Dave

 I suppose that everyone begins to feel, at some point, that they belong to a Lost Generation — especially when they begin to see significant losses from among their own ranks. Death being the main Occupational Hazard of Life, after all.  

In July, my friend Dave Peabody, known professionally as Dave Naybor, died from a cancer that shot through him at an astonishing speed.  This was him just last year, on the day when all my oldest friends came up to visit me here at the DuckHaus.

He was a guy with a great sense of humor, who always, always came at an idea from a direction that no one else would have thought of. In a world of Sameness, Dave was Daringly Different. He had a great laugh and he always made me laugh. He had a lot of friends. It’s a testament to him that a lot of folks have remembered him online. One thread on Facebook alone holds 111 comments as a type this. A good round number. 

For now, I’ll turn you over to our mutual friend Bruce Canwell, over at the Library of American Comics. Comics were the connecting thread that held us all together over the years, and they were part of what connected Dave to a lot of other people as well. Bruce’s comments about Dave’s passing are closer to what I feel than any words I could possibly muster. 

https://libraryofamericancomics.com/my-job-is-talking-to-people/

I’ll just add that along with the loss there is a sense of shock that I know all of Dave’s friends are feeling. He was just 63 — his illness came quite suddenly, and Dave had no more than informed us that he was in a lot of pain when the announcements came, in rapid succession, that he had lost 100 pounds (Dave never had that much extra weight to lose), that cancer was confirmed, and then that he was in hospice.

We all should have benefitted from his recommendations, his observations, his humor and laughter, his unique perspective, for many years more. We all expected that he would be around with us for a lot longer. There's a sense that the gods have cheated us, by taking him so soon. It's the same sense we felt when our mutual friend Howard was taken from us a decade ago. 

The world is greatly diminished without him.

He was a better friend to me than I was to him. He will be missed. Good night, my friend.

Oh: his collection of Walking Christendom comics is still available at Amazon, here: https://www.amazon.com/Walking-Christendom-One-End/dp/055741167X. A taste of Dave’s humor runs throughout, and is evident in the name he took to publish them: Ed, the Masked Dog Global Empire.