SFScope friend Andrew Porter and the PulpMags mailing list report the death of author and fan Jerry Weist, who had been battling cancer for several years, on 7 January 2011. He was in his 60s.
Weist was the author of The Comic Art Price Guide (the second edition appeared in 2000, and he completed the third edition prior to his death; it’s scheduled to appear this summer), Bradbury: An Illustrated Life (2002), and 100 Greatest Comic Books (2004).
He was also a retailer. He opened The Million Year Picnic, one of the first specialty comics stores in the US) in Boston in 1974. And he was a consultant to Sotheby’s auction house from 1990 to 2001.
Weist first began collecting comic books and science fiction in 1958, when he picked up the second issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland at his father’s grocery store. He produced his own Monster fanzines in the early 1960s, attended his first World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland in 1966, and later edited and published the groundbreaking comic book EC Fanzine Squa Tront. He moved to New York City in 1972 and established himself as an artist on the Lower East Side, eventually having one-man shows at galleries in SoHo, and then moved to Boston. After spending ten years in retail, he moved back to New York and convinced Sotheby’s in 1991 to mount the first major Comic Book and Comic Art auction.
Jerry was my close friend from the time he first arrived in Boston. We were fellow E.C. Fan-addicts. I found him a place to live, and visited his store, “The Million Year Picnic”, several times a week for centuries; still do. I visited Jerry in the the hospital several days before his death. He left us, in no pain, surrounded by his wife and friends. He was a fiercely loyal friend. I thought he would certainly outlive me; probably outlive us all. He didn’t. Totally unfair.
PAF
I’m saddened by the loss of Jerry Weist.
I didn’t know if that well, but he was a major influence on my life when I was a teenager. My father was a painter (Charles H. Sanderson, Kansas landscape artist) who also knew Jerry, which is how he and I were introduced. Jerry’s work was on display at a gallery in Lindsborg, KS where my father was also having a exhibit of his work. The curator of the gallery said that I should meet Jerry because of our mutual interests in comics and she took me to his nearby apartment. I was completely blown away by Jerry’s collections, it seemed that every other moment he’d pull another rare item off of a shelf that I’d never seen before. He also showed me his publication Squa Trot, giving me a copy to look take with to me to read later. My father also traded one of his paintings with Jerry for a copy of Spiderman #1 as a Christmas gift for me, my mouth still stands open when I think of the generousity of that trade from both Jerry and my dad, I still own that comic to this day. Jerry also introduced me to one of my now favorite films, “Metropolis”, he showed his 8mm film copy at an art fair that my father was attending, the film was on 18 minute reels and it took all evening to show the entire film, it was amazing.
Thank you Jerry for having such a wonderful impact on my life.
I had the pleasure of Jerry’s company a couple of years ago. He visited my house for two days to catalogue my pre-code horror comics that we were selling. It was hard for Jerry to do his work because I kept bothering him. I just wanted to hear his stories and plumb his knowledge. We went out for dinner and I enjoyed every minute of it. Good-bye to an honorable gentleman.