandman, where Zulli made his debut with issue #13, which introduced his fan-favorite co-creation, Hob Gadling, the immortal friend of Morpheus…

Zulli’s intricate lines amazed readers. He was well known for his drawings of the Endless, as well…

He would return to the series a number of times over the years, including drawing “The Wake,” the final storyline in the series, which netted him and Gaiman a number of Eisner Award nominations. His pencils were used without inks for the story. That is how detailed his work was…

Zulli and Gaiman worked together on a number of other projects, including an adaptation of Alice Cooper’s The Last Temptation

Zulli kept busy drawing many projects for Vertigo over the years, including Seekers Into Mystery with J.M. DeMatteis…

DeMatteis and Zulli also launched Webspinners for Marvel around that time, a sort of Legends of the Dark Knight for Spider-Man series….

In an excellent interview with Alex Dueben for The Comics Journal, Zulli spoke about his connection to his work:

I hate the term suffer for your art because you don’t suffer for your art. You suffer because you’re an artist, not for your work. Your work is a joy. Your work is always joy. You’re made to suffer for it because to do this on many levels you have to be an outsider from the group. You have to be the lone tree on a hill standing looking down at the forest. You have to separate yourself or you are separated just by the sheer fact that you have become an artistic entity. As soon as you do that the rest of the trees in that forest somehow find you suspicious and untrustworthy or odd. That you have some kind of narcissistic drive that is telling everybody else that somehow you’re privileged when in fact bearing an artistic gift takes a great deal of struggle a great deal of strength and endurance. It takes as much as it gives and the older and better you get at it, the more it takes and the more it gives. You never stop. The more you learn the less you know. You have to keep very very in touch with the muse and when that muse decides to go it’s one of the most painful things in the world. It’s like part of you is amputated. There’s an empty spot in your world and when it comes back, it’s pure joy. You fly. You fly and you fall. It’s a constant iteration of Icarus and Daedalus.

In another great interview back in 2011, Zulli described his best piece of advice:

A teacher of mine in high school saw me as having some potential. He told me basically, don’t even think about doing art for a living unless I loved it more than anything else in the whole world.

One thing I have learned, if you are thinking about money, if it comes into your head while you are working, it’s almost impossible to not start to tailor the work for the public sale/consumption, rather than staying true to the reason you are doing it. Unless you are very lucky, you must try to avoid thinking ahead of yourself. Be present when you are working on whatever is your discipline. Being present at all times is vital.

CBR offers our condolences to Michael Zulli’s friends and family.