Ron Cobb (1937-2020)

The film & comics worlds are mourning the loss of conceptual artist, futurist & satirist Ron Cobb. Cobb died Monday at his home in Sydney, Australia on his 83rd birthday of complications from Lewy body dementia.

Cobb was a prolific artist with works spanning everything from underground cartoons to album covers to concepts & props for Hollywood blockbusters. He also worked as an “inbetweener” animator on Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

After spending years drawing underground comics for the LA Free Press which were syndicated worldwide, he got his first live-action Hollywood job on John Carpenter’s student thesis sci-fi comedy, Dark Star. On the set, he met screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, with whom he later worked on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted Dune adaptation. It was while working on that project that he met artists H.R. Giger and Chris Foss. O’Bannon, Cobb, Giger & Foss would later collaborate on another, much more successful project, Ridley Scott’s Alien.