My friend Joe Matt died the other day and boy I didn't see that coming. We weren't good friends, in fact I hadn't seen him or talked to him in a long time. It seemed like I was always just missing him, running into someone who was like "I just had lunch with Joe Matt" or he was at the comic shop ten minutes before I came in. Life is busy, especially in LA, and you lose track of people too easily sometimes.

But back in the 90s, I knew Joe pretty well for someone who didn't live in the same city as me. One time he was visiting Chester Brown in Vancouver and I went up and stayed with them for a week and we rode bikes all over the city and talked about comics for days. I couldn't tell you much about it now, I was in my mid-20s then and now I'm in my mid-50s, and those years are foggy. My main visual memory is of the old men doing Tai Chi in the park across the street from Chester and his girlfriend's house. And I remember Joe getting a call about his profit share on Batman/Grendel (which he'd colored and gotten a good deal on) and the smile on his face as he went over his bank book was hilarious. Such a Joe Matt moment. 

Years later, I took a road trip all over the US and Canada and ended up at Chester's place in Toronto for a while, and Joe was living in a rooming house a few blocks away, the one that's in his comics. We hung out a lot that trip, all of us, and went to coffee and cards with Seth. Lots of cafes and book shops and bike rides. One night we went to an open mic night at a bar and some girl Joe had dated sang a Replacements song (I think his nickname for the girl was "Boots" but I might be remembering that wrong). Another night we went to see the movie Rounders and then we played cards for hours, trying to pretend we knew how to play poker. We'd wander to various cafes and talk about life and love (I was heartbroken at the time, and would meet my wife not long after that) and of course comics. I remember sometimes I'd say something and Joe would write it down in his notebook, "That's good dialog for a story someday." That was a great trip and Joe and Chester took care of me at a real low point in my life. I never forgot that. 



A while later I was on a trip to LA about a movie that never happened and I wandered all over Los Feliz with Joe one night, as he tried to talk me out of working in movies and TV and sticking with comics. He'd sabotaged his HBO pilot he said, and never wanted to chase that world again. I was full of hope (and myself and what a big deal I was going to be) and didn't listen. No one ever listens. Joe was renting a room in a house and his room was full of big sketchbooks with his newspaper strip collections. That was his big passion right then, collecting Gasoline Alley strips and glueing them into huge books. There's a scene in BAD WEEKEND where the cartoonist takes his assistant down and shows him the strips he collected his entire life, and that was directly inspired by those big books of Joe's. He spent countless hours going over those old strips and I'm pretty sure those were hours of childlike joy at the art of comics. 

I wish he'd been more prolific, and I have no idea how he made a living most of the last twenty years. I loved his comics, and he endlessly amused me in print and in person, and I can't believe he died so young. Although I guess we're none of us young anymore. I see more and more faces I know in the In Memoriam section of the Eisner Awards every year now. But I'm really sad Joe is gone now and that I'll never run into him at the comic shop or go to for coffee, and that we'll never see any more of his wonderful work.