I never thought I’d be making this episode.
Not this soon.
This past week—March 15th—we found out that comic creator and artist Sam Kieth passed away.
He was 63.
And yeah… that’s young. That’s too young.
And I’m not going to sit here and pretend I can talk about him in some detached, objective way. I can’t. His work didn’t just influence me—it changed my life.
Straight up.
Let me take you back.
Mid-90s. I want to say ’94, ’95.
I’m in Miami, in an art magnet program. I’ve already decided I’m going to be a painter. That’s the path. Fine art. Canvas. Beret. The whole cliché.
Also—I didn’t have cable.
So I’m already cut off from a lot of stuff. And my girlfriend at the time tells me:
“Have you ever seen this show… The Maxx?”
I hadn’t.
So she records it for me. Hands me the tapes.
I go home, put it on…
…and it hit me like lightning.
I didn’t just like it. I didn’t just think it was cool.
It felt like something I had been looking for without knowing it existed.
And here’s the thing—at that point?
I was done with comics.
Burned out. Completely.
The industry was collapsing. Shops closing. My local spot—gone. Everything felt dead. I had checked out.
And then I find The Maxx again—this time in a record store, on a busted spinner rack. Bent comics, half-wrecked copies… and there it was.
I flip through it.
And I’m like—
“This is it.”
I bought it. I think I grabbed Spawn too, just out of habit.
But that was the moment.
I was back.
From there, it was everything.
Hunting comics wherever I could find them.
Digging through shops across cities.
Finding new voices, new styles, new ways to tell stories.
But at the center of it?
Sam Kieth.
Because what he did… it wasn’t just drawing.
It was permission.
Permission to be weird.
To be messy.
To mix mediums.
To let the story feel like a fever dream and still hit harder than anything clean and polished.
And that changed my path.
I didn’t go to a traditional art school.
I chose sequential art. Comics.
I started making comics again.
Creating characters.
Building worlds.
That’s where things like Meathook started.
That whole direction?
That comes back to him.
I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now.
Publishing. Drawing. Writing. Grinding.
And yeah—financially? It’s always a fight.
But creatively?
Worth it. Every second.
And I can trace that back to one moment:
Watching The Maxx on a VHS tape in my room.
There’s this idea in stories—like a “nexus point.”
One thing that, if it didn’t happen, your whole life goes a different way.
For me?
Sam Kieth was that.
And the thing that hits me now… is I never got to meet him.
All the conventions. All the years.
I met so many people I looked up to.
But not him.
And that… that stings.
From everything I’ve heard, he was a private guy. Humble. Almost dismissive of his own work.
But man—
You don’t always get to see what your work does to people.
And his?
It mattered.
It mattered to me.
It gave a 16-year-old kid direction.
It showed me what comics could be.
It gave me a path I’m still walking.
And yeah… it hurts knowing there won’t be more.
But I’ve also seen the outpouring. The artists. The work. The influence.
That energy?
It didn’t disappear.
It spread.
So if you’ve never read his work—
Go find it.
The Maxx.
Zero Girl.
Anything.
Sit with it.
Sam—
Thank you.
For the work.
For the permission.
For the path.
And to everyone listening—
If something moves you like that?
Follow it.
Because sometimes…
that’s the thing that changes everything.
Be good.
