Mort Todd obit

Mort Todd, R.I.P.

 He was not on the list.

Sad to hear the news that Mort Todd (aka Michael Delle-Femine, aka Eel O'Brain) has passed away at the far too young age of 63.  Todd's career intersected with Ditko a number of times. In the 1980s he was the editor of CRACKED and commissioned a number of stories by Ditko (some of which Todd also wrote).  Later on Todd created the magazine MONSTERS ATTACK, each issue including a memorable story by Ditko (one of them inked by Todd). Also in that era, Todd wrote the story for RETURN OF THE SKYMAN #1 for A.C.E. Comics, which Ditko drew.

In the early 1990s, Todd worked with Ditko on some original Mr. A. material that only ended up being published years later by SD Publishing. He apparently did produce a Mr. A. t-shirt and some other stuff.

In the 1990s Todd was an editor at Marvel, where he worked on a number of reprints that included vintage Ditko work. He also got Ditko to contribute some new covers and pin-ups for those books, including the amusing little bit on the side here.

Later on Todd worked on some publications reprinting some of the 1980s stuff, and was recently announced as editing some material for the Ditko Estate's Ditkoverse initiative.

He was best known as an editor-in-chief of Cracked magazine, and later, Marvel Music. He was owner of Comicfix, a media company that has developed licensed properties.

As a writer, artist or editor, Todd worked at several comic book companies, contributing to characters including Superman and Spider-Man, and to licensed properties such as Barbie and Looney Tunes. His illustrations appear on CD covers, magazines, newspapers, and print advertisements.

Todd was born on November 9, 1961, and raised in the state of Maine, where he cultivated a keen interest in all media. As a youth, he started drawing and writing comics, and was editor of his camp newspaper. In high school he drew advertisements and record covers for local clubs and bands and created the Stiv Bators logo still being used for the late Dead Boys' solo career. As a teen, he moved to New York City and began creating Back from the Grave garage punk album covers for Crypt Records. He re-created the first cover for a new album from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

With Daniel Clowes, Pete Friedrich and Rick Altergott, Mort Todd contributed stories and art to Psycho Comics. He sold his first screenplay for a TV pilot called The Ultimates to a German production company while still a teenager. The pilot was produced, but never distributed, and stars a young Clowes as a teen rock 'n' roll superhero.[citation needed] Mort also wrote and penciled some stories for Clowes' Lloyd Llewellyn series from Fantagraphics. Around then he started freelancing for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Kitchen Sink, Myron Fass, and many other smaller publishers.

From 1983 to 1996, he illustrated all nine original volumes of Back from the Grave (Crypt Records), a compilation series of obscure proto-punk rock from the 1960s. The original art to the cover of Volume One is on permanent display at the Cornell University Punk Archive Collection.

In 1985, Todd became editor-in-chief of Cracked magazine. There he signed artist Don Martin after a 32-year career at Mad Magazine. Todd also published some of the earliest mainstream work of Altergott, Clowes, and Peter Bagge.

For Globe Communications, Todd created the comics magazine Monsters Attack!, which featured horror comics and articles about movies. It ran five issues (Sept. 1989 - Dec. 1990), with Todd involved with the first four.

Todd launched the imprint AAA, which published the first authorized collection of Bill Ward's pin-ups in W.O.W. (World of Ward). AAA also published a bilingual humor comic called Pepito with stories by writer George Gladir.

In 1994, Todd launched a line of music comics called Marvel Music at Marvel Comics, working with such artists as Kiss, Rob Zombie, The Rolling Stones, KRS-One, and the estates of Elvis Presley and Bob Marley. Some of the talent working on these books included Neil Gaiman, Kyle Baker, Dan Barry, Severin, Colan, and Morrow.

While at Marvel, Todd also edited a series of pre-Comics Code horror and giant monster reprints (Curse of the Weird and Monster Menace), and developed the oversized Comic Book by Ren & Stimpy-creator John Kricfalusi.

In 2005, Todd rejoined Cracked magazine, this time as a contributing editor, but left after several months.

Todd wrote and illustrated for the new Tales from the Crypt comic series, and completed new comic books featuring "Lucy Hell, Devilgirl", "The Secret Society", and the French/English language "Mr. Krime", the last written by Martyrs of Pop's Jean-Emmanuel Dubois. With his longtime collaborator Cliff Mott, Todd created and directed three animated cartoons for Playboy.

Todd has storyboarded commercials and produced animation for Walt Disney, Sesame Street, CBS, MTV, and Comcast, including an animated television pilot featuring Christopher Walken.

Todd was assistant director on the live-action film Distraction, and directed his first live-action short, a gangster comedy called A Change of Heart. He was producer of The Diabolikal Super-Kriminal documentary, which had its world premiere in Italy at the Ravenna Nightmare Film Festival in November 2007, and its U.S. premiere at San Diego Comic-Con in July, 2009. The film was awarded a Special Mention at the convention and in November, 2011, won the "Golden Lobster" Director's Award at the Portland Maine Film Festival. He has directed music videos for cartoonist Peter Bagge's Seattle band Can You Imagine?, the psychobilly band Psycho Charger, the Spanish Help Me Devil as well as an animated tease for his animated Sadistik: Strip & Kill web series. He also provided some animation for the documentary Arias with a Twist, directed by Bobby Sheehan.