Back from a weekend away,straight into some bad news....Drew Hayes, creator of Poison Elves is dead.

via The Beat & Newsarama

Came back from the weekend away, said goodnight to Molly, fired up the computer, checked the emails, looked at the blogroll and saw this:

Received from Sirius Entertainment, Inc:
Sirius Entertainment is saddened to report that Drew Hayes, the maverick creator of POISON ELVES, has died in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington. Drew had a heart attack while suffering from pneumonia. He is survived by his daughter, Mary and his mother, Sharon.

Now, you may or may not know Drew Hayes from his work on Poison Elves, but he was part of a great period for comics in the 90s where talented creators started getting their work published (often self published) and saw titles like Bone, Strangers in Paradise, Starchild, Wandering Star and many others do very well at Nostalgia & Comics.

Drew's Poison Elves was one of these titles and I followed it for many years.

I distinctly remember reading the first collection and laughing most of the way through it. Drew's sense of humour was probably best described as caustic and sarcastic in the extreme, his stories were good and his art distinctive.

A sad loss to comics, and at 37, a young life ended far too early.