Sunday, October 4, 2020

Ron Cobb: September 21,1937--September 21, 2020

During the recent succession of distractions from fire threats, power outages, sheltering (from both virus and fire pollution) and general political, social economic and environmental chaos much potential posting has passed us by.

 

One passing I would like to acknowledge is the death of one of the great cartoonists, illustrators and designers, Ron Cobb.

 


Many obituaries and commentaries focused on his Hollywood film design work (and for good reason).



Stars Wars concept art



                                                                 (from RBCC#148)
 
Alien (1978)

Dark Star (1974)


Concept art for The Rocketeer

Cobb also worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Back to the Future (1985), Aliens (1986), Total Recall (1990), True Lies (1990), The 6th Day (2000) and the TV series Firefly among many other projects.

 

But my favorite work is the political cartoons that he drew in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s for the L.A. Free press and distributed to numerous underground newspapers of the day.

 


Take note: These cartoons were drawn decades ago.  Yet they seem to be responses to current events --which may not say so much for our progress as a society but a lot for Cobb’s prescience.










Ron Cobb also offered this Ecology logo to the public domain in 1969.



You can discover more on the remarkable Ron Cobb by digging up his old cartoon collections (good luck) :




and checking out the official Ron Cobb website: http://roncobb.net/index.html


Works copyright of Ron Cobb or respective holders