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Les Daniels (October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011)
I was proud to have known Les, usually seeing him at the New England Horror Writers Conference (NECON) in Rhode Island every summer. He was a great guy, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge about popular culture and was an historian of and writer about comic books, as well as horror novels and several nonfiction books. He might be best known for his 1971 book, “Comix: A History of Comic Books in America.”
To create this posthumous oil portrait for a private commission, I had to gather as many photos of Les as I could find, no single one of which was very helpful for use as reference for the portrait. It was quite a challenge to create a good likeness from that limited material. Les is seen here on the campus of Roger Williams University where NECON had been held for a number of years. The Mount Hope Bridge is in the distance, and Les is holding two books that he authored. The top one was the one he was the most proud of, "The Black Castle." Underneath that is the one I have on my own shelf, "Superman, The Golden Age."

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